Pretend You’re Not My Wife (Her Marriage, His Regret #1)

Chapter 1

Elise

Ten minutes before the hospital called about Roman’s ex-girlfriend, I had his wedding ring against my skin and his name in my mouth.

He lay beneath me, one hand spread over my hip, the other tangled with mine on the pillow. Early sunlight slipped through the blinds in narrow gold bars, warming his chest and catching on the plain matte band around his finger.

“Slower,” he said.

I tightened around him deliberately. “That sounded like an order.”

His grip flexed but didn’t move me. “A request.”

“Better.”

I rolled my hips again, taking him deeper. His eyes closed for half a second before he forced them open.

“Look at me,” I said.

“I am.”

“No. You’re planning how to take over.”

His mouth curved. “You’ve known me too long.”

Seven years. Four of them married. Long enough to recognize the exact moment patience became effort for him.

I leaned down until my hair curtained us from the rest of the room. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“Ask.”

“Elise.” His voice roughened around my name. “Can I?”

I kissed him once, slow enough to make him wait through it. “Yes.”

He turned us with the ease of familiar practice, bracing his weight before settling between my thighs. The cold edge of his ring skimmed my waist as his hand traveled down my body. He watched my face while his fingers found me, adjusting when I shifted beneath him.

“Like that?” he asked.

“Exactly like that.”

He entered me again, deep and controlled. I hooked one leg around him and pulled him closer, refusing the careful pace he had chosen.

“Now who’s taking over?” he murmured.

“Still me.”

“Then make me forget the time.”

His laugh broke against my throat. Then he moved harder, each stroke answering the pressure of my heel against his back. The bedframe tapped softly against the wall. I slid my hand between us, and he covered it with his, following rather than directing.

The ring pressed into my knuckles.

Roman had chosen the plain band himself before our wedding. No polished edge, no engraving on the outside, nothing designed to impress anyone looking from a distance.

A choice you can see every day, he had called it.

I saw it now as I came beneath him, my hand caught under his, both our rings visible between our bodies.

He followed with my name against my mouth.

For a while neither of us moved. His forehead rested on my shoulder, his breathing warm over skin he had kissed only minutes before. The room smelled like clean sheets, coffee we had not yet made, and him.

He shifted to my side but kept one arm around my waist.

“Say one thing,” he said.

The ritual belonged to our first date, when a storm had knocked out the power at the Lantern Diner and left us eating pie by emergency light. We had taken turns answering the same question while rain hammered the windows.

Say one thing you wish someone would truly see.

We still asked it when one of us had been traveling, or working too much, or letting ordinary life make us careless.

I traced the pale line beneath his collarbone. “I want you to see that I like you best before you turn the day into a schedule.”

“I haven’t scheduled anything.”

“You checked the clock during sex.”

“I checked whether your nine o’clock client call was going to interrupt us.”

“My call is at ten.”

“Then I protected an entire extra hour.”

“That is an impressive interpretation of events.”

He kissed the corner of my mouth. “My turn?”

“Go ahead.”

“I want you to see that I know exactly what I have.”

His thumb brushed my wedding ring.

The answer was too smooth. His gaze stayed on mine without humor, so I let it stand.

His phone began to vibrate on the nightstand.

Roman ignored it.

It stopped, then started again almost immediately.

“That might be your project director,” I said.

“At six forty in the morning, he can experience character growth.”

The phone went silent. A moment later, it began to vibrate for the third time. Roman lifted his head, saw an unfamiliar Greyford number, and reached for it. “Hello?”

“May I speak with Roman Hale?” The woman’s voice carried through the quiet room.

“This is he.”

The woman identified herself as a nurse from Greyford Medical Center.

Her words were calm, arranged with the practiced precision of someone delivering information that had already frightened everyone else in the room.

There had been a car accident before dawn.

A woman named Serena Vale had been admitted with a head injury. Roman sat up at Serena’s name.

She was conscious. Stable. Confused. And she had asked for him.

“What happened?” he asked. He listened, the sheet pooled at his waist. The warmth left his face one detail at a time.

“Yes,” he said. “I knew her.”

“How far back?”

His eyes found mine.

“I understand.”

He ended the call and stared at the dark screen.

“Serena?” I asked.

He nodded. “They think she has a gap in her memory. She knows who she is. She remembers her family, school, work from years ago.” His fingers tightened around the phone. “She thinks she and I are still together.”

Seven years collapsed into one sentence.

I got out of bed and reached for my robe. “How badly is she hurt?”

“They said she’s stable. They want someone familiar there while neurology evaluates her.”

Roman was already pulling on yesterday’s jeans.

“Does Nadia know?”

“They can’t reach her yet.”

Serena’s older sister lived several states away. I had never met either woman. Serena existed in our marriage as a few old stories and one name Roman never said with anger. They had loved each other in college. They had ended before I met him. That history had never felt like a threat.

Roman shoved his feet into his shoes and looked at me. “I need you with me.”

It wasn’t a question. He had already turned toward the bathroom, certain I would be behind him.

I was.

---

Greyford Medical Center’s neurological observation unit had no soft edges. White walls, gray flooring, blue signs. Everything designed to be cleaned, read quickly, and forgotten.

Dr. Maya Chen met us outside Serena’s room. She was compact, direct, and looked as if she had already been awake for several hours.

“Ms. Vale has retrograde memory loss associated with the trauma,” she said. “We don’t yet know whether it will resolve quickly, gradually, or incompletely. Her accessible personal timeline appears to stop approximately seven years ago.”

“At what point?” Roman asked.

