My Dying Best Friend Gifted Me My Own Fiancée

The day before New Year’s, I stumbled across a goodbye post from a guy online.

He wrote that he’d been diagnosed with cancer, and the woman he loved was about to marry someone else.

The raw ache and profound regret woven into every sentence stopped me cold, and I felt a pang of sympathy for a total stranger.

It wasn’t until I recognized the familiar user profile picture that my blood ran cold. The man posting was my best friend, the brother I’d been inseparable from for more than two decades: Leo.

He ended the post with a final, devastating line: “I left a letter for her—my last will, maybe—and I won’t be at the wedding.”

“Sometimes, parting ways is the only way to be together forever.”

Panic seized me.

Without a second thought, I rushed to find my fiancée, Scarlett. I had to convince her to help me track down Leo before he did something drastic.

Instead, I found what I was looking for, tucked deep inside the pocket of her winter coat: the thousand-word letter Leo had mentioned.

And I, Dean—the man scheduled to get engaged to Scarlett on New Year’s Day—was holding it.

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My frantic, ragged breathing eventually began to steady. My fingers—sweat-slicked and trembling—clutched the envelope I’d taken from Scarlett’s coat. My mind was a dead zone.

She was currently in a meeting, just steps away.

The script on the front, elegant and achingly familiar, belonged to my lifelong best friend, Leo.

A visceral fear coiled in my stomach.

If this was the letter Leo had written, the will he mentioned… then Scarlett was the woman he loved, the one he couldn’t be with.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a trapped bird desperate to escape. I slipped into the nearest restroom, feeling like a thief, and tore open the seal.

All my desperate prayers for a misunderstanding turned to ash the moment my eyes scanned the contents.

Leo, my closest friend, and Scarlett, my fiancée, had been betraying me for the last three years.

In his final words, Leo detailed how they used burner accounts to talk through the night. How they’d planned a future while I remained clueless.

They had even adopted a stray dog behind my back. They named it together, then lied to me, pretending it was a chance encounter.

I read, word by painful word, the entire, intricate history of their profound entanglement.

The letter ended with the paper stained with his tears and his despair.

“Scarlett, I can’t bear to watch you exchange vows with Dean.”

“You and Dean are the people I love most. I hope you both find your happily-ever-after.”

“I can’t let Dean down. Falling for you was the single most pathetic, selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

“Maybe fate is punishing me, taking back the rest of my life. I’m not doing the chemo. I’ll tell Dean I’m leaving the country. You don’t need to mourn me.”

“Scarlett, forget me. Be good to Dean. Next life, just choose me first. How great would that be?”

I stumbled back, bracing myself against the cold tile wall, sucking in air in huge, shallow gasps.

Leo was dying.

And so, he had decided to “give” Scarlett to me.

The sheer absurdity of the thought made me want to scream.