Chapter 1

The day they told me it was terminal, my girlfriend showed up in a wedding dress and got down on her knees beside my hospital bed to propose.

She said, "Even if you've only got three months, I want to be your wife for those three months."

The video did millions of views, and she became the most devoted girlfriend the internet had ever seen.

But I knew I didn't have long, and I couldn't stand to drag her down with me.

So I quietly stopped every drug keeping me alive and signed everything I owned over to her.

I passed out from the pain most nights, my skin broke open and wept, and I swallowed all of it.

All I wanted was for the rest of her life to be easy.

Then, the night I signed the last of the transfer papers, half conscious, I heard my parents crying outside the room.

"I know we wanted him to learn, but this drug is destroying him."

My mother could barely get it out.

She'd found the bloody tissues I'd hidden in my bedding too many times.

And my fiancee, Vivienne Whitfield, said coldly, "If it doesn't hurt, he'll never agree to let Connor come home.

"So we told him he had cancer and put him through chemo. Once Connor's back, the Whitfields can keep Gabriel for the rest of his life, even if he never walks again."

Connor was the fake heir, the boy swapped for me all those years ago.

My one condition for coming home had been that he leave.

Off the antidote, my lungs kicked up another clot of blood.

What none of them knew was simple.

I didn't have much time left to keep playing this out with them.

Chapter 1

"Enough. Connor's coming home tomorrow.

"And stop the compound. He's our own son, and he's suffered long enough.

"Once Connor's settled, we'll make it up to him."

My father sighed.

He never noticed that I was awake in the hospital bed.

The cold went through me all at once.

They'd been poisoning me. For Connor.

Three years.

One "treatment compound" they'd paid a fortune for.

It had taken a six-foot-two man and ground him down to barely 100 pounds.

Every time I crashed and they brought me back, I'd bring up close to half the blood in my body.

And every time, white as a sheet, I'd tell them not to worry.

Looking back now, they must have thought that was hilarious.

The rust taste in my mouth got stronger.

"It's all right, Dad."

My fiancee, Vivienne Whitfield, spoke up.

"The compound does a lot of damage, I know.

"But I got Gabriel a protective antidote a long time ago. As long as he keeps taking it, nothing permanent is going to happen to him.

"Besides, we'd never have gone this far if he hadn't dug his heels in about sending Connor away.

"I say we keep him in here a few more days. He needs to learn what family's worth.

"Then he won't give Connor a hard time once Connor's back."

A few light sentences from Vivienne, and my parents were persuaded.

They didn't know I'd stopped taking the antidote weeks ago.

So I wouldn't be a burden to them anymore.

The poison had already torn through every organ I had.

My heart hurt worse.

Connor had been raised by the Morelands for twenty years.

I'd had a few.

Of course they loved him more. I understood that.

But I was the one they'd actually had.

And Connor's parents, the Vances, had taken me instead, raised me, and made me pay for it every day.

Winters, they let me get hungry enough to collect bottles for change. Summers, they put me down an off-the-books coal pit.

By the time the Morelands found me, there wasn't an unmarked inch on me.

That's why I insisted Connor go.

Because I couldn't make myself say the word forgiven.

Letting him keep enjoying everything the Morelands had was just one more thing done to me.

To my parents and to Vivienne, that made me heartless.

"She's right. He's a good boy in every other way. He just hasn't got a heart."

"And Connor never did a thing to him."

"Think how hard it's been for him out there. He called me last week and said he's down to store-brand caviar now.

"He's never had to go without like that..."

My parents' voices were full of pity.

They ached because Connor had to eat cheaper caviar.

I went missing when I was six.

At the worst of it, I took food out of a bowl a stray was eating from.

Somebody broke three of my ribs over half a piece of chicken off the sidewalk.

From start to finish, all I ever wanted was a home nobody could throw me out of.

Something heavy tore open in my chest.

I convulsed and brought up another mouthful of blood.

The last thing at the edge of my sight was my parents and Vivienne wheeling around, faces drained, lunging for me.

Chapter 2

"Gabriel, how could you just stop your medication? Do you want to die?"

When I came around again, Vivienne was standing over me, furious.

My parents were at the foot of the bed, just as unhappy. "We had to hear it from a nurse. How can you care so little about your own life? What are we supposed to do if something happens to you?"

They looked frightened.

Something warm moved through the frozen place in my chest.

Maybe some part of them did care.

Then a nurse came in with a syringe.

I read the label.

It wasn't the antidote keeping me alive.

It was the compound.

"Do we have to?"

I looked up at them and asked it quietly.

Once that went in, I wouldn't have much time left.

A month, maybe.

A week.

Or a day.

"The doctor says one more course and you'll stabilize.

