Signed (Will You Marry Me #1)

Chapter 1

Claudette

Dr. Rivera was still talking, but I’d stopped listening somewhere around “inflammation” and “inoperable.” The words kept coming: risk assessment, palliative options, quality of life—all of them meaning the same thing.

I was dying, and nobody could stop it.

My mother’s hand found my father’s across the consultation table.

She’d already pulled out one of those embroidered handkerchiefs she kept in her purse, dabbing at her eyes like we were at a funeral instead of a Tuesday appointment.

My father cleared his throat three times in a row, that sound he made when he was trying not to cry.

I wanted to comfort them, but I couldn’t figure out how to arrange my face into anything resembling okay.

“Claudette?” Dr. Rivera’s voice cut through. “Do you have any questions?”

I had a thousand questions. None of them had answers that would change anything.

“How long?”

“It’s difficult to say with certainty. Given the progression we’ve seen over the past eight months—”

“Weeks? Months?”

He hesitated. And that told me everything.

“We’ll monitor closely. Adjust medications as needed to keep you comfortable.”

Comfortable. As if comfort mattered when your brain was killing you. Every headache felt like it could be the beginning of the end. It didn’t matter when you were just twenty-eight and your body had decided to quit without asking permission.

I thanked Dr. Rivera because apparently that’s what you do when someone tells you they can’t save your life. You walk out. You get in the car and drive home in terrible silence.

Home was worse.

My mother showed up in my bedroom doorway every twenty minutes with increasingly ridiculous offerings. Tea. Soup. A throw blanket. She kept fluffing the pillows on my bed like the right arrangement might somehow fix the tumor in my brain.

“Mom, the pillows are fine.”

“Are you sure? You look uncomfortable.”

I was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the pillows. It was the way she looked at me—like I was already fading, like if she blinked too long I might disappear.

My father was worse in his own way. He’d hover in doorways without entering, asking careful questions that all meant the same thing. “Need anything?” which meant are you okay. “Hungry?” which meant are you safe. “Want company?” which meant please tell me you’re still alive.

He’d started keeping a glass of water on my nightstand, refreshing it every hour whether I drank it or not. The condensation would pool on the wood, and he’d wipe it away with his sleeve, and I’d watch him pretend he wasn’t checking to see if I was still breathing.

They were trying to love me. I knew that.

They were terrified and helpless, watching their daughter die, so they were doing the only things they could think of—building walls around me, making my world smaller and safer with every worried glance.

Protecting me from a danger that was already inside my skull.

But I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of all that love.

My phone buzzed. Pauline.

Thank god.

“Please tell me you’re calling with something ridiculous,” I said instead of hello.

“Oh honey, do I have ridiculous for you.” Her voice was bright and familiar and blissfully, beautifully normal. “Remember that guy from the coffee shop? Vintage band T-shirts, impeccable music taste?”

“The one who’d been offering you free coffee?”

“That’s the one. So we finally went out last night, right? Dinner, very cute little Italian place, everything’s going great. He’s funny, he smells good and laughed at my jokes—”

“Shocking.”

“Right? So I’m thinking, this is it, I’ve finally found someone who appreciates my wit and charm. And then.” She paused for dramatic effect. “He asks what I do for fun.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. And I, like an idiot, told him the truth. That I have a podcast addiction, specifically true crime podcasts, and that I may or may not have a spreadsheet ranking serial killer documentaries by cinematography, narrative structure, and overall creep factor.”

I burst out laughing. It felt foreign and wonderful. “Pauline, you do realize that sounds—”

“Completely unhinged? Yes, I’m aware of that now. But in my defense, I’m a journalist—it’s a sickness. I thought honesty was supposed to be attractive. Turns out there’s a line between ‘quirky hobby’ and ‘future murder plans,’ and apparently I pole-vaulted right over it.”

“What did he say?”

“He got very quiet. Then he said he had an early morning and basically sprinted out of the restaurant. I haven’t heard from him since. Three days, Claudette. I’m officially ghosted.”

“Maybe he’s just busy?”

“Nobody’s that busy. He saw my dark passenger and ran for the hills.” She sighed, but I could hear the smile in it. “Which is fine, honestly. If he can’t handle my extensive knowledge of forensic psychology, he doesn’t deserve this excellence.”

I smiled. “You’re so different from College Pauline, and I’m loving it.”

“College Pauline spent three years pining after a guy who told his friends she wasn’t his type.” I could imagine her cringing as she always did when we talked about this topic. “How do one recover from that humiliation?”

“He was an asshole.”

“I learned my brutal lesson with rich hot guys who think the world revolves around them.”

We both laughed, and god, it felt good. Normal. Like I was just a person talking to my best friend instead of a dying girl counting down days.

“So what about you?” Pauline asked. “How was the appointment?”

“It was bad.”

“How bad?”

“Dr. Rivera said there’s nothing else to try. No surgery, no experimental treatments. Nothing. We’re just waiting now.”

“Shit. Claudette, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I picked at a loose thread on my bedspread. “Eight months of appointments getting progressively worse, and today was the final nail in the coffin. Pun intended.”

