Chapter 4
My narrowed eyes stayed fixed on him.
To his credit, he didn’t look away. He stood near the window with his arms folded, watching me with the same maddening composure he’d maintained since I’d opened my eyes.
I’d woken up a few hours earlier, and this time Felicity had come armed with evidence.
Photographs.
Text conversations.
Emails.
Our marriage certificate.
She had sat beside my bed and patiently walked me through nearly three years of a life I couldn’t remember living.
There was no escaping it anymore.
It was true.
Almost three years had vanished from my memory.
My brain still couldn’t wrap itself around the idea. Three years of birthdays, holidays, arguments, ordinary mornings, terrible days, happy days, conversations, places I’d apparently visited, people I’d apparently met.
Gone.
Just… gone.
It felt impossible to accept that an entire portion of my life could exist in photographs and messages while my own mind contained absolutely nothing of it.
Dr. Reed and the nurses had spent the afternoon checking that I remained neurologically stable.
They’d repeated parts of my neurological examination, checked my pupils and strength, monitored my vital signs, and asked the same orientation questions they’d asked earlier.
My answers were still consistent. I knew where I was, who I was, and what day it was.
I could hold a conversation and remember everything that had happened since waking.
The problem remained everything before the accident.
I hated how reasonable everything sounded.
It would have been much easier if somebody had simply admitted this was an elaborate prank.
Before Dr. Reed left, he paused at the doorway and glanced down at his lab coat, his expression still faintly wounded. “Just so you know, my mentor gave me this. It’s very special.”
I’d really hit a nerve.
I made a mental note to tell Naija to send him flowers.
She hadn’t been able to come in yet. She’d been handling things at my company while I was stuck in the hospital, but we’d managed to FaceTime earlier.
The second her face appeared on the screen, the professional composure she’d been trying to maintain had cracked.
She’d looked relieved to see me awake and talking, even if she had spent most of the call asking whether I was following the doctor’s instructions.
After we ended the call, Felicity handed me a bowl of cut fruit, told me I needed to eat, and then stepped into the hallway when her phone started ringing.
And suddenly, I was all alone with him.
“Did you blackmail me or something?” I asked, breaking the silence that had been hanging between us. I took a bite of the apple in my hand, chewing slowly as I watched him.
He didn’t react.
To get me to marry you hung unspoken between us.
He let out a long sigh. “No.”
My brows shot up. “Black magic, then?”
He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and shook his head slowly, the sheer disbelief on his face making it clear he couldn’t believe this was a conversation he was actually having.
See?
There was simply no way this man was my husband. Not with an attitude like that.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he finally muttered, lowering his gaze back to mine.
I frowned. “Like what?”
“Like I’m some creature you can’t stand.”
“Lizard.”
His forehead creased. “What?”
“The creature I can’t stand.”
His mouth twitched, amusement slipping through before he could hide it. “Really? I would’ve guessed cockroach.”
I shook my head. “Nah. I can kill a cockroach. There are tools for that. Spray, shoes, strategically placed household objects. A lizard?” A shudder ran through me.
“How do you even kill one of those? They move too fast. They climb walls. They vanish behind furniture and then have the audacity to show up again when you’ve finally convinced yourself they’re gone.
At that point, the house belongs to them. I’m just paying rent.”
That pulled a laugh from him. It was brief, but unmistakable, and the sight of it caught me off guard.
I used the moment to let my gaze wander around the room before circling back to the question that had been burning a hole through my mind. “So…” My voice dipped as I gestured vaguely toward my battered body. “How did this happen?”
Whatever amusement had been lingering in his face disappeared.
His jaw tightened. His gaze dropped to my injuries, lingering there for a moment before he looked away. Guilt flickered across his features, followed by a flash of regret, both quickly buried beneath a grim, unreadable expression.
“It was my fault,” he admitted.
I froze. “What?”
He shut his eyes briefly, drawing in a slow breath before meeting my gaze again.
His eyes looked tired now, the weight of whatever he was carrying etched into the tension around them.
“We had a fight. A bad one. You were upset when you left, and then…” His voice faltered for half a second. “Then the accident happened.”
Relief slipped out of me in a shaky breath. “Oh.” I blinked at him. “You meant that kind of fault.”
