Too Dead To Be Your Bride

I didn't find out I was three months pregnant until I collapsed over my keyboard at two in the morning, under the hum of fluorescent office lights. At the clinic, the doctor told me a surgical termination would run about eight hundred dollars. Conrad pulled out his phone, checked his mobile banking app, and showed me the balance: thirty-seven dollars and twelve cents. He was already working three gig jobs, driving rideshare through the graveyard shift until his knuckles split in the winter air, but we were still coming up short on rent, let alone medical bills. That was when Meredith shoved a plastic bottle into my palm. Her voice was flat, clipped with an effortless cruelty. "If he didn't have to carry your dead weight, he wouldn't be scraping the bottom of the barrel like this," she said. "If you can't afford a clinic, make do. Swallow enough of these horse-dose laxatives. Your body will cramp hard enough to shed it on its own." Conrad stood in the doorway of our damp, rented room. His eyes were rimmed in red. He stared at the floor for what felt like an eternity, his jaw clenched, before he finally gave a single, slow nod. "Just this once, Junie," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Bear with it just this once. When I finally turn things around, I swear I'll make it up to you." I didn't blame him. A year ago, Conrad’s startup had gone under. The creditors had descended like vultures, burying him in insurmountable debt. I had stayed. I worked eighty-hour weeks at an entry-level logistics desk by day, hauled plastic bins of cheap hair accessories to sell on street corners by night, and pared my meals down to cold tap water and day-old bakery buns. He was drowning. I thought I was keeping his head above water. The moment Conrad walked out the door to pick up another fare, I unscrewed the laxatives and dumped the chalky pills straight down the drain. Then, with steady hands, I reached under my thin foam pillow and pulled out the bottle of prescription sleeping pills I had spent six months hoarding. I swallowed them all. I lay down, waiting for the dark to take me. But through the fog rolling over my brain, the street below suddenly erupted. Engines roared. Horns blasted in a triumphant chorus. Party poppers went off, raining foil confetti against the cracked windowpane. The door swung open. Conrad stepped inside. The frayed thrift-store hoodie was gone. He wore a bespoke charcoal Italian suit that smelled of cedarwood and money. Down in the narrow, trash-strewn alley, a motorcade of black Maybachs idled, their headlights cutting through our peeling wallpaper. "Congratulations, Junie," he said, laughing as he scooped me into his arms. "You passed the gold-digger test." He pressed his face into my neck, his voice trembling with sheer exhilaration. "I never went bankrupt. The debts, the ruined credit—all of it was a setup. Tomorrow morning, you're going to be the wife of the Hastings heir. I knew you weren't after my wallet. Marry me, and we'll raise this baby in a penthouse." The room spun. Every skipped meal. Every winter night standing on frozen concrete until my toes went numb. Every cent I had wired to his account to pay off men who threatened his life. It was all just stage dressing. A high-stakes loyalty audition for an empire I had never asked to enter. As the cold settled deep into my chest and the blackness swallowed the edges of my sight, I managed a faint, bloodless smile. I shook my head against his shoulder. "No," I thought, the words dissolving on my tongue. "I won't marry you. This time, neither I nor the baby will ever be your burden again." ... When I opened my eyes, I was standing beside the bed. My body remained beneath the thin quilt, curled into a tight, defensive knot. My skin had already turned the color of curdled milk. Conrad was on his knees, clutching my right hand between both of his. His brow was furrowed, his expression hovering between impatience and fond amusement. "Junie?" he coaxed, giving my limp fingers a playful squeeze. "Come on, stop playing around. Today's our day." I parted my lips to speak, but nothing came out. My voice was a stone dropped into an ocean. I reached out to touch his shoulder. My hand passed straight through his tailored sleeve, through his warm flesh, meeting only empty air. A quiet, hollow shock rippled through me. I was dead. Meredith clicked into the room on four-inch designer stilettos, pausing to glance at the bed with casual disdain. "Relax," she said, checking her manicure. "I swapped out the harsh stuff for mild stool softeners anyway. It wouldn't kill a fly. She probably just had a sugar crash. Finding out her broke boyfriend is actually the crown prince of Hastings Corporation probably knocked her flat from sheer excitement." The tension in Conrad's shoulders eased. "She hasn't been eating