"Then we can take you home."

My mother sat down on the edge of the bed, all tenderness.

"Hurry up and get better, Gabriel.

"I'm still waiting on a real wedding."

Vivienne smiled too.

I didn't say anything.

I just watched the compound go into my vein.

It didn't matter.

That's what I told myself.

It was only speeding up the collapse of a body that was already finished.

They gave me this life.

If they wanted it back, they could have it.

That night the hospital issued three critical notices in a row.

"Viv, you said there was an antidote. Why is he this bad?"

Looking through the ICU glass at all the tubes running into me, my mother turned to Vivienne, frightened.

"He's always been weak."

Vivienne frowned.

Something worried moved behind her eyes anyway.

It was three days before I clawed my way back awake.

They discharged me the moment I did.

When my assistant wheeled me through the front door, the family's other "son," Connor Moreland, was already waiting.

"Welcome home, Gabriel!"

He came toward me smiling.

I saw right away that he had my slippers on.

"Connor only just got back, and he's about the same size as you, so I thought—"

Roz, our housekeeper, trailed off.

"It's fine, it's my fault.

"I got Gabriel's slippers dirty."

Connor had them off in a second, set them down in front of me like an offering, and stood barefoot on the floor.

"Connor..."

Behind me, my parents and Vivienne watched the performance, and both their faces went tight.

"Gabriel, they're slippers. Do you have to be this small about it?"

Vivienne frowned.

"She's right. You're in a wheelchair, you don't need shoes anyway. What's wrong with letting your brother wear them?

"There's no call to be that cold to family."

My mother said it under her breath.

Loud enough for the whole room.

I almost laughed.

"If I were really that small about it, he'd never have made it through the front door."

When the Morelands got me back, the company was already mismanaged into the ground and close to going under.

That's why Connor left so agreeably.

I drank until my stomach bled to land the investment that saved Moreland Industrial.

Where was Connor then?

They only did this because they knew I'd give in.

My face didn't move. I asked Dana to take me back to my room.

The wheelchair went straight over the slippers.

It was exactly how much thought I'd ever given Connor.

His face went ugly.

Like a punch he'd wound up for had landed in a pillow.

Then, that night, my stomach twisted me awake again.

I got myself into the chair and pushed toward the stairs, and caught the warm little scene in the living room below.

They were down there making ravioli from scratch.

Shrimp filling. Connor's favorite.

My father worked the dough. My mother minced the filling.

Vivienne was laughing, dabbing flour on Connor's cheek.

And I thought about lying in that hospital bed, mumbling through a fever that I wanted a bowl of my mom's chicken soup.

The next morning I got cold takeout.

Right then I was a rat in a drain, staring up at a life that should have been mine.

A tear came loose and hit the back of my hand, bruised and full of needle marks.

The familiar sting spread out under my skin.

I didn't interrupt them.

I went back to my room and answered an email from overseas.

The subject line had the words body donation, emergency recovery, and research consent in it.

Chapter 3

Noise woke me the next morning.

I got dressed and went down.

Vivienne had workmen pulling out every raised threshold in Moreland House.

So my chair could get through.

"You're up."

She turned around and smiled at me.

"Once you're all the way better we'll put them back. Deal?"

The smile was so bright it left me off balance.

She and Connor had grown up together.

But she was the one who confessed to me.

It happened by accident. I came by right after she'd put her car into something.

The engine wouldn't turn over and she was standing there crying.

I'd apprenticed at a garage once, back when I was scraping by.

I rolled up my sleeves and had her running again in a few minutes.

She said it was the first time anyone had put themselves in front of a problem for her without being asked.

We dated. We fell in love.

I thought it would just keep going like that.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Vivienne smiled sweetly and pulled my hand into hers.

"My husband-to-be is doing really well. Barring surprises, you'll all be at our wedding before long.

"He's precious to me, so nobody gets to say a word against him."

I looked up, and that's when I saw the phone in her other hand. She was livestreaming.

The little bit of feeling that had just risen in me turned into a joke.

"I don't feel good. I don't want to be on camera."

I ignored the hurt that jumped into her face.

I pulled my hand back and got out of there.

I hadn't gone far before I went soft and opened her stream on my own phone.

Connor had already taken my place next to her.

He kept his face out of frame.

The viewers thought nobody had moved.

The comments kept rolling: perfect couple, forever, you two made me believe in love again.

Then they started egging the two of them on to kiss.

My fingers went white around the edge of the phone.

I watched Connor lean in.

Vivienne tipped back an inch.

She didn't stop him.

Twenty seconds of it, on screen.

My fingertips went cold.

I didn't watch any more.

I just turned around and left our engagement ring where it lay.

