"Sign here, Mrs. Cross, and there's no going back." I signed. Upstairs, my husband was laughing with his mistress. Tonight, he would announce their engagement. He didn't know I was dying. And now, he never would. "Aria, please reconsider," Dr. Reed said over the phone, his voice heavy. "Cryostasis has never been tested on a living human. The freezing may kill you instantly." "I have terminal cardiac amyloidosis," I said quietly, walking to my bedroom window. "I have four months either way. At least this way, there's a chance someone wakes me up in a future where my heart can be fixed." "And your husband? Does Damian Cross know his wife is volunteering to be frozen?" I watched the staff string fairy lights across the garden below. The party planner had called it an intimate celebration. Two hundred guests. A champagne tower. All for him and Vivienne Hale. "My husband," I said, "is busy." I hung up before Dr. Reed could hear my voice break. My phone lit up with a news alert. BILLIONAIRE DAMIAN CROSS TO WED SOCIALITE VIVIENNE HALE. The photo showed them hand in hand, and on Vivienne's finger blazed a sapphire ring — the ring I designed. The one I spent six months crafting for our third anniversary, engraved inside with the coordinates of the night we met. I had left it on his desk last month with a note: Can we try again? He never answered. Apparently, he had answered her instead. I pressed my hand flat against my chest, against the broken heart that was literally killing me, and I didn't cry. I had run out of tears somewhere around month eight of sleeping alone in a twelve-bedroom house. I went downstairs anyway. Habit is a pathetic thing. I had cooked dinner — his favorite, braised short ribs, the way his late grandmother used to make them — because today was our anniversary. Three years married. He had forgotten. Or worse, he remembered, and chose tonight on purpose. At 1:40 a.m., the front door opened. Damian walked in with his tie loosened, Vivienne's perfume all over him. He stopped when he saw me sitting at the dining table beside cold food and one unlit candle. "Why are you still awake?" His voice was flat. Bored. "Happy anniversary," I said. Something flickered across his face — there and gone, like a light dying. Then his jaw hardened into the stranger I'd lived with for two years. "Stop doing this, Aria. The dinners. The waiting up. It's pathetic." He dropped his cufflinks on the table like a verdict. "You knew what this marriage was. A contract between your grandfather and mine. Vivienne is who I love. The sooner you accept that, the easier this gets." "I know," I whispered. "I just wanted to ask one thing." He paused at the staircase, not turning around. "When's the wedding?" "December fourteenth," he said, and climbed the stairs without looking back. The candle slipped from my fingers and rolled across the floor. December fourteenth. My birthday.