much lately." "Not much" was an understatement. To help him clear his fake debt, I lived on the free saltines and instant coffee in the office breakroom. On weekends, when there was no free cafeteria food, I filled my stomach with tap water and stale bread. He knew that. He had held me on this very mattress, tears shining in his dark eyes, promising that when his ship came in, he would take me to Paris, to Tokyo, to every Michelin-starred table in the world. I had believed him with every fiber of my being. Meredith looked around the squalid room, her nose wrinkling at the damp patches where the wallpaper bubbled, the plastic tubs of unsold velvet scrunchies stacked in the corner, the stiff work uniform drying on a hanger from the exposed pipe. "I have to hand it to you, Conrad," she chuckled. "To prove a girl wasn't a mercenary, you actually slummed it in this dump for an entire year. I wouldn't have lasted one night." Conrad leaned down and carefully tucked the frayed blanket around my chin. "If I didn't make the pain look real, how could I ever trust that her devotion was?" Meredith twirled a set of luxury car keys around her index finger. "Playing bankrupt is one thing, but you actually drove for Uber until your hands blistered. You really committed to the bit, didn't you?" The cracks on his hands had been real. Not because he was desperate. Only because he wanted to craft an airtight illusion of misery. All those nights I lay awake, massaging his sore knuckles with dollar-store lotion, crying silent tears because I hated seeing him suffer—had he been lying beside me, privately mocking how gullible I was? Conrad looked down at my pale face, a soft, satisfied smile touching his lips. "She didn't let me down," he said quietly. "When the business supposedly went under, she didn't pack her bags. She emptied her savings account into mine. That is the kind of woman who earns the right to wear the Hastings name." Standing beside him as a spirit, an icy shudder ran through my phantom frame. Every dollar he had taken from me was drenched in my sweat and exhaustion. To scrape together thirty thousand dollars, I had sold the only thing my grandmother left me—her vintage gold locket. I hadn't taken a single day off in six months. Before I fainted yesterday, I had taken an overnight inventory shift for an extra sixty bucks. To him, my near-fatal exhaustion was simply the entry fee to prove I was "worthy." His phone buzzed in his breast pocket. Meredith glanced at the screen. "The downtown hotel is blowing up your phone. Your parents and the press are already seated. You're supposed to introduce your future wife to high society today. You can't keep five hundred people waiting." Conrad hesitated. Finally, he released my cold hand. He pulled an unlimited black card from his leather wallet and laid it gently on the rickety nightstand. Then he leaned down, pressing a warm kiss to my forehead. "Junie, I'll go handle the media first," he murmured against my skin. "Sleep it off. Take an Uber down when you wake up. You never have to work a night shift again. You never have to pay off another debt." He didn't notice that the flesh beneath his lips was already growing stiff. Before walking out, Meredith kicked the empty laxative bottle under the bed. She looped her arm through Conrad's, her eyes gleaming with subtle triumph. "If I knew she was this fragile, I wouldn't have used the pregnancy to push her," she said lightly. Conrad paused in the doorway. "Meredith, that was out of line." For a fleeting second, I thought he might turn around and look at me again. Instead, he smoothed his lapels and said, "Don't pull that stunt again. Junie is soft-hearted. Once she understands you were just helping me test her loyalty, she won't hold a grudge." The door clicked shut. The silence rushed back in, heavy and thick. I looked down at the shell of myself lying on the stained sheet, a girl who would never open her eyes again, and a breath of hollow laughter escaped me. Yes. I had always been compliant. Sensible. Forgiving. They were so certain that no matter how deep they cut, I would patch myself up and apologize for bleeding on their carpet. Too bad for them. I would never have to forgive anyone ever again. ... My tethered spirit followed Conrad to the grand ballroom of the St. Regis. The moment the heavy double doors opened, a sea of crystal chandeliers flared into dazzling brilliance. Champagne towers gleamed beside massive arrangements of white orchids. Dominating the stage was a massive portrait of Conrad and me. In the photo, I was wearing a faded cotton sundress I had bought off a clearance rack for nine dollars. He was standing beside me in a bespoke suit. Back then, he told me he had rented the tux for a friend’s wedding. Now I realized a single mother-of-pearl button on that jacket cost more than six months of