Her voice got softer. “How are you doing? Really?”

“Honestly? I feel like I’m suffocating. Mom won’t stop hovering. Dad keeps asking if I need anything every five minutes. They’re trying to take care of me but I can barely breathe.”

“They’re scared.”

“I know. But I’m scared too, and I’m the one dying. I should get to decide how I spend whatever time I have left, you know? “I don’t want to spend it trapped in my childhood bedroom while my mom keeps trying to force-feed me soup.”

Pauline was quiet for a second. “Remember that bucket list we made?”

I looked at my nightstand where that old journal was buried under pill bottles. “When we were sixteen and thought we knew everything?”

“We did know everything. Sixteen-year-old us were brilliant.”

“Sixteen-year-old us thought thirty was ancient.”

“Okay, fair. But we wrote down a hundred things we wanted to do, Claudie. And how many have we actually done?”

“I don’t know. Twenty? Maybe?”

“Exactly. We got so caught up in being adults that we forgot about actually living. We should fix that.”

“Pauline—”

“I’m in Vegas right now for a wedding. I could come to California after it’s over. We could do some of the list. The reckless stuff. When’s the last time you did something just because you wanted to?”

I couldn’t remember. When was the last time I did something fun?

After we hung up, I sat there on my bed and retrieved the journal.

The cover was plastered with decade-old stickers—stars, moons, and quotes that felt painfully naive now.

“One hundred things to do before turning thirty” in my handwriting across the first page.

Santorini at sunset. Kiss someone in the rain. See the Northern Lights. Fall in love.

All those dreams from when thirty seemed far away and death happened to other people. When we’d been young enough to believe wanting something badly enough would make it happen.

I flipped through pages. Some crossed off, most untouched. Then I stopped on an entry that wasn’t in our handwriting.

Jack had grabbed the journal once and written “DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID” in his aggressive scrawl, and drawn an arrow pointing to number forty-seven.

Tell him how you feel.

I’d written that one alone, late at night during a sleepover. I hadn’t specified who “him” was. I didn’t need to because his name was engraved in my heart.

Michael Ashford.

My brother’s best friend. Five years older. Completely off-limits.

I realized I loved him when I turned seventeen.

He was twenty-one that summer, home from college. I’d destroyed my laptop the week before my senior project was due—still don’t know how—and Jack called Michael because Michael understood computers like breathing.

He showed up with a toolkit and spent three hours recovering files I thought were gone.

Explained everything in this calm voice, and I just watched his hands and the way his forehead crinkled when he concentrated.

Somewhere between “corrupted sectors” and “miraculous save,” I fell completely in love with him.

With his patience and the way he looked at me like I wasn’t just Jack’s annoying little sister.

I’d had twelve years to tell him, and I chose silence every time. Last I heard, he’d gotten engaged two months ago.

I’d lost everything without ever giving it a try. I’d been afraid of—rejection, ruined friendships, uncomfortable family dinners—now all of it needed a future I didn’t have.

My hands were shaking when I opened my laptop. I stared at the search bar for a full minute before typing “flights to Vegas.”

Pauline had mentioned being there this week. I could tick some of the list with her, even if it didn’t involve Michael Ashford.

I found a flight leaving in six hours. Barely enough time to pack and get to the airport. I hit “book” before my brain could catch up. Entered my credit card. Hit confirm.

Done. Non-refundable.

My parents would panic when they found out. Jack would probably try to drag me home. Dr. Rivera would have opinions about stress and rest.

But I was tired of waiting.

I packed light: a carry-on with clothes for a few days, medications in orange bottles, and that bucket list journal. I left the note on the kitchen counter because disappearing felt cruel even if staying felt impossible.

“Visiting Pauline in Vegas. Back soon. Don’t worry.”

They’d worry anyway. But I’d be in the air before they could stop me.

The airport was strange and quiet at one in the morning. Security waved me through. Nobody looked at me and saw a dying girl. Just another passenger. Anonymous and free.

I sat at my gate and watched people sleep in uncomfortable chairs, scroll through phones, live their regular lives.

I’d been afraid of flying since I was twelve. Since my grandmother’s plane went down over the Pacific. Just gone. Vanished.

My mother inherited that fear and passed it down like a family heirloom.

But sitting there, I realized how absurd it was to fear a plane crash when my brain was killing me. What did it matter if I died in the air or on the ground? At least in the air, I’d be choosing the risk.

Getting over my fear of heights. Number one on the list.

When they called my boarding group, I walked down that jetway with wobbly legs and cold hands. I thought about my grandmother and the ocean and my mother’s tears. Then I thought about Dr. Rivera’s face and my father’s throat-clearing and my mother’s soup, and I kept walking.

I took a window seat and watched the ground fall away.

The city lights stretched below, then disappeared into darkness.

My hands gripped the armrests. My heart hammered.

But I didn’t close my eyes. I made myself look.

Allowed myself to feel every second of the fear because terror meant I was alive and choosing.

This was living.