23. Eliana
Eliana
The road had been empty for several minutes, but I was still staring at the place where Adrian's car had disappeared.
Dad remained beside me on the porch.
He didn't say anything immediately. He seemed to be gathering the courage to tell me something he had spent years keeping buried.
"Eliana," he finally said, "there are things about your past that you deserve to know."
I turned toward him.
"What things?"
He looked at me with an expression that made me realize this wasn't going to be a simple answer.
"Adrian was never a stranger to you."
My fingers curled around the edge of my dress.
Dad took a slow breath.
"Five years ago, you and Adrian had already been together for three years."
I stared at him.
Three years.
The number seemed impossible.
"You loved each other deeply," Dad continued.
"But the relationship was private. Neither of you wanted the attention that would have come with Adrian's family name and his growing company.
You were focused on becoming a novelist, and he was building his business.
You were happy keeping your relationship between the two of you. "
I listened without interrupting.
"You were engaged, too. Secretly. You had already started making plans for the future."
My eyes burned.
Then Dad's voice softened.
"And then you found out you were pregnant."
I looked down at my hands.
"You and Adrian were terrified at first," he said. "But you were happy. Happier than I'd seen you in a long time. You talked about the baby constantly. You had dreams about what your life would look like once the three of you were together."
His voice faltered.
"Then you lost the baby."
Everything inside me went still.
Dad continued carefully, as though he knew every word could hurt me.
"The loss changed you. You couldn't accept it. You became withdrawn, depressed, and increasingly suspicious of everyone around you. You blamed yourself for things that weren't your fault. And eventually, you began to doubt Adrian."
I remembered the diary.
The frightened woman inside those pages.
The woman who had believed someone was watching her.
"That's when Ethan became involved," Dad said.
I looked at him.
"He had been around you for years, but after the loss, he became much more involved in your life. He knew you were vulnerable. He knew how much you were hurting, and he used it."
Dad's jaw tightened.
"He started telling you things about Adrian. That he was cheating. That he was seeing other women. That he was hiding things from you because he wanted control over your life."
I shook my head slowly.
"But Adrian didn't?"
"No."
Dad's answer came immediately.
"None of it was true."
I looked toward the road again.
"Ethan kept feeding you information that sounded believable because he mixed lies with things that were technically true.
Adrian was busy with his company. He had meetings you didn't know about.
People around him knew things you didn't. Ethan took those pieces and built an entirely false story around them. "
I swallowed.
"And Adrian knew?"
"He knew Ethan was interfering."
Dad's expression hardened.
"He tried to stop Ethan from constantly meeting you and filling your head with those stories. But every time Adrian tried to protect your relationship, Ethan twisted it."
"How?"
"He made Adrian look controlling. If Adrian asked Ethan to stay away from you, Ethan told you Adrian was trying to isolate you. If Adrian questioned where Ethan had been taking you, Ethan made it sound as though Adrian wanted to control who you could see."
I closed my eyes.
The memories of Adrian asking me to trust him suddenly felt different.
"There was something else happening at the same time," Dad continued. "Your mother's death."
My eyes opened.
"After your mother died, everything became worse. You had already been struggling with the loss of your baby, and losing her pushed you further into a state none of us knew how to handle."
His voice became quieter.
"You stopped trusting people. You became convinced that everyone was hiding something from you. Ethan encouraged those fears instead of helping you through them."
I couldn't speak.
"Eventually, you decided you had to get away from Adrian."
Dad's hand closed gently around mine.
"You left."
My eyes filled with tears.
"It was during a storm. Adrian realized what you were doing and followed you. He tried to reach you before you got too far, but he was too late."
Dad paused.
"You lost control of the car."
I could hear the rain in my memory, though I couldn't tell whether it was real or something my mind had created.
"The accident was terrible," Dad whispered. "You were badly injured. We thought we had lost you."
I covered my mouth.
"You spent months in the hospital unconscious. When you finally woke up, you didn't remember Adrian."
I stared at him.
"Not just the engagement. Not just the pregnancy. You couldn't remember the three years you'd shared with him."
A tear slipped down my cheek.
"Doctor Lara was the one who looked after your case," Dad continued. "She was Adrian's childhood friend, but she was also one of the doctors who understood what your mind had gone through. She warned us not to force your memories back."
"Why?"
"Because your brain had protected you by burying the trauma. If we forced those memories back before you were ready, there was a risk you could lose more memories instead of recovering them."
I lowered my gaze.
"So Adrian left."
Dad nodded.
"He was told that his presence was inseparably connected to the most traumatic period of your life. Every memory of him could lead you back to the loss, the grief, the accident, and everything that followed."
He squeezed my hand.
"Adrian could have fought to stay in your life. He could have told you who he was and demanded that you remember him."
Dad looked toward the road.
"But he didn't."
"He disappeared because he loved you enough to let you heal without him."
I couldn't hold back the tears anymore.
My gaze drifted toward the house.
"Then the diary..."
Dad went silent for a moment.
"The diary was yours."
My breath caught.
"Mine?"
"Yes."
He nodded.