my flea-market earnings. His mother, draped in emeralds, hurried over. "Where is she?" she demanded in a hushed, excited whisper. "Where’s the girl? It’s the reveal of the decade—why isn't she on your arm?" Conrad accepted a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. "The shock overwhelmed her. She passed out in bed. Let her rest; I'll send a car to bring her over this evening." His mother beamed, clasping her hands together. "I knew she had character. When your father and I staged that fake collapse, those society girls scattered like roaches. She's the only one who rolled up her sleeves and took the hits with you. Your grandfather would have been proud." Meredith gave an airy snort. "Why wouldn't she stay? Conrad’s gorgeous. Even if he were broke, she was still getting the better end of the deal." I hovered beside her, watching as she handed a metallic clutch to a coat-check attendant. I recognized that bag. Three months ago, Conrad had come home with his head in his hands, claiming a collector was threatening to break his legs if he didn't produce ten thousand dollars by midnight. I broke open my locked tin box, walked to the bank, and transferred every single cent of my flea-market profits to him. That night, he had held me tight against his chest, murmuring, "Junie, just hold on a little longer. Once this fire is put out, we can finally breathe." And now, Meredith was showing that very bag to an heiress friend. "Conrad bought it for me in Milan," she preened. "Limited edition. Ten grand isn't the flex—it's the waiting list." The ten thousand dollars that had cost me four hours of sleep a night for six months hadn't gone toward his life. It had been slung over Meredith's wrist as a thank-you gift. I looked at Conrad, wanting to scream, to ask him why. He caught Meredith's eye, his tone casually dismissing it. "I couldn't touch my family accounts while the sting was active. Junie happened to wire the cash, so I used it. Once she gets here, I'll buy her ten bags ten times better." "Better." He had always traded in the currency of "later". "Later, I’ll buy you a real diamond." "Later, I’ll take you on a proper vacation." "Later, we’ll move into a place with heat." I had survived on those hollow promises, gnawing on them like bones through endless, freezing nights. But he had possessed the world the entire time. Every drop of misery I swallowed had been completely unnecessary. Conrad’s mother motioned for an assistant to bring over a velvet-lined steel case. Inside lay the deeds to a waterfront estate, stacks of blue-chip stock certificates, and a flawless six-carat emerald-cut diamond ring. "Conrad," she instructed, her eyes bright with pride, "when she arrives, you propose right in front of the cameras. A woman who walks through hell for you deserves to be crowned like a queen." The guests cheered, slapping Conrad on the back, calling him the luckiest man in the city. He smiled, a look of effortless conquest on his face. "She would have died for me. She won't say no." A dull ache throbbed where my heart used to be. He was right. I "had" died for him. Only he had mistaken my sacrifice for a trophy he could mount on his wall. Conrad pulled out his phone and typed a message to me: [When you wake up, put on the designer dress in the closet. Don't be petty about yesterday.] Thirty minutes passed. He typed another: [Meredith's tongue is sharp, but the pills were harmless. Don't make a scene over nothing.] I floated behind his broad shoulder, staring at my contact photo on his screen. Over the past year, I had sent him thousands of texts. "Packed up the stand. Made forty dollars tonight." "Paid three hundred toward the credit card." "A coworker brought in cupcakes—I saved the chocolate one for you in the fridge." He had always taken hours to reply, citing long shifts behind the wheel. Now that I was a corpse, his messages arrived every few minutes. The screen flared, then faded. Silence. Meredith sauntered over with a fresh drink. "Still ghosting you? Let her pout. A girl from the trailer park finds out she’s landing a billionaire—she’s just trying to milk the leverage." Conrad frowned slightly. "She isn't like that." Meredith smirked. "Isn't she? We'll find out tomorrow. Staying loyal when a man is broke doesn't mean she won't turn greedy once the check clears." Conrad said nothing. And in that quiet omission, I saw the truth clearly: This test had never had an end date. Even if I had survived to walk into this ballroom, they would have kept testing me. Testing if I wore their jewelry with enough grace, testing if I spent his fortune too eagerly, testing if I belonged at their polished tables. A lifetime of enduring their suspicion, endlessly auditioning for love. By the next morning, the live stream of the "Billionaire Heir’s Romantic Proposal to his Loyal Girlfriend" was trending