Chapter 16
Michael
I stood on the balcony watching Vegas glowed against the desert night, neon bleeding into darkness like something beautiful trying too hard to stay alive. And all I could think about was how close I’d come to losing her.
When Pauline’s call came through that afternoon, I’d been going through emails I didn’t care about.
Claudette had wanted to meet Pauline for lunch and shopping.
I’d worried about letting her go without me—that familiar knot tightening behind my ribs.
But she’d wanted normal, to feel like a regular person instead of someone being constantly monitored.
So I’d kissed her goodbye and told her to have fun and spent the next three hours checking my phone every five minutes, wearing a path between my desk and the window.
Then Pauline called—and the world narrowed to a single point.
I didn’t remember the drive to the hospital.
One moment I was grabbing my keys, the next I was tearing through the ER doors demanding to know where my wife was.
The fluorescent lights had seemed too bright, the antiseptic smell sharp enough to make my eyes water—or maybe that had been something else entirely.
They’d taken her to a room in the back. I’d found her on a gurney, still unconscious, a gash on her temple bleeding through the gauze they’d pressed against it.
So small against those white sheets. So still.
Pauline stood in the corner, tears streaking down her face, looking at me like I might have the answers neither of us had.
The doctor had asked about her medical history and I’d called Dr. Rivera immediately.
Listened to him explain Claudette’s condition to a stranger while I held her hand and watched her chest rise and fall and prayed she’d keep breathing.
Each inhale felt like borrowed time. Each exhale felt like a promise I had no right to make.
After the scans came back, the neurologist that handled it had pulled me into the hallway. He had looked me in the eye and said the words I’d been dreading for weeks.
“The tumor has grown faster than expected. The pressure is causing the seizures. I’m sorry, Mr. Ashford. There’s nothing we can do.”
No hope. That’s what he’d meant. No treatment. No miracle waiting around the corner.
Just time running out faster than we’d thought.
Her parents had arrived sometime after that. I hadn’t seen them since the wedding, and I’d braced myself for anger. For accusations. For them to demand I bring their daughter home where they could take care of her properly.
Instead, her father had gripped my shoulder, his hand heavy with a grief too large for words. Her mother had looked at me with exhausted eyes—the kind of tired grief carves into a person, and asked if Claudette had been happy all these while.
The act that had made her daughter feel normal.
So we’d all kept lying to her—because the truth would break her faster than the tumor. We crafted the story to tell her she’d simply fainted, hit her head, nothing to worry about.
The fear in her eyes when she’d overheard my conversation with Jack had gutted me. She’d known something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what.
I’d brought her home, promising to tell the truth. I held her in my arms until she fell asleep. Stroked her hair and whispered that everything would be okay.
One more lie to add to the pile. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell her the complete truth, so I’d told her something less serious.
She’d finally drifted off around midnight, exhausted from the day and the medications they’d given her. I’d tried to sleep beside her but the fear, guilt and grief made my heart too heavy.
It consumed me. Suffocated me. Like drowning in air.
Claudette was extraordinary and kind, she didn’t deserve the illness.
For her life to be taken so young, there was so many years left that I wanted to spend with her.
I wanted us to grow old together, wanted to see silver threaded through her dark hair, wanted to learn the map of laugh lines on her face.
But my strong will couldn’t win against the tumor that was fighting to take her from me. From the fragile home we’d built here.
I’d bought this penthouse two years ago when Ashford Technologies expanded operations into Vegas.
Smart investment in a growing market, somewhere to stay during business trips.
I’d barely used it—maybe a dozen nights total in two years.
Just walls and windows and expensive furniture that meant nothing.
Now it felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever lived. Because she was here. Because for a few perfect weeks, we’d built something real inside these walls. Her fragrance in the air. Her shoes by the door. The ghost of her laugh still echoing in the corners.
Now I stood on the balcony wondering how much longer we had. Days? Weeks? The doctor hadn’t been able to say. Just that it was coming faster now.
I inhaled deeply for air that didn’t fill my lungs, that didn’t erase the stone lodged beneath my sternum.
How long had I been standing here? The city below pulsed with oblivious life—people laughing, gambling, falling in love for one night, unaware that somewhere above them a man was counting minutes I couldn’t afford to spend.
I needed to check on her. I walked past the living room, and headed straight to the bedroom.
I twisted the knob, dread already clawing up my spine.
The bedroom was empty.
I looked around, my body tensed anxiously, that familiar dread spiking through my chest. The sheets were thrown back, her side of the bed cold like she’d been gone for a while. The bathroom door stood open, light off, clearly empty.
“Claudette?”
No answer. Just the hum of the air conditioning and my own pulse thudding in my ears.
I moved faster now, checking rooms with mounting panic. Kitchen—empty. Living room—empty. Guest rooms—empty. Each doorway a small devastation.
Then I saw it.
The study door stood closed.
I walked toward it slowly, dread building with each step. I pushed the door opened and the world stopped.
Claudette sat in my desk chair, surrounded by devastation—the truth laid out around her like wreckage. The file cabinet hung open behind her. Papers scattered everywhere—medical files, brain scans, treatment plans.
