He Came Back to Mock the Dying Girl

He looked at the wheelchair and laughed in my face.

"Eight years gone and you can't even walk anymore?"

I tugged my sleeve down over the needle marks before he could count them.

Aaron left me eight years ago with a three-line email, after I sold my mother's emerald earrings to pay for his visa.

Now he was home, fiancée on his arm, asking me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding.

He thought I'd crawled back broke and sick and forgotten.

He didn't know the hospital had just sent me home to die.

He didn't know the building his fiancée's family rents stands on land I own.

He didn't know the doctor who held my hand through eight years of chemo had just pulled my last test from a second lab.

I patted my mother's hand and told her to take me home.

Sloane smirked and said the dying should be grateful for an invitation.

I smiled back and said I was going somewhere very far away.

I just didn't tell them which direction.

The valet brought a car none of them recognized, and the man stepping out of it called me by the name only my dead father used.

***

Vivienne Cole's POV

Aaron's leather shoes struck the marble floor, cutting a straight path through the crowded banquet hall toward my wheelchair. My mother, Helen, froze mid-step behind me, her grip tightening on the rubber handles. I stared at the man approaching us, the noise of the Cole family welcome-home dinner fading into a dull hum.

Eight years ago, the night before Aaron left for London, I pressed my mother’s forty-thousand-dollar emerald earrings into his palm. They were everything I had to put toward his tuition deposit. He swore he would come back for me. Fourteen months later, I received a three-line email ending us. Now, the ghost of that boy wore a custom Italian suit, his gaze sweeping over my seated form with undisguised contempt.

He stopped two feet away. He didn't offer a greeting. His eyes dragged down my oversized puffer jacket, landing on the metal spokes of my wheels.

"Eight years, and you forgot how to walk?" He let out a sharp, mocking laugh.

I kept my face perfectly blank. Under the table's shadow, I pinched the hem of my sleeve and tugged it down. The coarse fabric slipped over my knuckles, hiding the angry purple bruises and dense clusters of needle tracks covering the back of my hand.

"I fell," I said. "Broke a bone."

"Clumsy as always." He shoved a hand into his pocket. "I heard you were coming tonight. Didn't expect you to roll in."

"I didn't expect you to speak to me," I replied.

"We're adults, Vivienne. It's a party."

Helen shifted her weight behind me. "Aaron, please. Let us pass."

"Helen," he acknowledged her with a curt nod. "Long time."

"Not long enough," she muttered.

A woman stepped up beside him, her arm sliding smoothly through his. Sloane. She wore a silk champagne gown that clung to her perfectly healthy frame. A massive diamond caught the chandelier light on her left hand.

"Vivienne! It's been ages." Sloane offered a bright, pitying smile. "Aaron told me you'd be here. We were actually hoping to run into you."

"Is that so."

"Yes." She leaned closer, her perfume sweet and suffocating. "We're finalizing the wedding party. I know it's unconventional, but I'd love for you to be my bridesmaid."

Helen gasped quietly. I felt her fingers dig into my shoulder.

"A bridesmaid," I repeated.

"It would mean so much to Aaron to have his oldest friend up there," Sloane continued, her voice sickly sweet. "You practically grew up together. It feels wrong not to include you."

Aaron didn't flinch. He just watched me, waiting for the humiliation to break my composure. His jaw was set, his eyes locked on my face.

"I have to decline," I said, my voice steady.

Sloane pouted. "Oh, come on. Are you still holding a grudge?"

"No grudge." I met Aaron's cold stare. "I'm going somewhere far away soon. I won't be in town for the wedding."

"A vacation?" Aaron scoffed. "With that leg?"

"Something like that."

"Running away again," he said, his tone dropping. "Just like you did when things got hard."

"I didn't run away, Aaron. I was thrown out."

"Excuses."

"Think whatever makes you comfortable."

"I'm perfectly comfortable," he snapped. He pulled a silver cigarette case from his jacket, snapping it open. "You're the one sitting in a wheelchair at a high-society event looking like a charity case."

"Aaron!" Helen snapped. "That is enough."

"It's fine, Mom," I said smoothly. I looked back at him. "If I'm a charity case, you must be a philanthropist. I seem to recall my charity paying for your education."

Aaron’s hand stopped mid-air. The cigarette hovered inches from his mouth. His eyes narrowed, the mockery vanishing into cold fury.

Sloane glanced between us, her fake smile faltering. "What is she talking about, Aaron?"

"Nothing," he bit out. He shoved the case back into his pocket. "She's delusional."

I reached up and patted my mother’s trembling hand resting on my shoulder.

"Let's go, Mom."

"Wait," Sloane said, stepping in front of the chair. "At least take an invitation. You can keep it as a souvenir."

She held out a thick, cream-colored envelope. Gold foil lettering caught the light. I stared at the paper, then up at her perfectly glossed lips.

"I don't need a souvenir," I said.

"Take it," Aaron commanded.

"I said no."

Before Helen could turn the chair, I caught a flash of crimson by the champagne tower. My stepmother, Marie, stood in the corner. She swirled the amber liquid in her crystal glass, a half-smile twisting her painted lips. Her eyes raked over my wheelchair. Twelve years ago, she forged the financial documents that stripped me of my inheritance and threw me out of this house. Looking at her now, I saw the exact same expression she wore that night—staring at a broken piece of trash finally rotting away.

She raised her glass to me in a silent, mocking toast.

My chest tightened. I broke eye contact.

"Push, please," I told my mother.

Sloane finally stepped aside, feigning a sigh. "Well, we tried."

The wheels squeaked against the polished marble as we navigated toward the exit. No one in this room knew the truth. They saw a pathetic, crippled ex-girlfriend running away. They didn't hear the oncologist three days ago in a sterile white room, sliding a folder across a metal desk. Treatment failed, Vivienne. You should go home and wait.

I didn't have a broken bone. I had a deadline.

We bypassed the dessert tables and the string quartet. Helen's breathing was erratic, her steps hurried. She wanted to get me out of this house just as much as I wanted to leave.

"Don't listen to them, Vivi," she whispered fiercely. "They aren't worth your time."

"I know."

"We'll go home. I'll make tea."

"Okay."

Helen pushed through the heavy double doors into the biting night air. We reached the top of the stone steps just as the valet lane cleared. The cold wind whipped my hair across my face, stinging my cheeks.

A matte-black sedan I didn't recognize glided up the driveway and braked sharply at the bottom of the stairs. The engine purred, deep and quiet. It wasn't a standard valet car. The tinted windows hid the interior completely.

Behind me, the doors opened again. Aaron and Sloane stepped out, their voices carrying over the wind.

"You don't just walk away when I'm talking to you, Vivienne," Aaron snapped, closing the distance.

I ignored him. My eyes were fixed on the sedan.

Aaron's footsteps slapped the stone aggressively. "You think you can play the victim forever?"

The rear passenger door of the sedan swung open. A tall man in a dark trench coat stepped onto the pavement. He didn't look at Aaron. He didn't look at Sloane. He walked to the bottom of the steps, stopped, and extended a gloved hand up toward me.

"Ready to go, Little Bird?"

Aaron stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw tightening. Only my late father had ever called me that.