Chapter 1

Today is my 25th birthday.

Sitting in the waiting chair at Cleveland Medical Center, I couldn't stop repeating this phrase in my mind. My phone screen showed March 15th—the date I'd been waiting for all year.

Maybe this year Bradley would remember my birthday.

"Paisley Fuller!" the nurse called my name, and I practically jumped up.

The test results were finally ready! I hurried toward Dr. Spencer Powell's office, feeling lighter than I had in ages. Spencer was my college classmate who became an oncologist here after graduation. If he hadn't insisted I get a comprehensive checkup, I never would have come to the hospital.

"It's just routine," he'd said at the time. "Your mother's medical history makes me a little concerned."

But I wasn't worried at all. Today was my lucky day—everything would be perfect.

The moment I pushed open the door, I saw Spencer staring at the lab report in his hands, his familiar face from college days etched with gravity.

"Spencer, it's good news, right?" I asked eagerly. "It's my birthday today—I should have good luck!"

He looked up at me, his eyes holding a complexity I'd never seen before—pain, sympathy, and something else.

"Paisley, sit down. We need to talk." His voice was soft, yet it hit my heart like a sledgehammer. "The test results show... you have pancreatic cancer, and it's already advanced."

I froze. My phone slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor.

"What?" My voice was barely a whisper. "You're joking, right? It's my birthday..."

"It's hereditary, just like your mother." Spencer's voice grew even softer, with unmistakable compassion. "Based on the current situation, you might have about six months."

Six months.

My mind instantly flashed to my mother's final days—her face distorted by pain, her lifeless eyes, and those weak moans she made from her hospital bed.

"No... that can't be..." I shook my head desperately, trying to deny this cruel reality. "I'm still young, I still have so much to do, I still haven't..."

I still hadn't earned Bradley's love.

Spencer reached out to comfort me, but I suddenly stood up and stumbled toward the door.

"Paisley!" he called after me, but I had already pushed through the door.

I rushed out of the hospital into the cold March wind that stung my face. Pedestrians hurried past on the street, each absorbed in their own lives, none knowing that a twenty-five-year-old girl had just been given a death sentence.

On her birthday.

I don't know how I drove home. Traffic lights, turns, parking—these actions seemed like bodily reflexes while my soul remained in that cold examination room.

Six months. Advanced pancreatic cancer. Just like mother.

These words echoed repeatedly in my mind, cutting my nerves like a dull blade.

I didn't realize I'd arrived until my car stopped in front of the Whitman house. I sat in the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white.

Breathe, Paisley. It's your birthday.

Maybe Bradley would remember. Maybe he'd already prepared a surprise for me. Maybe today wouldn't be a complete disaster.

I checked the car clock—3 PM. I told myself to pull it together, at least pretend to pull it together.

I pushed open the kitchen door to find it empty. On the luxurious marble countertop sat Bradley's coffee cup from this morning, long gone cold.

Maybe he was upstairs waiting for me? Maybe he was preparing a birthday surprise?

I hurried to the storage room and pulled out the birthday decorations I'd bought in advance. Streamers, balloons, cake candles...

As I hung the first streamer, tears fell without warning.

Six months. I only had six months left.

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand and continued hanging streamers. Pink ones, blue ones, each carefully coordinated just like every year. My hands were shaking, but I couldn't stop.

"He'll remember," I told myself through sobs, my voice echoing forlornly in the empty kitchen. "He forgot last year too, but remembered eventually. He said work was too busy, but he still had cake with me."

Tears dripped onto the marble countertop, and I quickly wiped them away with my sleeve. I couldn't let Bradley see I'd been crying.

I took yesterday's strawberry cake from the fridge, my hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped it. It was Bradley's favorite flavor. Though he'd never said he liked anything I made, I remembered strawberry cake was his childhood favorite.

Maybe this would be the last birthday cake I'd ever make for him.

The thought made me break down in tears again. I collapsed onto the kitchen island, crying silently, my shoulders shaking. Why today? Why on my birthday?

But I couldn't fall apart. At least not now.

I took a deep breath, washed my face, and continued preparing my birthday dinner. Every movement felt like defying death itself—I had to prove I was still alive, still capable of doing these things for him.

At six o'clock, familiar footsteps echoed from the front door. My heart began racing as I hurriedly fixed my hair and wiped my trembling hands on my apron.

"Bradley?" I called softly.

But he went straight upstairs without even glancing toward the kitchen. Those colorful decorations might as well have been invisible to him.

I stood in the kitchen doorway, listening to sounds from upstairs. He was making a phone call.

"Madison, are you free tonight?" his voice carried down through the ceiling. "Nothing's happening at home, so we could try that new French restaurant."

Nothing's happening at home.

I repeated those words, feeling like someone was squeezing my heart. In his eyes, my birthday was nothing. My existence was nothing.

"Paisley probably doesn't have any plans anyway," he continued, his tone as casual as discussing the weather. "She's always just staying home alone."

Had he forgotten I even existed?

Madison Parker, Bradley's college classmate and now his secretary. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfect as a magazine model.

I knew their relationship went beyond work—I'd seen the looks they exchanged, heard the late-night phone calls, found her lipstick in his car.

But Mr. Robert Whitman didn't like Madison, saying she was "unsuitable for the Whitman family." So Bradley could only see her secretly, while I became his "perfect girlfriend" for public appearances.

I leaned against the wall, feeling my legs go weak. The phone conversation continued upstairs as Bradley planned his date with Madison, while I stood in this kitchen I'd carefully decorated, waiting like a fool for a "Happy Birthday" that would never come.

Half an hour later, I heard his footsteps coming downstairs, then the sound of the door closing. He was gone, off to his date with Madison.

I sat alone in the beautifully decorated kitchen, waiting for him to return. Seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock... The clock's ticking was particularly piercing in the silence.

At eleven PM, Bradley still hadn't returned. I finally gave up waiting and carried the untouched strawberry cake back to my room. I lit the candles, made a wish that would never come true, then blew them out.

Moonlight streamed through the window onto my diary, just like that night seventeen years ago.

I was only eight then, moving into the Whitman house with my mother Hadley. Robert had just lost his wife Aurora, and we had lost our support—this marriage was more like mutual assistance.

I timidly knocked on ten-year-old Bradley's door, holding a birthday card I'd drawn myself. "Brother Bradley, this is a birthday card for you... I spent a long time drawing it..."

But the door was yanked open, and Bradley, red-eyed, yelled at me: "Get out! You people killed my mother!"

"I... I just wanted to say happy birthday..." Eight-year-old me was scared into tears.

"I don't want your happy birthday! I hate you!" He slammed the door shut.

Seventeen years had passed, and I was still waiting for his "happy birthday." And today, I finally understood—I would never get it.

I opened my diary and wrote with trembling hands: [Diagnosed with cancer today. Bradley forgot my birthday. Perhaps this is fate's arrangement.]

After writing this sentence, I put down my pen and looked at my haggard reflection in the mirror. With six months left, I didn't want to become "another person faking illness for sympathy" in Bradley's eyes.

When mother was seriously ill, I heard Bradley tell his friend: "These people always like to fake illness to get more attention."

I was hiding behind the door then, hearing every word clearly. The disgust and disdain in his eyes—I could never forget it.

If I told him I had cancer, what would he think? Would he think I was copying mother, faking illness for sympathy? Would he look at me with those suspicious eyes?

No. I'd rather he never knew.

I firmly closed my diary and made a decision—for the remaining six months, I would leave with dignity.

As if I had never loved him at all.