nationwide. Everyone was waiting for Cinderella to emerge from the ashes. The ballroom doors never opened. Conrad waited from nine in the morning until noon, the skin around his jaw growing tight and pale. He called my phone seventeen times. No answer. "Enough already," Meredith said, lounging on a velvet settee. "You're offering her half a dynasty. What more does she want?" Conrad gripped his phone until his knuckles went white. "She never ignores my calls. Her color was off yesterday." Finally, a flicker of memory broke through his arrogance. Meredith immediately thrust her phone in front of his face, displaying a photo of a generic supplement bottle. "Look. Prenatal vitamins. I personally swapped them. The worst she got was a mild stomach ache. If you rush over there to coddle her now, you're handing her the leash." Conrad hesitated. The instinct died. He ordered his executive assistant to deliver the custom gown and the diamond ring to the rental unit. Two hours later, the assistant called back. "Mr. Hastings, I've been knocking for twenty minutes. No one's answering. What should I do with the package?" Conrad's voice dropped to ice. "Leave it at the door. Text her that if she isn't here by three o'clock, the proposal is off." I sat on the edge of the hotel sofa beside him, watching the digital clock march forward. I used to live in terror of his frustration. If he sighed, I swallowed my complaints. If he mentioned a collector calling, I handed over my pay envelope before he even asked. Now, seeing the fury in his eyes, all I felt was a profound, glassy stillness. When you stop needing someone’s love, their anger loses all its power. Around two in the afternoon, Brenda, my stall neighbor from the flea market, sent a barrage of texts to my phone: [Junie, where are you?] [I pooled some cash from the other vendors. I've got six hundred bucks for the clinic. We can go together.] [Don't play games with your body. Whatever that blonde snake gave you, DO NOT swallow it.] The texts sat unread. Panicked, Brenda called Conrad’s number directly—a contact she had saved from my emergency list. "Are you Junie's boyfriend?" Brenda demanded, her rough voice breathless with anxiety. "I can't reach her. She was talking about taking some shady pills yesterday. I've got a bad feeling." Before Conrad could process the words, Meredith snatched the phone. "She's perfectly fine," Meredith snapped. "She just found out her boyfriend has nine figures in the bank and she's playing hard to get." Brenda went silent for a beat. "Nine figures? What the hell are you talking about?" Meredith laughed. "The Hastings family. Ever heard of them? Conrad played broke to see if she was a parasite. Turns out she has zero sense of humor." On the other end of the line, the silence curdled into absolute rage. "You mean... the collectors were fake?" Brenda's voice was shaking with fury. "Junie working sixteen-hour days, passing out behind her stall, skipping lunch until her ribs showed—that was all a game to you people?" Conrad’s expression shifted. He pulled the phone back to his ear. "What do you mean, passing out? How many times?" "You didn't know?" Brenda laughed, a bitter, vicious sound. "She didn't want to stress you out! Every time she dropped from low blood sugar, she begged us not to tell you. Yesterday the urgent care doctor told her her body was too weak to carry the baby, and she was crying, begging me for a loan because she didn't want to put another penny of debt on your shoulders! You better get your ass over there right now." The line went dead. Conrad shot to his feet. Meredith grabbed his sleeve. "Don't let some flea-market trash play you. She's running a coordinated guilt trip for Junie. If Junie were actually sick, she would have called you." Conrad froze. He stared at our empty message thread. The prickle of alarm in his chest was snuffed out once more by injured pride. "She knows I hate games," he muttered darkly, sitting back down. "We wait." And so, he waited until the sun sank beneath the skyline. In the dim, narrow hallway of the tenement building, the satin-wrapped box holding a fifty-thousand-dollar French gown sat on the dirty floorboards. Grime from the peeling ceiling drifted down onto the white silk ribbon. Brenda rounded the top of the stairwell, carrying a paper sack of soup. As she reached the door, she caught the faint, unmistakable smell slipping through the gap beneath the frame. Her face drained of color. She slammed both fists against the wood. "Junie! Junie, open the damn door! Don't do this to me!" Nothing stirred inside. Only my ghost, standing on the other side of the deadbolt, pressing my translucent palms against the wood, unable to turn the latch. The building super shuffled up the stairs, jangling a ring of master keys and grumbling under his breath. "What's the racket? She was late on rent last