Too Late to Love Me

The pathology report was crumpled into a tight, trembling ball in her fist, its edges soft and worn like the wilting petals of a dying flower. "Stage IV gastric cancer... I'm afraid we're looking at weeks, not months." The doctor, Lucas's words, measured delivery still echoed in her ears, each syllable landing like a blade between Evelyn's ribs. With hands she couldn't quite steady, Evelyn fished her phone from her coat pocket. That number, etched into her memory since she was fifteen years old, still sat at the very top of her contacts, exactly where it had always been. The phone rang once. Twice. An eternity. Then the line clicked alive, and Aiden's voice came through, steady, composed, as unchanging as the North Star. "Evelyn? What's wrong?" Her throat closed like a fist. She forced air past the tightness. "Aiden, if... just hypothetically, if I didn't have much time left... what would you do?" A beat of silence stretched between them, dense and heavy. In that quiet, she could hear her own heart hammering against her ribs, could almost feel the blood pulsing through her veins. When Aiden finally spoke, his tone hadn't shifted by a single degree. "Don't talk like that. I'll be with you. Until the end." Of course he would. Rock steady. Unshakable. The anchor in her storm-tossed world. She knew, with the cold clarity of someone staring down their own mortality, that this promise had nothing to do with love. This was simply Aiden being Aiden: dependable, responsible, incapable of abandoning anyone who needed him. But even so, those three words, I'll be with you, wrapped around her heart like a temporary shelter. At least he wouldn't leave her. Evelyn tugged at the corners of her mouth, attempting to manufacture a smile that probably looked uglier than tears. That expression didn't survive the next ten seconds. A sudden commotion erupted at the hospital entrance, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, raised voices, the unmistakable chaos of an emergency in progress. And then she saw him. The man who had just promised to stay with her until the end came stumbling through the automatic doors with a frail, pale woman cradled in his arms. His face, usually so composed it might have been carved from marble, was twisted into an expression Evelyn had never witnessed. Genuine panic. Beads of sweat glistened at his temples. "Doctor! Someone, where's the doctor?!" His voice cracked. Actually cracked. The Aiden Cross who never raised his voice, who moved through life with unshakeable calm, he was trembling, his words thick with urgency and fear. Evelyn stood frozen, her blood turning to ice in her veins. Instinctively, she shrank back into the shadow of a support pillar, pressing herself against the cold concrete as she watched Aiden lower the woman carefully onto an arriving gurney. She listened as he rattled off symptoms to the doctors in rapid, desperate bursts, his voice dripping with a worry so thick it seemed to choke the air around him. So. Aiden wasn't always calm and collected after all. He could lose his composure, could be completely thrown into disarray, for someone. Just never for her. Never for Evelyn. A different kind of pain lanced through her chest, sharper than anything cancer could produce, deeper than any surgical incision. This one carved out something vital and left her hollow. She watched as they disappeared through the emergency corridor doors, and with them went whatever thread of strength had been holding her upright. Evelyn made her way home in a daze, moving through the world like a woman underwater. From the back of her nightstand drawer, beneath old receipts and forgotten mementos, she pulled out their marriage certificate. Red cover, gold embossed lettering. It felt cold to the touch, heavy with the weight of everything it didn't contain. In the photograph, her eyes were curved into crescent moons as she smiled, her whole being radiating adoration for the man beside her. Aiden, meanwhile, gazed calmly at the camera. Distant. Polite. Looking anywhere but at her. They had grown up together, twenty years of her chasing the space he left behind. Later, when his family's fortunes had crumbled, she had offered their marriage as a bargaining chip. She'd gone to her parents on her knees, begging them to save the Cross family from ruin, and they'd agreed, on one condition: that Aiden marry her. On the day she proposed, she had looked him straight in the eye and said, "Aiden, let's get married. You don't have to love me. Just make me your wife in name." He had been silent for so long that Evelyn had been certain he would refuse. Finally, he lifted his gaze, his eyes deep and unreadable. "Evelyn," he said quietly, "I will never fail you." She had once asked him, foolishly, "If you ever meet someone you truly love... tell me. I'll let you go." At that, Aiden had only smiled faintly and reached out to ruffle her hair. "Don't overthink it," he'd said. "I've married you. I'll give you a secure future." A secure future... Evelyn's tears finally broke free, burning hot as they fell onto the cold plastic sleeve of the certificate, spreading into blurred, wet patches. The night deepened around her. She sat in the darkness, holding the weight of twenty years in her hands. Then, sometime past midnight, she heard it, the quiet click of a key turning in the lock, echoing from the entryway. Evelyn wiped her tears hastily and shoved the marriage certificate back into the drawer, closing it with a soft thud. The door swung open, and Aiden stepped inside. Following close behind him was the girl from the hospital, the one who had shattered his composure earlier that day.