Chapter 2 - Seven Things Before Goodbye
On the way back to Manhattan, Lucian asked me to make a list.
“Seven things?” I said.
“Seven days.”
“That’s aggressively symbolic.”
“You texted a billionaire. This is what happens.”
I turned toward the window so he wouldn’t see me smile.
My body was tired in that deep, heavy way illness had taught me to accept as ordinary, but my mind felt strangely sharp.
I opened the notes app on my phone.
“What are the rules?”
“No rules.”
“That’s suspicious coming from a man who carries contracts to beaches.”
“Fine. One rule. Don’t write what you think a dying woman is supposed to want.”
I stopped.
That removed half the things I had been about to type.
See Paris.
Climb a mountain.
Say something profound under the stars.
Those were beautiful things, but they did not belong to me.
I had never cared about climbing a mountain.
What I wanted was smaller.
More embarrassing.
More real.
I typed slowly.
1. See the ocean at sunrise.
I checked it off.
2. Finish the painting.
3. Eat my mother’s lemon cake one more time.
4. Dance in the rain.
5. Tell my sister the truth.
My thumb froze over number six.
Lucian did not look at my screen.
“What are you stuck on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then leave it blank.”
“I don’t want to die with blanks.”
His gaze shifted to me.
The words had come out more sharply than I intended.
I looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Rule three.”
“No pity?”
“No unnecessary apologies.”
“That was not on the contract.”
“I’m amending it.”
“You cannot amend a contract without both parties.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m impressed.”
“I once dated a lawyer.”
“What happened?”
“He fell in love with a yoga instructor.”
Lucian’s expression remained completely serious.
“Unforgivable.”
“She was very flexible.”
That got him.
Not a smile.
A short laugh.
It changed his whole face.
The powerful, severe man from magazine covers disappeared for half a second, replaced by someone younger and lonelier.
Then he looked away.
“What’s number six?” he asked.
I thought about it.
“Wear something beautiful somewhere I don’t belong.”
“Meaning?”
“A room full of rich people who would absolutely know I don’t belong there.”
“You’re in luck.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Tonight.”
“No.”
“You just wrote it.”
“I meant theoretically.”
“That is not how lists work.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’re weaponizing the diagnosis already.”
“I have six days left. I’ve earned it.”
We stared at each other.
Then both of us laughed.
The sound filled the car.
It was ridiculous.
I had known him for less than two hours.
Yet somehow, beside him, death did not disappear, but it stopped being the only person in the room.
When we reached my building, Lucian did not follow me upstairs.
He handed me a card.
No title. No company logo.
Only his name and one number.
The same number I had texted.
“Call if you need anything,” he said.
I looked at the card.
“Anything?”
“Within reason.”
“I want a giraffe.”
“No.”
“A small giraffe.”
“Still no.”
“Your customer service is terrible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He began to step away.
“Lucian.”
He stopped.
“Why did you keep that number private?”
His face changed again.
Not enough for anyone else to notice.
Enough for me.
“You said no lying,” I reminded him.
“I did not say I would answer every question immediately.”
“That sounds like a loophole.”
“It is.”
Before I could protest, he added, “Tonight. Seven o’clock. I’ll send a car.”
Then he left.
At 6:10, a garment bag arrived at my apartment.
I nearly sent it back.
Then I unzipped it.
Inside was a dark green evening gown, elegant without being absurd, with long sleeves and a neckline that made me feel like the version of myself I remembered from before hospital gowns and IV bruises.
There was no price tag.
I texted him.
Me: If this costs more than my rent, I’m not wearing it.
Lucian: Then don’t ask what it costs.
Me: That is not reassuring.
Lucian: The dress is borrowed.
Me: From whom?
Lucian: A designer who owes me a favor.
Me: Is this how billionaires say “free”?
Lucian: Wear the dress, Amelia.
I did.
At seven, the car took me to a glass tower overlooking Central Park.
I expected a charity gala.
Instead, I arrived at a private dinner for forty people in a penthouse restaurant that had been closed to the public for the evening.
Politicians. CEOs. Investors. Actors I recognized.
And Lucian, standing near the windows in a black tuxedo.
Every head in the room seemed to turn when he walked toward me.
“You didn’t tell me what this was,” I whispered.
“You wanted a room where you didn’t belong.”
“I meant emotionally, not financially.”
“You’re doing well.”
“I may throw up on a senator.”
“I can suggest one.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Then I noticed a silver-haired man approaching.
“Lucian,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get ten minutes with you for three weeks.”
