Chapter 4
Claudette
I woke up staring at a ceiling that wasn’t mine.
That was the first thought. Wrong ceiling. Too high, with crown molding that caught the morning light in a way that looked almost artistic. The kind of architectural detail you noticed in other people’s homes, not your own.
The second thought was that my head felt wrong—heavy. Like someone had filled it with lead while I was sleeping.
Pressure throbbed behind my eyes with each breath, and when I tried to move, my body protested in ways I couldn’t quite identify.
I blinked at the ceiling, trying to remember how I got here.
Nothing.
I sat up slowly, and the room came into focus.
Floor-to-ceiling windows showing a city skyline bathed in morning light.
Furniture that looked like it belonged in a magazine—all clean lines and deliberate placement.
A massive bed with sheets that felt like silk against my skin.
Everything too perfectly arranged. Too unfamiliar.
A dress was draped over a chair in the corner.
Except I didn’t remember wearing that dress. Or taking it off.
I looked down. An oversized T-shirt that definitely wasn’t mine, hanging halfway down my thighs. It smelled like cologne. Something masculine and clean and completely foreign.
Then I saw my hand.
The ring.
A massive diamond catching the morning light. Gold band that looked vintage, elegant. Sitting on my left ring finger like it had always been there.
My heart rate spiked. I grabbed it with my other hand, tried to pull it off. It didn’t budge. It fit perfectly, like it had been sized specifically for my finger.
Which didn’t make any sense because I didn’t own jewelry like this.
I stared at it, turning my hand to watch the diamond catch the light, trying to remember when I’d gotten it.
It came up completely blank.
My eyes went to the nightstand. Empty water glass, condensation still clinging to the sides like someone had filled it recently. Medical supplies scattered around it— A blood-pressure cuff that looked recently used. Evidence that someone had been taking care of me while I was unconscious.
Unconscious.
Why had I been unconscious?
I pressed my palms to my face, tried to force my brain to work. What was the last thing I remembered?
Work. I remembered being at work. The Richards account—I’d been reviewing data for the report, the one my dad needed for the board meeting. I’d been at my desk in my office. It had been tedious but important, and I’d promised him I’d have it done by end of day.
But after that?
Nothing.
Just this room and this ring and the growing panic that I’d done something catastrophically stupid and couldn’t remember any of it.
I looked around desperately for something that would explain this. A purse on a chair across the room. My phone plugged in and charging on the other nightstand. And next to it, a piece of paper that looked official.
I grabbed it with shaking hands.
Marriage certificate.
The words at the top were clear, formal, legal. Official seal in the corner that made my pulse hammer faster.
My eyes zeroed on my signature at the bottom, right there in my handwriting.
Next to another signature.
Michael Ashford.
The name punched through me.
Michael Ashford?
My brother’s best-friend Michael Ashford?
Off-limits-since-the-beginning-of-time Michael Ashford.
No.
This wasn’t possible. It had to be some elaborate scheme that would make sense once someone explained it to me.
Except the certificate looked real. The signatures looked real. The ring on my finger felt very, very real.
I checked the date on the certificate.
My brain stuttered, trying to make the numbers make sense.
That couldn’t be right. The date said yesterday, but that didn’t match with—
I grabbed my phone, hands shaking so badly I almost dropped it.
The date on my phone didn’t match the date in my memory.
I heard a sound behind me and spun around, nearly tripping in the process.
It wasn’t just any person.
Michael stepped out of what appeared to be a bathroom door, and every coherent thought I’d managed to gather evaporated instantly.
He was fresh from the shower. Water still dripping down his chest, tracing paths over muscle I’d never known existed under his usual clothes.
A towel slung low around his hips, dangerously low, and absolutely nothing else.
His hair was wet and messy, pushed back from his face.
And there were tattoos—black ink curving across his ribs, disappearing beneath the towel in ways that made my brain completely malfunction.
I’d seen Michael at family dinners for years. Seen him in suits and in casual clothes at barbecues, even in swimming trunks once at a pool party when I was seventeen and had to physically restrain myself from staring.
But I’d never seen him like this.
He leaned against the bathroom doorframe, one hand gripping the towel, and smiled at me. Not his polite family-dinner smile. This was something else. A smile that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Morning,” he said, voice deeper than I remembered. “You sleep okay, Mrs. Ashford?”
The question sounded amused. Playful even.
My mouth opened but nothing came out. My brain was too busy cataloging the water droplets sliding down his chest, the way the towel sat on his hips, the tattoos I hadn’t known existed.
He waited, still smiling, water dripping from his hair onto his shoulders.
“What—” I finally managed, tearing my eyes away from his chest. “What happened?”
The amusement faded immediately. “You don’t remember.”
It wasn’t a question.
I shook my head, watching his expression change. Concern flickered across his face—sharp and intense.
“What do you remember?” He moved into the room, grabbed a shirt from a drawer. He pulled it on, which was both relieving and—annoyingly—disappointing.
“Work,” I said. “I remember being at work. I was pulling data for my dad’s board meeting.”
“When?” His voice had a more serious note now, his gaze still deep with that concern.
“Y-yesterday?” I said, still thinking about the wrong date on my phone.
Michael went very still. “Claudette… what’s the date?”
I told him, and watched his face for whatever was coming.
“What year?” His voice dropped to something quiet and careful.
I told him that too.
He didn’t say anything right away. Just looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Then, carefully: “That was a year ago, Claudette.”
“What?” I breathed, his words confirming the date I already saw on my phone.
