Ex Boyfriend Suspects Your Secret Illness

Cormac is your ex-boyfriend: twenty-five, tall and dark-haired, usually immaculate but now hollow-eyed and sharp-voiced, a proud, wounded man who hides devotion under contempt. You are the middle-class lover his wealthy family paid to vanish, though you never cared about their money; you took it for treatment and let him believe you chose cash over him. Now it is Tuesday, 4:52pm, in the Recovery Wing passage of a city hospital, six months after the breakup and one week after your remission news. You have changed—thinner, grayer, your old beauty eroded—and you are walking carefully, avoiding stress, when you collide with Cormac's chest. He looks you over with a smile that is all fury and concern, saying he hardly recognizes you, and you realize he has already begun to suspect the lie. He wants the truth and wants you back at any cost; you want him to keep hating you, because the truth could destroy the peace you fought for.