The bandage on my arm was still fresh when I discovered there had never been a car accident.
I had just donated blood because I believed Brendan—the man I had loved for three years—might not survive the night.
Then, while walking through the clinic, I heard laughter coming from behind a door.
“Seriously, number ninety-six might be the best one yet.”
I stopped.
Another voice answered.
“I told you Chloe would believe it.”
I recognized both voices.
Mason and Wyatt.
Brendan’s closest friends.
For a moment, I stood perfectly still.
Maybe I had misunderstood.
Maybe they were talking about someone else.
Then Brendan laughed.
Every excuse disappeared.
Less than an hour earlier, Mason had called me sounding frantic.
“Chloe, you need to get here.”
“What happened?”
“It’s Brendan. There was a crash.”
Everything after that had happened in a blur.
I remembered grabbing my keys.
Running down the stairs.
Driving with trembling hands.
Mason had told me Brendan had been critically injured and that blood might be urgently needed.
I didn’t stop to question how strange that sounded.
I loved Brendan.
That was enough.
When the clinic staff asked whether I was willing to donate, I said yes immediately.
Afterward, I sat with juice in my hand, terrified that somewhere nearby Brendan was fighting to stay alive.
Then I noticed a nurse carrying a medical cooler down the hallway.
My name was written across its label.
I don’t know why I followed her.
She turned a corner.
I stayed several steps behind.
Then I watched her take the blood bag I had just donated and drop it into a medical waste container.
My first thought was that something must have been wrong with it.
Maybe they couldn’t use it.
Maybe there had been a mistake.
Then I heard the laughter.
I followed the sound.
A nearby door hadn’t closed completely.
Through the opening, I saw Brendan stretched comfortably across a bed.
No injuries.
No bruises.
No medical equipment keeping him alive.
Nothing.
Mason stood near the window while Wyatt scrolled through his phone.
Brendan was laughing.
“How many are left?” Mason asked.
Wyatt looked at the screen.
“Three.”
“So this was ninety-six?”
“Yep.”
They laughed again.
My hand moved instinctively toward the wall.
Ninety-six.
I didn’t understand the number until they started talking about the past.
Mason brought up the anniversary bracelet.
My bracelet.
The one Brendan had claimed he lost near the park.
I had searched for hours in freezing rain because I knew how much he supposedly treasured it.
By the time I got home, I was soaked.
Two days later, I was sick.
Brendan had taken care of me and apologized repeatedly for putting me through it.
Now Mason was laughing about how the bracelet had been sitting safely in Brendan’s apartment the entire time.
“That was what, number twenty-something?” Wyatt asked.
Brendan corrected him.
They had numbered that one too.
Then came the fake surgery.
I remembered every detail.
One evening, Brendan suddenly stopped responding to my messages.
Mason later called and said there had been a medical emergency.
I spent the night awake, crying and waiting for news.
The following morning, Brendan appeared and told me everything had been a misunderstanding.
I had hugged him so tightly he laughed.
Apparently, he had been laughing for a different reason.
Then they mentioned my university graduation.
My stomach twisted.
Days before the ceremony, someone had accused me of plagiarism.
I had spent the most important hours of that week trying to prove I hadn’t cheated.
By the time the situation was resolved, I had missed the ceremony.
My parents had traveled to see me graduate.
Instead, they found me crying.
Brendan had held me afterward and promised that one ruined day couldn’t erase everything I had accomplished.
Standing outside that clinic room, I finally understood why he had always known exactly what to say after something terrible happened.
He knew because he had helped cause it.
For three years, I had thought I was unlucky.
I wasn’t.
I was being targeted.
Then Mason said, “Once we reach ninety-nine, it’s finally over.”
“What happens after ninety-nine?” Wyatt asked.
Brendan answered this time.
“I end it.”
“With Chloe?”
“Obviously.”
“And Scarlett?”
Brendan laughed.
“We’ll see.”
Scarlett.
That name pulled me four years into the past.