“And now you have none.”
The man looked at me.
Recognition flickered nowhere in his face.
“This is Amelia Carter,” Lucian said.
No explanation.
No label.
No dying woman.
No charity case.
Just my name.
The man shook my hand and moved on.
For the next hour, Lucian did something I didn’t understand until much later.
He did not introduce me as someone special.
He made everyone else treat me as though I already was.
When people tried to pull him into business conversations, he redirected them.
When they asked what I did, I told them the truth.
“I paint when I’m brave enough and work remotely editing educational books when I’m not.”
One woman asked to see my art.
I nearly choked on my water.
I showed her two photographs on my phone.
She stared at the second one, a portrait I had painted of my mother from memory.
“This is extraordinary,” she said.
I looked at Lucian.
He didn’t react.
He had never seen it before.
That mattered.
The compliment was mine.
Not his.
Dinner had barely begun when the room suddenly went strange.
A buzzing sound came through my ears.
The chandelier blurred.
I gripped the table.
Lucian noticed immediately.
“Amelia?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I just need air.”
He stood.
The room turned sideways.
The last thing I remember was my hand slipping from the back of the chair.
I woke up on a sofa in a private lounge with a doctor kneeling beside me.
Lucian stood across the room, white with anger.
Not at me.
At the doctor.
“Say it again,” Lucian said.
The doctor looked uncomfortable.
“Her oxygen saturation recovered quickly. Her blood pressure is low, but that alone doesn’t explain the episode.”
“It does with my condition,” I said.
The doctor looked at me.
“What condition?”
I told him the diagnosis I had carried for almost four years.
He frowned.
Then asked three questions my own specialists had stopped asking a long time ago.
Had I ever had a pulmonary pressure study?
Had my cardiac MRI been repeated after a specific medication was discontinued?
Had anyone ever biopsied the abnormal tissue directly rather than relying on the original pathology report?
I answered no three times.
Lucian’s face hardened with each answer.
“It won’t matter,” I said. “My doctor told me yesterday. Seven days, approximately.”
The doctor did not offer false comfort.
But he did not look convinced either.
“Who is your physician?”
“Dr. Stephen Talbot at St. Catherine’s.”
Something passed between the doctor and Lucian.
I saw it.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing yet,” Lucian said.
“No lying.”
He exhaled.
The doctor glanced at him, then back at me.
“Ms. Carter, I’m Dr. Naomi Reyes. I’m a cardiothoracic specialist. I consult for Moretti Medical Ventures, among other institutions. I’m not saying your diagnosis is wrong. But I am saying the progression you describe doesn’t line up neatly with the physiology I’m seeing tonight.”
I stared at her.
My heart began pounding.
“Are you saying I’m not dying?”
“No,” she said carefully. “I’m saying I want to see your records before anyone says anything more.”
Hope entered the room like a dangerous animal.
I hated it instantly.
I stood too quickly.
Lucian stepped forward.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Run from this because hope scares you more than dying does right now.”
I slapped him.
The sound cracked through the lounge.
Dr. Reyes froze.
Lucian did not move.
My palm burned.
“I am not afraid of hope,” I whispered. “I am afraid of being told to hope by people who get to go home when the test comes back bad.”
His expression changed.
The anger disappeared.
“Fair,” he said quietly.
My eyes filled.
I hated that too.
“I spent four years getting worse,” I said. “Four years canceling plans. Four years watching people stop inviting me places because I kept saying maybe. Yesterday I was told I had seven days. I finally accepted that there was an end to this. Do you understand what it does to someone to reopen the door?”
Lucian looked at me for a long time.
“Yes,” he said.
Not I think so.
Not I can imagine.
Yes.
Then he turned to Dr. Reyes.
“Get the records. No pressure on her. No tests unless she agrees.”
Dr. Reyes nodded.
I should have been relieved.
Instead, a cold thought moved through me.
“Why did she react to the name St. Catherine’s?”
Lucian went still.
There it was again.
The private number.
The dead woman he had mentioned.
The hospital.
My rule about lying.
I looked directly at him.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
His jaw tightened.
Then he reached into his jacket and took out his phone.
He opened a photograph and handed it to me.
A young woman smiled from the screen.
She had dark hair, bright eyes, and the same slight curve at the corner of her mouth Lucian had when he forgot to be guarded.
“My sister,” he said.
I looked at him.
“She died at St. Catherine’s seven years ago.”
My breath caught.
May you like
Then he added the sentence that made the room disappear around me.
“And the phone number you texted yesterday used to belong to her.”
