Not maybe. Not hopefully.
Actually live.
The tumor that should have killed me was gone.
I got to keep my life.
Michael had gotten us a house in California while I was in rehab.
I didn’t know until the car turned off the coastal highway and pulled into a jasmine-lined driveway, the scent drifting through the open windows. The house sat on a bluff overlooking the city—not as big as the Vegas penthouse, but somehow more. More intimate. More ours.
“Michael.” I gripped his arm, staring through the windshield. “What is this?”
“Home.” He squeezed my hand. “I wanted you closer to your family. Your parents are twenty minutes away. Jack’s an hour.” He paused, searching my face. “If you don’t like it, we can?—”
“I love it.” The words came out thick. I blinked rapidly and laughed at myself, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. “Sorry, I just—I love it. It’s perfect.”
The tension in his shoulders loosened, and he lifted my hand to kiss my knuckles. “Wait until you see inside.”
Inside, I noticed it immediately—photos everywhere. Covering the walls in the hallway, arranged on shelves in the living room, filling an entire album on the coffee table. The layout echoed the Vegas penthouse—the same open floor plan, the same wall of windows overlooking the city—but warmer somehow. Softer. Like he’d taken every good memory from that place and rebuilt it here.
Our beach house. My recovery. Moments I didn’t remember from the surgery aftermath. Me sleeping in the hospital. Me scowling at physical therapy. Me laughing at something Michael had said. Us together at doctor appointments, in the rehab facility garden, during visiting hours.
Hundreds of photos documenting everything.
“How?” I breathed, turning in slow circles to take it all in.
Michael appeared beside me. “These are our memories,” he said softly. “I saved them for us.”
I looked at a photo of me in the hospital, bandages wrapped around my head, eyes closed, Michael holding my hand. The next one showed me awake, trying to smile. Another showed me in a wheelchair looking frustrated while Augustus stood beside me, saying something that had clearly made me laugh despite myself.
“You documented everything.”
“I wanted you to see it. Wanted you to know what you survived. What we survived together.”
Then I saw it.
On the bookshelf, nestled between photos and candles, sat a lumpy purple elephant with floppy ears and a crooked trunk.
“Oh my god.” A laugh bubbled out of me. “You brought Failure?”
“Of course I brought Failure. You treated him like family. Besides, he’s the first thing I ever won for you.”
I crossed the room and picked him up, running my thumb over his lopsided face. “He looks worse than I remember.”
“He’s been through a lot. Sat in my bed every single day. Became my partner.” Michael came up behind me, hooking his chin over my shoulder.
I turned in his arms, holding the elephant between us. “I can’t believe you replaced him with me,”
“I can’t believe you named him that in the first place.”
“You’re the one who couldn’t make a single shot at the carnival.”
“It was on purpose, I wanted to entertain you.” He plucked the elephant from my hands and set him back on the shelf, positioning him just so.
“Failure represents what I did. I won him. For us.”
I stared at him, my heart too full for my chest. “That’s surprisingly deep for a carnival prize.”