“No.” The word came out automatically. “No, that’s not—that can’t be right.”
“What else do you remember?”
I tried. Really hard, pushing my brain to find something, anything that came after sitting at my desk pulling numbers for the quarterly report.
Nothing.
Just blank space where an entire year should be.
“I don’t—” My throat was closing up. “There’s nothing. It’s just gone. How does that happen? How do you just lose a whole year?”
“Hey.” Michael moved closer. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t. I was staring at my hands, at the ring on my finger that I didn’t remember getting, at proof that I’d lived through time I couldn’t access.
“Claudette.” He said my name, and I looked up. “It’s going to be okay.”
“How is this okay? I lost a year, Michael. An entire year.” I gestured at the certificate on the stand. “And apparently in that year I married you, which—why would I do that? Why would you?”
“Because we wanted to,” he said simply, eyes steady on mine.
I stared at him in disbelief, “We wanted to?”
“Yes. We got married yesterday,”
I was still too shocked even after he’d just confirmed it. “Michael, I would remember if we—if there was something between us. If we were—” I couldn’t even say the words. “I would remember.”
“You don’t remember the past year,” he said gently. “So maybe your memory isn’t the best judge of what happened.”
He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make it less terrifying.
My phone started vibrating on the nightstand.
I grabbed it, grateful for the distraction.
Twenty-three missed calls from Jack.
I blinked at the number. Twenty-three? Why would Jack call me twenty-three times?
Texts filled the screen too.
Jack
‘Where are you?’
Claudette answer your phone.
This isn’t funny!
CALL ME.
Mike won’t answer either. What the hell is going on?
“Why is Jack calling me so much?” I asked, looking up at Michael. “Did something happen?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t know what?”
“About us. About the wedding.”
The words took a second to land. “What?”
“We got married yesterday. Jack doesn’t know yet.”
I just looked at him. Waiting for the punchline. For him to say he was kidding.
He didn’t.
“Wait. Wait. You’re serious? How—” I started pacing. I had to move or I was going to scream. “How does he not know?”
Jack who had always warned me to stay away from his best friend, that he was a player who would break my heart, and now I was married to the same Michael? Without his knowledge?
“Because we haven’t told him yet. It just happened,” Michael started to say when my phone started buzzing again. Jack’s name lighting up the screen.
We both looked at it.
“This is a disaster,” I whispered, dizziness creeping back in.
“Take a deep breath, Claudie,” he said. “I married you because I love you. And because last night, you wanted to do things you’ve never done before, because you…” he hesitated for a while. “You were going through things. And I confessed and proposed at the same time.”
He said a lot of words, but only three words stayed with me. “You… love me?” I asked, bewildered.
“For years.”
We looked at each other, and he excused himself. Probably to give me time to go over everything.
My phone buzzed again with another text from my brother saying he’s coming over.
“Jack’s coming. He said…” I trailed off.
“Good. Let him come.” Michael looked weirdly determined.
An hour and half later, there was a knock on the door.
“Oh my God, oh my God…” I said.
“Relax,” Michael said. “It’s not Jack yet.” He smiled at me and let in a man carrying a medical bag. He was older, maybe late fifties.
“Claudette,” he said, and something about his voice tugged at a memory I couldn’t reach. Like I should know him.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“We’ve met before,” he said, his tone was careful. “I’m Dr. Rivera.”
The name meant nothing to me, but the way he said it suggested it should.
He sat in the chair next to the bed, pulled out a small flashlight. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Confused.”
“That’s understandable.” He checked my pupils, had me follow his finger with my eyes. “Michael mentioned you’re experiencing some memory loss. Can you tell me what you remember?”
I went through it again while he took a general assessment.
“Any headaches?” he asked. “Nausea?”
“Just pressure. Behind my eyes.”
He made notes, asked more questions. When did I wake up? How did I feel physically? Could I move everything normally?
“Everything looks stable,” he said finally.
“But the memory loss—”
“It should improve with rest,” he said, though something in his tone felt off, maybe it was because he hadn’t met my eyes. Or had I imagined that?
“A year is a long time to just forget. What happened to me?”
“You suffered a trauma.” He packed up his equipment. “The important thing is not to push yourself. Your body needs time to recover.”
“Recover from what?”
He glanced at Michael. That look again—like they were communicating something I wasn’t supposed to understand.
“From yesterday,” Dr. Rivera said vaguely. “It was… a long day.”
He left with Michael, their voices low in the hallway where I couldn’t hear.
When Michael came back, I was ready with questions. But before I could ask them, the doorbell rang.
Long and aggressive.
“That’ll be Jack,” Michael said quietly.
My stomach sank to my feet. “Now?”
“He must have succeeded in tracking my location. We can’t put this off anymore.” Michael spoke. He looked like he was bracing himself for a fight.
The doorbell rang again, followed by pounding.
“MICHAEL!” Jack’s voice came through the door, muffled but furious. “I know you’re in there! Open the damn door!”
I looked down at the t-shirt I was wearing. The ring on my finger. The complete disaster that was my life.
“I’m going to die,” I muttered. “Jack is going to kill me, and I’m going to die without even remembering why I married you.”
“He’s not going to kill you,” he said to me.
“He’s definitely going to kill you, though.”
“Probably.” Michael moved toward the door. “But then I’d die a happy man. You ready?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Good enough.”
He walked to open the door and Jack’s voice filled the apartment immediately. “Where is she? Where’s my sister? And why the hell haven’t either of you answered your phones?”
I closed my eyes and braced for the explosion.