His forehead creased.
“Next time, maybe lead with that?” I waved a hand toward my injuries. “For a second there, I thought you were confessing to actually doing this to me.”
“I did.”
“No, I mean you physically did this to me.” I raised an eyebrow. “You know. With your hands. Your fists. The whole husband-beating-his-wife thing.”
“What? No!” He straightened abruptly, horror flashing across his face. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Okay, good,” I murmured.
He gave me a long, incredulous look. “Why would you even think that?”
“Well, I woke up covered in injuries, asked how it happened, and you looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘It was my fault.’ Forgive me for connecting two very obvious dots.”
“They weren’t obvious dots.”
“They were pretty obvious.”
“They were completely different things.”
“How?” I demanded, giving him a look. “You said it was your fault. What exactly was I supposed to think? ‘Ah, yes, obviously he means an unrelated accident that occurred after an argument.’”
His mouth twitched. “That’s exactly what you should’ve thought.”
I stared at him. “Right. Because apparently I’m supposed to be a mind reader now.”
“You could’ve asked what I meant.”
“I did ask.”
“After accusing me of beating you.”
“Because you said it like a man confessing to a murder!” I threw my hands up, then immediately regretted the movement when pain shot through my side. “You could’ve saved us both the confusion by saying, ‘You got hurt because of an accident I feel responsible for.’”
He considered that for a moment. “That’s a lot of words.”
I gave him a flat look. “And yet somehow fewer than the ones we’re using to explain why your three-word confession made you sound like a serial killer.”
He glanced away, a faint flush touching his ears.
Silence lingered between us for a few seconds, giving me just enough time to study him before another thought surfaced.
“So…” I began, rolling a grape between my fingers before popping it into my mouth. “I take it we got married because of love?” I gestured between us, chewing thoughtfully as I watched his face. “You love me and everything?”
His entire body seemed to lock in place. His eyes widened for the briefest moment before narrowing, a flicker of surprise, confusion, and unease crossing his features before he buried it.
“I care about you—” he began.
“So, that’s a no. Got it.” I popped a piece of apple into my mouth. “So ours was a contract marriage, then. A business arrangement.”
“No.” His answer came immediately, his jaw tightening as he held my gaze. “It wasn’t a contract.”
I frowned, trying to force the pieces into some sort of coherent picture, but the more answers I got, the less anything seemed to make sense.
“Okay, now you’re just fucking with me. No blackmail, no love, no contract.
Then why the hell are we married?” A different possibility surfaced, and a flicker of unease ran through me.
I studied his face, suddenly wary of the answer.
“This fight you mentioned…” I hesitated before asking, “Was I leaving you?”
His expression tightened for a fleeting second, a shadow of emotion crossing his features before he smoothed it away. He hesitated, then gave a small shake of his head. “No. You weren’t leaving. You were upset. You went for a drive to clear your head.”
The humor drained out of me.
My fingers froze around the slice of mango, halfway to my mouth. I lowered it slowly, staring at him as his words replayed in my head.
We’d had a fight.
I’d been upset.
And I hadn’t been leaving him.
My mind worked through the pieces, one by one, until they formed an answer I desperately wished I could take back.
I set the mango down.
Oh, shit.
I loved him.
And he didn’t love me.
What. The. Fuck.
Felicity stepped back into the room, immediately picking up on the strange tension. Her eyes moved from me to him and back again, her brows knitting together. “You two good?”
“Yup,” I answered far too quickly, keeping my gaze fixed on the wall opposite me. The paintwork had become strangely fascinating, every tiny imperfection demanding my full attention. I could probably spend the next hour studying cracks and uneven patches if it meant avoiding his eyes.
Anything was better than looking at him.
Not after what I’d just figured out.
Felicity’s eyes narrowed. “Okay…” She drew the word out, clearly unconvinced. “Well, I have to head out—”
“What?” I cut her off, my voice sharp with panic. “You can’t leave me here with a stranger.”
He straightened from where he’d been leaning against the window, his expression tightening. “I’m your husband.”
I finally flicked my eyes to him. “And? Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Before he could answer, I turned back to Felicity, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “He could be a wife beater.”