"You wrote it during the worst part of your grief. You weren't thinking clearly. Your paranoia had convinced you that Adrian was dangerous, that he was keeping you trapped, and that the people trying to help you were actually hurting you."
I remembered the words on those pages.
The fear.
The desperate plea.
"SAVE ME."
"The injections weren't torture," Dad said gently. "They were medication prescribed by your doctors. You had convinced yourself they were being used against you, but they were part of your treatment."
I pressed my palms against my face.
"And the paintings?"
"Adrian painted them."
I lowered my hands.
"He had been painting you long before the accident. Those weren't paintings of someone he was secretly hunting. They were memories of the woman he loved."
My eyes moved toward the empty road again.
The man I had spent weeks fearing had spent five years believing he had lost me.
Dad reached for the envelope Adrian had left behind.
"You should read what he wanted you to know."
My hands shook as I opened it.
A single sheet of paper rested inside.
My Eliana,
If you're reading this, then you've found pieces of the past I couldn't give back to you myself.
I loved you then, and I love you now. But I never wanted my love to become another thing you had to survive.
Please don't blame yourself for what happened. You lost more than anyone should have to lose, and you did what you had to do to survive it.
If you remember me someday, I hope you remember the happiness before the pain.
If you never do, I will still want the same thing for you: a life filled with laughter, books, and all the little things that make you happy.
I won't ask you to come back.
I only hope that if life ever brings you to me again, you will know that I never stopped loving you.
Always yours,
Adrian
I read the final line until the letters blurred beneath my tears.
He hadn't asked me to remember.
He hadn't blamed me for leaving.
He hadn't even asked me to choose him.
After everything we had lost, he had still given me the freedom to walk away.
I lowered the letter into my lap and finally broke down.
Dad pulled me against him, holding me while years of a life I couldn't remember came crashing into the one I knew.
And somewhere beneath the grief, beneath the confusion and the pain, one truth remained impossible to escape.
Adrian had not entered my life five years ago.
He had been there all along.
For the first time, I understood why Adrian had always looked at me that way.
Why he remembered the flowers I liked, the tea I drank when I was stressed, the songs I played when I couldn't sleep. Why every ordinary moment with me had seemed precious to him, as though some part of him was terrified that if he looked away for too long, I might disappear again.
My fingers trembled as I reached for my phone.
I called him.
He answered before the first ring could finish. His voice came through softly, carrying something that sounded almost like relief.
“Eliana?”
I tried to speak, but the tears came first. I covered my mouth, struggling to catch my breath.
“I’m sorry,” I finally whispered.
There was a long silence on the other end.
Then Adrian said quietly, “You don't have to apologize.”
That only made me cry harder.
I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, trying to gather myself. Then another thought surfaced, sharp and sudden.
“When your grandmother's warehouse burned…”
Adrian waited.
“Did you call the police?”
The silence that followed was different.
“No,” he finally answered. “My family handled it privately. Grandmother didn't want reporters turning it into another scandal.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
No.
If Adrian had never called the police, then how had Ethan known?
How had he appeared at the cottage at exactly the right moment?
My mind raced back through everything that had happened. Ethan had arrived in a police car. He had claimed officers were investigating the fire at Eleanor Ashford's warehouse and that he had followed Adrian from there after Adrian took a secluded road instead of heading toward the city.
But if there was no police investigation…
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“I have one more question.”
Adrian's voice softened. “Ask me.”
“When did I have the accident?”
He hesitated.
Then he answered, “May fifth. Five years ago.”
My memory flashed to Ethan's tattoo.
555.
For several seconds, I simply stared at the memory of it in my mind.
Three numbers. A hidden meaning. A date. May fifth.
A broken laugh escaped me, but there was nothing amused about it.
“Oh, God.”
My father looked at me. I slowly lowered the phone. “He knew.”
The words barely left my mouth.
Everything began falling into place. Ethan's warnings. His carefully chosen words. The lies about Adrian. The way he had encouraged my fear when I was already grieving and vulnerable. The way he had painted Adrian as controlling whenever Adrian tried to keep him away from me.
Then the accident. Then the years I couldn't remember. Then Ethan appearing at the cottage when I needed someone to believe.
He hadn't been protecting me. He had been waiting. My eyes filled with fresh tears as I looked at my father. “He lied to me.”
My father's face changed, but before he could answer, slow applause echoed from the hallway.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
I froze.
A familiar voice followed. “So…”
Every trace of warmth vanished from the room.
“I was wondering how long it would take.”
Ethan stepped into view.
The man who had sat beside me in my house. The man who had brought me ramen in the rain. The man whose voice had comforted me when I couldn't decide what to believe.
He was gone.
Or perhaps I had simply never known him at all.
His expression held none of the concern I had seen so many times before. His eyes were cold, fixed on me with an unsettling calm.
“So,” he repeated, a faint smile touching his mouth. “Did your father finally gather the courage to tell you?”
I couldn't move. My father stepped slightly in front of me. Ethan noticed. His smile widened.
Then his hand disappeared inside his jacket. My father's voice came sharp and low. “Ethan.” Ethan slowly pulled something from beneath his coat. Metal caught the light.
A gun.
My breath caught as he raised it into view. And suddenly, every warning I had ignored made terrifying sense.