Chapter 1

On the day the real heiress returned, the three sons of the Sinclair family stormed out in anger.

I ran after them in the pouring rain, only to be caught in a devastating car accident that left me with ALS.

From then on, my muscles wasted away, and I gradually lost the ability to care for myself, becoming the most useless person in the Sinclair family.

Time and again, I tried to pull out my ventilator, but my third brother, a doctor, always dragged me back from the brink of death.

My second brother, once a world-famous star, disappeared from the spotlight and sang me lullabies every night until I fell asleep.

My eldest brother, the CEO of the Sinclair Group, worked himself to exhaustion, yet still returned in the dead of night to pray for me at church.

I thought things would eventually get better.

Until one day, when the pain became unbearable, I called my third brother, only to trigger his breakdown. "Lena's only wish was for us to spend her birthday with her, and you just had to make it about yourself today?"

Over the faint sound of a birthday song, I heard my second brother mutter, "If she were gone... the three of us could finally have some peace."

*****

That was when I started hating myself even more than I already did.

A half-dead life like mine was clinging on and dragging all three of them down with it. I really was a terrible person.

So I took my wheelchair to the top floor and rolled it toward the stairwell.

The moment I let go, the chair slammed through the railing with a sound like something breaking open.

From the phone beside me, my eldest brother, Alexander Sinclair, roared with grief, "Claire, tell me you're not doing something stupid right now!"

My back hit the edge of the stairs hard, and something inside my chest cracked.

Even their screams, raw and terrified, felt like they were coming from somewhere far away.

After eight hours of surgery, I finally managed to pry my eyes open.

My three brothers were stationed around my hospital bed like guardian statues, and the first thing that came out of my mouth was an apology.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice barely holding together. "I didn't mean to fail at dying."

Alexander's brow trembled, and his eyes turned so red they looked as though they might bleed.

Guilt washed over me so heavily that I had to look away, shrinking like a child caught in a mistake too shameful to name.

My third brother, Lucas Sinclair, was still in his surgical scrubs, the blood on his hands not yet dry as he pressed them against my shoulders.

"I shouldn't have yelled at you when you called, Claire," he said. "That was my fault."

I reached up and wiped the tears from his face.

My heart broke for him, because I knew how exhausted he was and how many times he had raced death to pull me back from the edge.

The problem was never him. It was my own clumsy attempts at suicide that kept dragging him down with me.

Flustered and ashamed, my hand went instinctively to my hair. Lucas tried to stop me, but it was too late.

I touched nothing but bare, empty scalp.

Seeing the look on my face, he shrank like a guilty child and started fumbling with the hem of his gown. "The test results weren't good, so I had to operate on your brain. I had to shave your head."

The mirror showed me someone bald and grotesque, barely recognizable as myself.

I remembered, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the three of them fighting over who would get to braid my hair when I was little.

But I pulled my lips into a grin anyway, doing my best to look like I couldn't care less. "Hey, it's just hair. Who gives a damn?"

That was when my second brother, Samuel Sinclair, walked in on short notice, his own head completely shaved.

The sight of him was so ridiculous I wanted to laugh, but by the time I realized what was happening, tears were already spilling down my chin.

He crouched by the hospital bed, and for once, his usual reckless attitude was nowhere to be seen. "Claire, please. No more of this. You promised Mom and Dad you were going to be an artist."

They all remembered, but I was the one who kept trying to forget.

I couldn't bring myself to admit that I'd never get to paint in this lifetime, and I couldn't stand the thought of disappointing anyone either.

Just then, Alexander's phone rang, harsh and sudden in the quiet of the room.

Even with his hand cupped over the receiver, I could still hear Lena Sinclair's voice, thick with tears, on the other end of the line. "Alex, so my wish isn't coming true this year either, is it? No one's going to be there for my birthday. Am I right?"

Alexander pressed the phone tighter against his ear. The three brothers looked at one another, none of them quite sure what to say.

I pushed past the pain that was tearing through my body and gave them a wave, my smile as careless as I could make it. "Go. It's fine. Really."

Before he left, Lucas measured out my medication into separate doses and made me promise to take them exactly on time.

They hurried out the door in such a rush that none of them remembered it was my birthday, too.

And I lay there, melting into the hospital bed like a candle burning down to nothing.

"Hey, miss," I said to the nurse. "Would you mind buying me a bag of gummy bears? It's my birthday."

My brothers had never let me have them. The nurse hesitated for a second, but in the end, she went and brought me a bag.

I pressed a finger to my lips. "Shh. If I don't tell, they'll never find out."

One by one, I swapped out every single pill that was keeping me alive and replaced them with gummy bears.

Then I signed the organ donor consent form, handed it to the nurse, and asked her to give it to Lucas after I was gone.