The text message glows on my phone screen at 2:47 AM: "Maya, please. Stop trying to come here. You know what happens." I stare at Derek's words until they blur. Three years. Three years of video calls, voice messages, carefully planned virtual date nights where we watch the same movie in different states. Three years of loving a man I haven't touched since that perfect weekend in Seattle when we first met at my cousin's wedding. Three years of him refusing to let me visit. "It's for your protection," he always says. And God help me, he's right. My fingers hover over the keyboard. I want to argue. I want to scream that this isn't normal, that relationships can't survive on pixels and promises. But the bandages wrapped around my left hand stop me cold. The fire was two weeks ago. I'd been so careful this time. I'd checked the stove three times before leaving for the airport. I'd unplugged everything except the refrigerator. I'd even asked my neighbor Mrs. Chen to do a final sweep of my apartment. But somehow—impossibly—a candle I hadn't lit in months had fallen onto a stack of magazines I'd already thrown in the recycling bin. The magazines that had mysteriously reappeared on my coffee table. The flame that shouldn't have existed consuming paper that shouldn't have been there. The smoke detector's shriek had reached me in the Uber, two blocks away. I'd watched my building's third floor billow black smoke while firefighters swarmed like ants. My flight to Portland—to Derek—had been forgotten as I'd stood on the sidewalk in my travel clothes, watching everything I owned nearly turn to ash. "Coincidence," the fire marshal had said, even though his eyes had told a different story. "These things happen." But they don't. Not like this. I scroll back through our message history, through the breadcrumb trail of disasters that have defined our relationship. *Attempt One, Year One:* The elevator incident. Twenty-three hours trapped between floors in my office building on the exact morning of my flight. The maintenance crew had sworn the elevator was brand new, the safety systems flawless. Yet somehow, impossibly, every backup had failed simultaneously. By the time they'd extracted me, dehydrated and traumatized, Derek's city was experiencing a freak ice storm that grounded all flights for three days. *Attempt Two, Year One:* The car accident. Not my fault—a delivery truck had run a red light, T-boning my Uber en route to the airport. I'd walked away with only bruises, but my suitcase had been destroyed, along with my nerve. Derek had begged me to stop trying after that one. *Attempt Three, Year Two:* Food poisoning so severe I'd spent four days in the hospital. The restaurant had been investigated, but no contamination was ever found. Just me, violently ill, exactly twelve hours before my scheduled departure. *Attempt Four, Year Two:* A sudden appendicitis that turned out to be a "mysterious inflammation" that resolved itself the moment my flight took off without me. *Attempt Five, Year Two:* A burst pipe that flooded my apartment the night before my trip, requiring my presence for insurance documentation. *Attempt Six, earlier this year:* A jury summons that couldn't be postponed, for a trial that was dismissed on day one—the day after my flight window closed. And now, Attempt Seven: the fire. Each incident, taken alone, could be explained. Bad luck. Poor timing. Life's random cruelties. But together? Together they form a pattern that defies logic. Derek has visited me four times. Four perfect, magical visits where nothing went wrong. Where we walked through botanical gardens and cooked dinner in my tiny kitchen and fell asleep tangled together on my couch. Where I remembered what it felt like to be held by someone who knows the sound of your heartbeat. But I can't go to him. The universe—or fate, or God, or whatever cosmic force governs these things—won't allow it. "It's not worth your life," Derek had said after Attempt Five, his face pixelated on my laptop screen, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I love you too much to let you keep getting hurt." "So what?" I'd screamed back. "We just do this forever? You visit me when you can, and I stay trapped here like Rapunzel in her tower?" "If that's what keeps you safe," he'd whispered. "Yes." I'd hung up on him that night. We hadn't spoken for two weeks. But we always come back to each other. We always will. My phone buzzes again. Another text from Derek: "I know you're awake. I can feel it. Please, Maya. Promise me you won't try again." I look at the calendar on my wall. Three years and two months since Seattle. Since I knew what his skin smelled like, what his laugh sounded like when it wasn't filtered through speakers. My laptop is already open on my bed. The airline website is already loaded. My fingers move before my brain can stop them, clicking through to flights. Portland. One way. Leaving in three days. I can be more careful this time. I can outsmart whatever force is doing this. I have to. Because the alternative—accepting that loving Derek means never touching him again—is a fate worse than any accident. My phone rings. Derek's face fills the screen, those green eyes that haunt my dreams. I answer. "Don't," he says immediately. "Maya, whatever you're thinking, don't." "How did you—" "Because I know you. And I'm begging you. Please." I look at the flight confirmation page. One click away from booking. "What if this time is different?" I whisper. The silence on the other end stretches so long I think the call has dropped. Then: "It won't be."