Open it. You’ll understand everything.

Ending 12 (The real one, if I were brave): He doesn’t let her leave in the first place. Not by grabbing her—by listening. By looking up from his laptop three months earlier when she said she felt lonely. By closing Excel and opening his arms. By being a man instead of a machine. She read each ending twice. Then a third time, slower. Her wine went cold.

A spreadsheet. Of course, Leo was an engineer. His love had always been data, patterns, predictable curves. But this… this was different.

A single line graph. Steep, sharp, jagged—not a curve at all. A fever chart of missing someone. The Y-axis label: How many times I thought of you today. The final data point, today’s date: 11,847 times.

Instead, she double-clicked.