month. If she's trying to skip out on me—" "Shut your damn mouth!" Brenda screamed, tears spilling down her weathered cheeks. "Her boyfriend bled her dry! Open the door!" The key clicked into the tumblers. Brenda's hands shook violently as she shoved the door open. The heavy, metallic reek of death rolled out into the hallway. Brenda froze. A terrible, animal shriek tore from her throat as she shoved past the gown, kicking the box aside. The velvet jewel case snapped open, and the six-carat diamond ring went bouncing across the cracked linoleum floor, coming to rest in the dirt under the radiator. Brenda fell to her knees beside the mattress. Her shaking fingers hovered under my nose. "Junie? Baby, wake up... I got the money. Look, I got it. Let's go to the hospital." The body did not move. On the crate serving as a nightstand, beneath a plastic cup of stale water, lay a folded sheet of yellow legal pad paper. It was my personal ledger from the past twelve months. "Rent: $750." "Conrad’s loan payment: $2,400." "Conrad’s ulcer prescription: $120." "Scrunchie materials: $85." And at the very bottom, scrawled in a weak, jagged hand: "The baby is gone. I am gone. He won't have to carry us anymore." Brenda slid to the floor, clutching the paper to her chest, her sobs tearing through the empty room. The paramedics arrived fifteen minutes later. The lead medic checked my pulse, shone a penlight into my fixed, dilated pupils, and gently pulled the blanket up. "She's gone," he told the officers. "Pronounced on scene. Time of death was at least ten to twelve hours ago." Brenda pulled out my cracked smartphone and dialed Conrad’s number. In the glittering ballroom miles away, the celebration was still humming. Conrad answered instantly, his tone laced with cold irritation. "Junie, you've finally decided to—" "She's dead." Conrad's voice cut out. For five long seconds, the ballroom orchestra played softly through the receiver. Then he let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Who is this? Put Junie on the phone." Brenda ground her teeth so hard I could hear them click. "She can't come to the phone, Conrad. She swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. Her body is cold." A crash echoed over the line—a crystal glass shattering against parquet flooring. In the background, Meredith's shrill voice cut in: "Don't buy it, Conrad! It's a setup! They're trying to blackmail you! How could she be dead? She was fine yesterday!" Seizing on the lifeline of denial, Conrad’s voice regained its steely edge. "Tell Junie that faking a suicide is pathetic. If she wants an apology, I'll give it to her. If she wants equity in the firm, she can have it. But tell her not to use our child to stage a cheap drama." Brenda began to shake so violently she dropped the phone onto the bed, then snatched it back up, screaming into the receiver. "A drama?! She worked herself to the bone for your fake debts! She starved so you could eat! When she collapsed, she wouldn't even let them run bloodwork because she couldn't spare the copay! Her last words on this earth were hoping you wouldn't have to carry her and the baby anymore! You call that a drama?!" Brenda slammed the phone down. Thirty minutes later, the alleyway below choked on the sound of screeching tires. Conrad shoved past the crowd gathered on the sidewalk and bounded up the stairs three at a time. He was still in his bespoke tuxedo, the white boutonnière pinned over his heart. Meredith trailed behind him, holding a silk scarf over her nose, complaining loudly: "This is absurd. Hiring an ambulance crew just to force an apology? It's embarrassing." Two county coroners were wheeling the stretcher out of the doorway. A black vinyl body bag was zipped shut, but one arm had slipped out during the turn in the narrow hall, dangling over the metal rail. Around the pale wrist was a frayed red string bracelet. Conrad had tied it there the night his company supposedly collapsed. He had told me: "When we beat this, I’ll replace it with diamonds." Conrad stopped dead. The color drained from his face until he looked as lifeless as the body on the gurney. "Who is that?" he whispered. Brenda stepped forward and hit him across the face with everything she had. The slap echoed through the stairwell. Conrad’s head whipped to the side. "You wanted to marry her?" Brenda snarled, pointing at the stretcher. "Look at your bride." Conrad stumbled forward. His hand rose, hovering over the zipper, trembling so violently he couldn't grasp the metal tab. Behind him, Meredith gripped his arm. "Conrad, don't fall for it. It's special effects. It's makeup. She's just trying to humiliate you." Conrad didn't seem to hear her. He yanked the zipper down. When my gray, sunken face was exposed to the harsh fluorescent light of the hallway, his entire world collapsed into absolute silence.