The magazine with Hannah’s engagement announcement lay on the floor, crumpled at one corner. And there, clutched in her trembling hands, was the bucket list journal.
Her face was what destroyed me. Her eyes swollen and red from crying, she looked up at me and the expression there—raw grief mixed with something that looked like betrayal—made my chest feel like it was caving in. As if the ground had opened up beneath me and I was still falling.
“Why did you lie to me?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it hit like a blade. “At the hospital. Why did no one tell me I was dying?”
I’d known this moment was coming. But nothing could have prepared me for the impact.
I started to walk towards her. My feet echoing in the panelwood below. “We couldn’t bear to hurt you,”
“Stop.” She pressed back into the chair. “Don’t come any closer. You can drop the act now.” She pressed back in the chair, and the way she looked at me—like I’d hurt her in ways words couldn’t describe.
“It’s not an act.” I spoke but I might as well have said nothing, she wasn’t listening now, she’d already drawn her conclusion.
“I know everything now. About Hannah. About the tumor. About this.” She held up the journal, hand shaking so badly the pages rustled like dry leaves. “Every perfect moment was just you checking off a list,” she said, voice breaking. “The carnival. The baking. The ferris wheel. All of it.”
“No.” The word came out too fast, too desperate.
“Then what was it?” Her voice cracked down the middle. “I can’t figure out which parts were real and which parts were just you being kind to someone who didn’t have much time left.”
I crossed the room and dropped to my knees in front of her before she could recoil.
“No, that’s not true” I said.
“Then tell me the truth,” she whispered, tears streaking down her face. “Tell me what was real.”
“You remember everything now,” I said softly. “So you must remember what I told you. In the desert. Before the seizure took it all away.”
She went still, but her hand trembled violently in mine.
“I told you I loved you,” I said, my voice rough, scraped raw by everything tearing through me. “Not because you were dying, but because I’d loved you for years and finally had permission to say it out loud.”
She looked at me as though weighing my answers, if she could find any truth in it. Her eyes filled instantly, tears spilling before she could blink them back, the sight of her crying made my own heart squeezed.
“The diagnosis didn’t create my feelings, Claudie. It just stripped away every excuse I’d been hiding behind.”
I guided her hand to my chest, pressed it flat over my heart so she could feel how hard it was beating—too fast, almost painful.
“I married you because marrying you was the only thing I’d wanted. You arriving in Vegas just gave me the courage to stop being a coward and start being honest.”
“I’ve been nothing but a burden,” she whispered, as if confessing a crime. She shook her head, the words leaving her like she’d been holding them in.
“My parents crying all the time. Jack looking at me like I’m already gone. You carrying all this weight alone—”
“Stop.” My eyes burned, my throat tightening with something close to panic, my heart thudding painfully. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true though. Everyone’s lives would be easier if I just—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” I pulled her out of the chair and into my arms before she could finish the sentence that shattered me. I held her firmly when she tried to resist. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
She fought me for a heartbeat, then collapsed against me like her strength had finally run out. Her hands fisted in my shirt and she buried her face in my shoulder and just broke.
“I married you because I loved you.” The words came out fierce against her hair.
“The memory loss wasn’t a burden. Claudette.Watching you fall in love with me while I knew what was coming and you didn’t…
that was the cruelest thing I’ve ever lived through.
But I’d do it infinite times. I’d watch you discover me over and over.
I’d fall in love with you twice, ten times, a hundred times.
Because any version of loving you is better than not having you at all. ”
Her shoulders shook harder in my arms.
“I’m dying,” she breathed into my shoulder, the words breaking apart. “You need to let me go.”
“I don’t know how much time we have left,” I said, tightening my hold like I could anchor her to this world.
“But I’m not letting go. I’m holding tighter.
It doesn’t matter what the doctors say or how long we have.
You’re it for me. You’ve always been it.
I’ll love you for whatever time we get—weeks, days, hours.
“I’ll love you through all of it. And I’ll love you after you’re gone. Time doesn’t get a vote.”
She made a sound caught between a laugh and a sob—grief and love tangled together.
I couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter. I just held her while she shook apart in my arms, while tears soaked through my shirt and warmed my skin, while the city kept glowing outside like nothing had changed when everything had.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, voice breaking. “For making you love me. For making you watch me die and—”
“Stop apologizing.” I cupped her face, forcing her to meet my eyes. “I want us to live without apologies. Just us. Just the moments we have left.”
She searched my face for a long moment, like she was trying to find the lie she expected to be there.
She gave me a small nod, wiping tears with the back of her hands.
Something loosened in my chest. Not relief—relief would come later, if it came at all.
But something like hope. Like maybe we could do this.
Maybe we could face what was coming together instead of me facing it alone while she floated through borrowed time.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” I cupped her face in both hands, thumbs brushing away tears that kept falling anyway. “Whatever you want. Wherever you want to go. However you want to spend it. We’ll do all of it.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
I pulled her close again and we stayed there on the floor of my office, holding each other while Vegas glowed outside and time kept ticking away whether we wanted it to or not.
We had time. Not enough—never enough—but time all the same.
And I was going to make every second count.