“She believes you’re still in a relationship. She remembers plans and conversations from that period as current.”

Roman glanced through the narrow window in the door.

“What are we supposed to tell her?” I asked.

“The truth, but gently. Start by orienting her to the fact that time has passed. Avoid overwhelming her with every major change at once while she’s acutely distressed. We’ll assess her response and add information with support.”

“Should Roman correct her about their relationship now?”

Dr. Chen turned to him. “He should not confirm information he knows is false. But we can introduce current facts in stages.”

Dr. Chen’s answer left one clean edge: she had not asked anyone to pretend.

A nurse opened the door. Serena lay propped against white pillows, one side of her forehead covered by a dressing. Bruising shadowed her temple. She looked smaller than I had expected, stripped of every old photograph’s confidence.

Her gaze landed on Roman. Relief transformed her face.

“Ro.”

The nickname entered the room before any of us could prepare for it.

Roman stopped beside the bed. “Serena.”

“You came.” Her eyes filled. “They kept telling me there’d been an accident, but nobody would tell me where you were.”

She lifted her hand toward him.

Roman did not take it.

Her attention dropped to his left hand. The relief vanished.

“What is that?”

He looked down at his wedding ring as though he had forgotten it was there. Serena followed his glance, then looked at me.

“Who is she?”

“I’m Elise.”

“That doesn’t answer me.” Her breathing quickened. The monitor beside her accelerated with it. “Ro, why are you wearing that? What happened? Why won’t anyone tell me what happened?”

“Serena, you’re safe,” Roman said.

“Then tell me who she is.”

Dr. Chen stepped between the bed and the door. “Serena, you’ve experienced a head injury. Some of your memories aren’t current yet. We need to take this slowly.”

“No.” Serena’s voice sharpened with panic. “I know him. I know what we are.”

The monitor alarmed. A nurse moved toward the bed. Dr. Chen asked us to wait outside.

“Ro.” Serena tried to sit up. “Don’t leave me.”

Roman’s jaw tightened. “I’ll be right outside.”

The door closed between them. Through the glass, I watched the nurse adjust Serena’s monitor while Dr. Chen spoke close to her ear. Roman stood motionless beside me.

When Dr. Chen came out several minutes later, she said, “She’s calmer. Her sister has been reached. Nadia is arranging the earliest flight and expects to arrive within forty-eight hours.”

Roman rubbed a hand over his face. “Seeing the ring set her off.”

“It contradicted the life she currently remembers,” Dr. Chen said.

“What if we wait to correct the relationship until Nadia gets here?”

Dr. Chen’s expression did not change. “You can tell her that time has passed and that circumstances have changed. You can defer a detailed discussion until family support arrives.”

“But if even the ring sends her into panic—”

“I am not recommending that you represent yourself as her current partner, Mr. Hale.”

Roman looked at the closed door.

“She thinks I abandoned her after an accident.”

“She is experiencing a false present created by memory loss. Our goal is to orient her safely, not construct additional facts around it.” Dr. Chen was called away before Roman answered.

She disappeared down the corridor. Then he turned to me.

“What are you asking?” I said.

“Just until Nadia gets here.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

His gaze dropped to my left hand.

The ring had warmed against my skin during the drive. I covered it with my thumb.

“Elise, if seeing us married causes another panic response—”

“You want me to leave.”

“No. I want you here.”

“As what?”

His silence placed the word between us before he said it.

“A friend.”

The corridor seemed to narrow.

“I’m your wife.”

“I know.”

“Dr. Chen did not ask you to do this.”

“She didn’t.” He lowered his voice. “But Serena woke up injured and terrified in a life she doesn’t recognize. Nadia will be here in two days. We can tell her everything with her sister beside her.”

“We?”

“You and me.”

He reached for my hand. His ring touched mine.

“It’s forty-eight hours,” he said. “Then it ends.”

For seven years, Roman had loved me openly. And Serena was lying behind that door with blood beneath her hair and seven missing years.

Compassion for her came easily.

The rest did not.

“Three conditions,” I said.

Roman straightened. “Name them.”

“No kissing. No romantic touching. You don’t hold her like a girlfriend, stroke her hair, get into that bed, or let confusion become permission.”

“I won’t touch her that way.”

“Second, you make no new promises as her partner. Nothing about your future together. Nothing she can wake up tomorrow believing you offered her tonight.”

“I won’t.”

“Third, this ends when Nadia arrives or when Dr. Chen says Serena can hear the full truth. Whichever comes first. Forty-eight hours is the limit, not a starting point for another conversation.”

His thumb moved over my knuckles.

“Forty-eight hours,” he said. “No kissing or romantic contact. No new promises. The moment Nadia arrives or Dr. Chen clears it, I tell her everything.”

“Even if telling the truth makes you feel cruel.”

A pause.

Then, “Yes.”

I held his gaze and left the pause on his side of the corridor.

Roman slid his wedding ring from his finger. The bare strip of skin beneath it was lighter than the rest of his hand. He closed the ring in his fist, then put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

The absence was immediate. A removed element always changed the entire composition. The eye went straight to the space where it should have been.

“Elise,” he said quietly.

I took off my own ring. I kept it in my own palm, the metal pressing against the lines of my skin.

“This expires in forty-eight hours.”

“Understood.”

A nurse opened Serena’s door and nodded to Roman. He went inside without his ring.

Serena said, “Ro,” with exhausted relief.

The door closed behind him.

I stood in the corridor holding the choice he had once promised to make visible every day, and understood for the first time that two days was long enough to teach a man his wife could be hidden.