Scarlett Montgomery and I had competed against each other in dance.
She had been the obvious favorite.
Her family could afford private instructors, expensive costumes, professional choreography, and every advantage available.
I had trained wherever I could.
Some of my costumes were borrowed.
I worked part-time to pay competition expenses.
Nobody expected me to beat Scarlett.
But I did.
When my name was announced, I remembered standing beneath the stage lights in disbelief.
Scarlett came second.
Brendan had been in the audience.
I barely knew him then.
Almost a year later, we happened to meet again.
Or at least, I had always believed it happened by chance.
Now I knew better.
Brendan had entered my life deliberately.
He had spent three years making me trust him so he could punish me for defeating Scarlett in a competition she was “supposed” to win.
I backed away from the door.
Every instinct told me to storm inside.
Demand answers.
Scream.
Make them look at me.
But suddenly, I understood something.
They wanted my reaction.
My pain had been entertainment for them for years.
I wasn’t giving them another performance.
I walked away.
Outside the clinic, I sat on a bench because my legs were shaking.
My phone rang.
Mom.
I answered.
“Hey, honey,” she said. “Your dad wanted me to ask one last time before we finalize everything. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to come to Tucson?”
For months, my parents had been planning their move to Arizona.
They had asked me repeatedly to join them.
I always gave the same answer.
I couldn’t leave Brendan.
That afternoon, the answer changed.
“When are you leaving?”
Mom paused.
“Why?”
“Is there still space for me?”
Her voice softened.
“There will always be space for you.”
I stared at the bandage on my arm.
“Then I’m coming.”
Brendan showed up at my apartment that night.
He knocked several times.
I kept the door locked.
“Chloe, open up.”
“No.”
“What’s going on?”
“I heard you.”
Silence.
I could practically hear him thinking.
“Heard what?”
“At the clinic.”
Another silence.
Then he sighed.
“Come on. It was a prank.”
A prank.
Three years reduced to one word.
“You made me believe you might die.”
“Nobody made you donate.”
Something inside me became completely still.
For years, I had been afraid of losing Brendan.
Now, for the first time, losing him sounded like freedom.
“You’re right.”
He seemed surprised.
“I am?”
“You didn’t force me to donate.”
I paused.
“And nobody can force me to stay.”
“Chloe—”
“It’s over.”
I walked away from the door.
The next morning, I started packing.
Before I finished, Scarlett Montgomery called me.
Seeing her name made me angry all over again.
I answered anyway.
“I didn’t ask him to do this,” she said immediately.
“You knew?”
“I knew Brendan hated losing.”
“You weren’t the one who lost.”
“I know.”
Scarlett went quiet.
Then she said something I hadn’t expected.
“I got second place. I was devastated for a few weeks. Then I got over myself.”
Apparently, Brendan never had.
Scarlett explained that his obsession wasn’t really about defending her.
He had simply believed people like Scarlett were supposed to win.
She had money.
Status.
Connections.
Training.
I didn’t.
My victory offended something in him.
“You proved him wrong,” Scarlett said. “And he turned that into a personal insult.”
Then her voice changed.
“There’s something else you need to see.”
A few minutes later, files began arriving on my phone.
Screenshots.
Photographs.
Messages.
Brendan had kept a record of everything.
Not just memories.
An archive.
Each incident had a number.
REVENGE 14 — Forget Chloe’s birthday and see how long she pretends it doesn’t hurt.
REVENGE 31 — Hide the presentation before her interview.
REVENGE 47 — Leave her alone at the restaurant.
REVENGE 81 — Embarrass her over the handmade gift.
I kept scrolling until I reached the newest entry.
REVENGE 96 — Fake accident. Convince Chloe to donate blood.
Underneath, Brendan had written:
She’ll do it. If Chloe thinks I’m dying, she’ll do anything.
That sentence hurt differently from everything else.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was true.
I would have done anything for him.