She'd designed the pair herself.

There was a sunflower cut into the inside of the band.

She said it was because I was the sun that came into her life.

So which one of us had she meant. Me, or the boy she'd been turning toward since they were children.

I didn't have the strength left to work it out.

I went back to my room and started packing.

The door banged open.

"Gabriel, was this you?"

Vivienne shoved her phone in my face.

A trashy headline filled the screen.

CUCKOO IN THE NEST: THE MORELAND HEIR SWITCH, AND TWENTY YEARS IN A LIFE HE STOLE

Under it, a high-resolution shot of Connor's face.

"Is any of it not true?"

I looked up calmly.

My not panicking made her face go darker.

"Connor's parents are dead. Why are you still coming after him?

"He just wants a family. What has he done wrong?"

The familiar dull pain came back into my chest.

For a second I couldn't tell if it was the compound or her.

"I just wanted a family too."

I said it under my breath.

But mine had been gone since the day I was taken.

Vivienne didn't catch it.

"Do you know some lunatic online went after Connor over this? He's bleeding."

She stepped aside as she said it.

Connor was behind her with a gash across his forehead, still running.

"It's fine.

"Even if the post did come from the IP in Gabriel's room, it's fine.

"I owe him this much anyway."

He gave the bitter little smile and said all the right things.

And then my parents came through the door and my father hit me across the face.

"He's the one we owe!

"We never should have had you."

Chapter 4

I turned my head.

Even the inside of my nose tasted like rust.

"Your brother's been home a few days and you already can't stand to have him here!

"For fifteen years he was the one taking care of us in your place. Even if you won't do it for your mother and me, you don't get to destroy him!"

My father stood there pointing at me, shouting.

My mother's face was nothing but disappointment.

"Gabe, you're both my children, but you were wrong to do this.

"Apologize to Connor. Say you won't do it again, and we'll let it go."

Connor came and stood right in front of me.

Where they couldn't see, he raised an eyebrow at me, enjoying himself.

He was waiting for me to confess to something I'd never done.

"And if I don't?

"Will you drug me again and put me back in the hospital?"

I laughed, softly.

Every face in front of me went white.

"What are you talking about..."

My father said it with the guilt all over him.

"So you're wrong and you still won't admit it. Stay in your room and think about it."

They locked my bedroom door from the outside.

They were sure I'd already signed the transfer papers at the hospital.

They figured locking me up left me nothing.

I'm not an idiot.

"If I die, every share and every property still in my name goes to the Havenlight Children's Foundation."

I sent it.

Then a notification came up on my phone and my pupils shrank.

Somebody had put every filthy thing that had ever happened to me online.

Line after line of it.

Wrapped around my eyes like snakes.

Bullies at school holding me down and making me eat garbage because I smelled.

Grown men beating me at every job I took to eat.

None of that shamed me.

I hadn't done anything wrong by surviving.

But it also dragged in Walter Boone, the old man who fed me when I couldn't afford food.

Walter had nothing himself, and still, if he got hold of a bread roll, he'd break it and give me half.

He treated me like his own grandson.

He got me through the worst years of my life.

The first thing I did when I got on my feet was try to pay him back.

He froze to death on a sidewalk on an ordinary winter night.

Still holding a carton of milk he'd been saving for me.

The post said what the two of us had was a transaction.

It said I wanted money, and that I'd sold him my body and whatever dignity I had left.

My teeth went into my lip until it was running blood.

I screenshotted it and sent it to Vivienne.

She was the only person I'd ever told.

Her answer came fast.

"I never meant for them to make up something that vile.

"But what's coming at Connor is enormous, and this is how you make it right with him.

"I'll get PR on it. Trust me."

Trust her?

I clamped a hand over my chest and started bringing up blood in mouthfuls.

Never again.

The monitor in my room went off, screaming.

They rushed me back into the ICU at Fairleigh University Medical Center.

"How is this happening? Didn't they stop the drug? Why is he still bringing up blood?"

Outside the OR, my father was frantic.

My mother was sobbing out loud.

Not long after, Dr. Pierce came out, pulled his mask down, and looked sorry.

"Multiple organ failure. Time of death, 3:08 p.m. We did everything we could."

Every one of them stared at him.

Vivienne grabbed him by the collar.

"That's not possible. How could he die? Did you not give it to him?"

The look on her face frightened him.

"You mean the protective antidote?

"Mr. Moreland stopped taking that a long time ago.

"And there was no money on the card your office sent over, so the pharmacy couldn't release any more of it."

Vivienne remembered, all at once, the card she'd tossed to Connor a few days earlier when he wanted a limited-edition Rolls-Royce.

Every bit of color went out of her face.