Love Me While I'm Dying

Elena

The moment William's weight came down on me, I cried out in pain.

I looked up and caught a flash of mockery in those ice-blue eyes.

"Since when did you get so sensitive?" His voice was cold.

Something squeezed tight in my chest.

I wanted to tell him this wasn't me throwing a fit — I was actually hurting. The test results had come back that morning. The report was sitting in the drawer right now. Breast cancer. Late stage.

"William, I'm dying."

I grabbed his arm and looked hard at that impossibly handsome face, searching for even a trace of concern.

He just curved his lips into a lazy smile.

"What's this about? Because I spent one birthday with Chloe?"

A scene?

Something inside me went cold, piece by piece.

There's a saying that's dead-on — to someone who doesn't love you, even if you hang yourself, he'll think you're just playing on a swing.

I closed my eyes and felt a bitter smile pull at my mouth.

"You skipped your own wife's medical appointment to spend the day with another woman. Tell me I don't have the right to say something."

I said it and I meant every word.

I rarely thought of myself as William's legal wife. I knew what he thought of our marriage — something to be ashamed of.

I used to love him. I put up with it.

But now I was dying.

If I had nothing left to lose, why couldn't I live the way I actually wanted — just once?

The man who'd been all over me a moment ago pulled away instantly. The air around him turned sharp and cold.

"Elena." He tossed the words over his shoulder without turning around. "You crossed a line."

Then he was gone.

I sat up. A wave of nausea hit me hard. I stumbled to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left.

I stared at the face in the mirror — hollow, wrecked, barely recognizable — and made myself a promise: Let it go. Let him go. Let yourself go.

I called a lawyer that night and had a divorce agreement drafted by morning.

The house, the cars, everything — I didn't want any of it. I just wanted out. Fast.

When I held that thin sheet of paper in my hands, I felt something loosen in my chest.

Somewhere along the way, this marriage — the one I'd once ached for, felt giddy over — had turned into a weight I was carrying.

I took the agreement and went to Holloway Group, but William's assistant Blake stopped me before I could even reach the office door.

"Miss Vance." Blake's tone was flat. "Legal is on a different floor, if I remember right."

William had never told anyone at the company about us. As far as the world was concerned, the CEO of Holloway Group was still single — and his rumored girlfriend was Chloe, the newly returned pharmaceutical PhD who'd just come back from studying abroad.

So Blake had never had much use for me. To him, I was just a junior associate in Legal who didn't know her place.

I was too tired to bother.

I held out the envelope — the one with the divorce agreement inside — and kept my face blank.

"Please give this to William."

I turned and walked away.

I didn't look back to see Blake's reaction. I just heard footsteps behind me, a pause, then a knock on the door.

The next day, Blake called me into a conference room.

"I'm sorry — what?"

I could barely process what I was hearing.

Blake repeated himself. "Dr. Chloe from the Pharmaceutical Research Institute is currently facing a defamation lawsuit. Mr. Fu wants you to take the case personally and win it for her."

My heartbeat started climbing.

Everyone in Legal knew about this case.

Chloe was the youngest, most accomplished female pharmaceutical PhD in the field. The moment she came back to the country, she'd picked up a stalker — some anonymous account that kept posting she was a homewrecker, that she'd broken up William's marriage.

Most people ignored it at first. Just noise.

But then the account did something unexpected. They posted a photo from a Holloway family dinner. Every face was blurred out, but sharp-eyed users noticed something — the woman sitting next to William wasn't Chloe.

That lit everything up. The hashtag #ChloeHomewrecker shot to the top of trending within hours.

Chloe fired back fast. She filed a defamation suit against the anonymous account.

I was shaking — literally shaking — with rage.

Whether Chloe was the other woman? Nobody knew that better than me — the actual wife.

All those nights I couldn't sleep. The explicit photos. The voice messages, breathy and unmistakable. Every single one of them from Chloe — pure, brilliant Chloe.

And my breast cancer? Nobody knew more about how I got it than she did.

Now William wanted me — his actual wife — to win a defamation case for his mistress?

Did he see me as a person at all?

"Miss Vance?" Blake's voice pulled me back. "Are you listening?"

I came back to myself and didn't hesitate.

"I'm not taking the case."

Blake's expression didn't change. He looked like he'd expected exactly that.

"Miss Vance, you're still an employee of Holloway Group. When you're given an assignment, you don't get to say no."

I laughed — a short, hollow sound — and reached up to take the lanyard off my neck. I dropped the ID badge on the table.

"Then I quit."

I didn't stop to grab anything from my desk. I walked out of Holloway Group with nothing but myself.

Ding.

I'd just stepped outside when my phone went off — a calendar reminder. Just a date. No description, no note.

But my face went white.

I moved fast, out to the curb, arm up for a cab.

"Riker's Island Correctional." My voice came out rushed. "Please hurry."The moment William's weight pressed down on me, I cried out in pain.