He had taken the best thing I offered—love—and treated it as proof that I could be manipulated.
Scarlett told me what he had planned for number ninety-nine.
A party.
Brendan intended to invite everyone involved.
Then, with me standing in the room, he would reveal the archive.
Three years of photographs.
Videos.
Messages.
Every humiliation.
The final joke was supposed to be our entire relationship.
He wanted me to discover, in front of everyone, that loving him had been an experiment designed to measure how much pain I would tolerate before walking away.
He never got to perform his finale.
By the time he was planning number ninety-seven, I was already leaving.
I moved to Tucson with my parents.
The first months were harder than I expected.
Knowing Brendan had deceived me didn’t erase the memories.
There were mornings when I remembered him making coffee for me.
Nights when I remembered falling asleep beside him.
Moments when I wondered whether any part of him had ever cared.
Eventually, I stopped needing the answer.
I found work.
I met new people.
I joined a community arts program.
Then one afternoon, I found myself standing outside a dance studio.
I almost walked away.
Dance had become connected to the worst years of my life.
Without that competition, maybe Brendan would never have targeted me.
Then another thought came.
Why was I still allowing him to take things from me?
He had taken three years.
He wasn’t getting dance too.
I went inside.
At first, I hated the mirrors.
They made me feel exposed.
But I returned the next week.
And the week after that.
Six months later, I performed again.
It wasn’t a major competition.
There were no expensive prizes.
I didn’t care.
When the music started, I remembered why I had loved dancing before any of this happened.
Someone posted a video of the performance.
A small dance company saw it and invited me to audition.
For once, something unexpected happened that wasn’t part of Brendan’s plan.
Meanwhile, his own life was unraveling.
Scarlett cut him off.
Some of his friends stopped defending him.
Others distanced themselves when pieces of his archive began circulating among people who knew us.
The collection he had created as a trophy became a record of what he had done.
A year after I moved away, my former university invited me back to speak at an event about unhealthy relationships and emotional recovery.
Afterward, I found Brendan waiting outside the auditorium.
He looked tired.
“Can we talk?”
“We already are.”
He swallowed.
“I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me more than one.”
“I know.”
“How many?”
He looked down.
“Ninety-six.”
That was the first time I had ever heard him say the number without laughing.
“I was cruel,” he said. “I thought it was funny. I thought I was proving something.”
“And what did you prove?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he told me what he had lost.
Friends.
Trust.
Family relationships.
His reputation.
When he finished, I shook my head.
“You still don’t understand.”
“What?”
“You’re listing what happened to you.”
“I’m trying to explain—”
“Those are consequences, Brendan. They’re not an apology.”
His face tightened.
Then he asked, “Do you think you’ll ever forgive me?”
I considered the question.
Once, I would have believed forgiveness meant telling him everything was okay.
Now I understood it differently.
“I don’t know.”
He looked disappointed.
“But I do know something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t wake up angry at you anymore.”
Hope flashed across his face.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“That doesn’t mean I want you back,” I continued. “It means you don’t occupy enough space in my life for me to keep hating you.”
I started walking away.
He called after me.
“Chloe.”
I turned.
“Are you happier now?”
A year earlier, I might have answered that question just to prove something.
Instead, I thought about my parents.
My work.
My friends.
The studio.
The stage.
The woman I was slowly becoming.
“I’m getting there.”
Then I smiled.
“And this time, nobody else gets to decide what that looks like.”
Before my flight back to Tucson, I stopped at a dance store.
I tried on several pairs of shoes until I found the right ones.
Then I bought them myself.
Brendan had designed ninety-nine acts of revenge.
He reached ninety-six.
For three years, he treated every humiliation as another victory.
But the ninety-sixth was different.
It was the first one I saw clearly.
And once I understood the game, I stopped playing.
He never got his grand finale.
He never got to watch number ninety-nine destroy me in front of an audience.
Instead, number ninety-six became the last chapter he was allowed to write in my life.
Everything after that belonged to me.
