Dying On My Own Terms

I loved Dozier McCarthy with a madness that terrified him. So when his new girlfriend accused me of pushing her down the stairs, he didn't defend me.

Instead, he signed the papers to lock me away in Serenity Heights.

He called it "rehabilitation" for my obsession. I called it three years of hell.

While he lived his perfect life, I was strapped to a bed, force-fed heavy antipsychotics that they called "vitamins."

Those pills didn't just kill my love for him. They slowly destroyed my kidneys.

When he finally came to collect me, he smiled, thinking my silence meant I was "cured."

He didn't know he was looking at a walking corpse.

Now that the doctors have given me a terminal diagnosis, Dozier is on his knees, offering millions to fix what he broke.

"We'll find a donor," he begged, tears streaming down his face. "I'll save you."

I just pulled my hand away and adjusted my apron.

"It's too late, Dozier. I have a bagel cart to run."

He wanted to control my life. Now, he can only watch me die on my own terms.

Chapter 1

Kristal Gillespie POV:

I hated him for eight years before I truly started to love him. Or maybe I loved him so much I hated myself for it. I don' t know. All I know is that my world began and ended with Dozier Mccarthy. Every breath I took, every decision I made, every public display of affection that embarrassed him, it was all for him. And he knew it. Everyone knew it.

Then he introduced Dallas Suarez.

She was everything I wasn't-poised, polished, and perfectly designed to fit into Dozier's world. I watched them, my stomach churning with an acid I hadn't known before. I knew then that my love, the kind that made me chase him through every party, every charity gala, was a burden to him. A nuisance.

I had to do something.

My plan was simple, desperate, and, in hindsight, stupid. I pulled Dallas aside at the Mccarthy Foundation's annual winter gala. The air was thick with the scent of expensive perfume and old money.

"Fifty thousand dollars," I said, my voice barely a whisper against the clinking of champagne flutes.

Dallas, her eyes the color of iced tea, barely blinked. Her smile didn't reach them. "Is that all your little heart can offer, Kristal? Fifty thousand dollars to walk away from a Mccarthy? Darling, that's what I spend on shoes in a season."

The words cut deeper than any knife. She laughed, a soft, tinkling sound that grated on my nerves. She knew. She knew my love was a desperate, unrequited thing. And she thrived on it.

I must have said something then, something angry, something that pushed her. Or maybe I just looked at her wrong. Everything happened so fast. One moment, she was standing at the top of the grand staircase, her hand loosely gripping the ornate railing. The next, she was tumbling down, a scream tearing from her throat.

People rushed forward. Dozier was there, his face a mask of shock and fury. Dallas lay at the bottom, a twisted doll. Her eyes, still shining with a cold triumph, found mine.

"She pushed me!" she wailed, her voice surprisingly strong for someone who had just taken such a fall. "Kristal pushed me!"

The words echoed in the cavernous hall. Gasps filled the silence that followed. My heart pounded against my ribs, a trapped bird. I didn't push her. I didn't. But who would believe me? Not Dozier.

He looked at me, not with concern, but with a chilling disappointment. He was tired of the drama, tired of me. My love, once a fiery thing, had become an inconvenience.

Days later, the papers came. My name, Kristal Gillespie, was scrawled at the top. Below it, Dozier Mccarthy' s signature, stark and unfeeling, authorizing my involuntary commitment to "Serenity Heights." He called it "rehabilitation," a benevolent "correction" for my "erotomania." My family, bewildered and shamed, offered no resistance. They too, I think, were tired.

The gates were tall, rusted iron, like something out of a gothic novel. They clanged shut behind me, severing me from the world I knew. From Dozier.

I stood there, a ghost already, knowing my life, as I understood it, was over.