ETHAN'S POV
Waking up in his own bed should have felt like relief.
Ethan's eyes opened to soft morning light filtering through the blackout curtains he'd installed last year. The familiar sound of the city waking up outside. The smell of his own sheets. His own bed. His own bedroom.
Everything was exactly as he remembered it.
Except everything was wrong.
He lay still for a moment, trying to figure out what didn't fit. The pain in his ribs was still there, a constant reminder that his body had been through something terrible. His left arm was immobilized in the cast. His head felt stuffed with cotton. But beyond the physical hurt, something deeper felt off. Like he was looking at a familiar room through slightly blurred glass.
He tried to remember the accident more clearly. There were fragments. Anger burning hot in his chest. A highway at night. Rebecca's voice on the phone saying something that made him want to drive fast. The truck coming toward him. Metal screaming. Then nothing.
What had he been so angry about?
The bedroom door opened and Lily came in carrying a tray. Coffee and toast and fruit arranged on china that probably cost more than most people's rent. She looked like she'd been up for hours already. Her hair was wet from a shower. She wore clothes that didn't quite fit right, like they came from her old apartment and not from the closet in this room.
"You're awake," she said, and there was something careful in her voice. Something that sounded like relief mixed with anxiety.
"How long have I been sleeping?" He tried to sit up but his ribs made him regret that decision immediately.
"Don't move," she said, setting the tray down on his nightstand. "You've been asleep for almost twelve hours. The doctor said your body needs rest to heal."
She adjusted the pillows behind his back so he could sit up without putting pressure on his broken ribs. Her hands were shaking slightly. Ethan noticed that. Noticed too that she stayed on the other side of the bed, not coming too close. Not touching him unless it was absolutely necessary.
"Lily, what's wrong?" he asked.
She was already moving away, busying herself with something that didn't need to be busied with. Straightening a picture frame on the dresser that was already straight.
"Nothing's wrong. You're home. You're healing. That's what matters."
But her shoulders were tight. Her jaw was clenched. She looked like someone waiting for a bomb to go off.
"Did my mother say something yesterday that upset you?" he asked carefully. "When she came by?"
Lily froze. Actually froze like someone had hit pause on her body. Then she turned around with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"She was just worried. Mothers worry about their sons."
"That's not what I asked," Ethan said. His head was starting to hurt. Not the injury kind of hurt. The confused kind. "I asked if she said something that upset you."
Lily moved toward the tray like the conversation was over. Like she could deflect his concern with coffee and toast.
"We just had some tension before the accident," she said vaguely. "Work stress. Family stuff. Nothing serious."
"We had tension?" Ethan latched onto that. "What kind of tension?"
"Just normal marriage stuff," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed but still not touching him. Still maintaining distance like physical contact might shatter them both. "Every couple goes through phases. You know that."
He didn't know that. Or at least, he didn't remember that. The last clear memory he had of Lily was her looking at him like he was her whole world. The last real conversation he could recall was him telling her he loved her.
But his brain was playing tricks on him. The doctor had warned him about that. Amnesia didn't just erase memories. It created blank spaces that his mind tried to fill in with fragments and suggestions and things that felt real but weren't.
"Lily..."
"Eat," she interrupted, nodding at the tray. "You need to keep your strength up."
He let it go because pushing her felt dangerous. Because the last thing he wanted was for her to get that worried look on her face and pull further away. Because as long as she was in his bedroom, as long as she was bringing him breakfast and taking care of him, he could pretend everything was normal.
Even if everything felt twisted.
The coffee was exactly how he liked it. That surprised him. He hadn't told her how he liked it. His brain had forgotten that detail along with everything else from the past two years. But she knew. She remembered. That meant something. That meant their marriage existed in the details of coffee preferences and the way she knew to adjust his pillows just right.
After she left him to rest, Ethan tried to think through the fragments of memory that kept circling his brain like sharks. Work. The board meeting where they'd questioned his leadership. Rebecca's voice on the phone, sweet and poisonous, asking when he would finally admit he'd made a mistake.
A mistake about what?
He didn't ask Lily. He let her believe he was sleeping when she checked on him. He watched her through his eyelashes as she sat in the chair by the window, her hands folded in her lap, staring out at the city like it held answers she desperately needed.
That night, pain medication dragged him into sleep before the sun finished setting.
And in that sleep came the dreams.
He was in a lawyer's office. Expensive. Cold. There were papers on the desk in front of him and his own pen in his hand. Lily was there but she was far away. Separated by something he couldn't see but could feel. The pen was heavy. Signing his name felt like signing away pieces of himself.
Then the dream shifted.
A blonde woman. Beautiful in the way that came from money and generations of privilege. Her hand touched his arm. Her voice was familiar and wrong at the same time. She was saying something about second chances. About how he'd made a mistake. About how she'd been waiting for him to realize it.
He tried to pull away but his arm wouldn't move. He tried to call for Lily but his voice wouldn't work.
The blonde woman was smiling like she'd already won something.
Ethan woke up gasping.
His ribs were on fire. Sweat covered his skin. His heart was racing like he'd been running. The dream clung to him even as he tried to shake it off. Dreams weren't memories. The doctor had explained that. Dreams were his brain's way of processing trauma and confusion.
But it had felt real.
The penthouse was dark around him. The city lights painted the bedroom in shades of blue and grey. Ethan tried to breathe through the pain and the panic and the overwhelming sense that something was terribly, irreversibly wrong.
The blonde woman's face lingered in his mind. He knew who she was. The knowledge was there somewhere in the dark parts of his brain that the amnesia hadn't touched. Not a face he could name. But a feeling that went with it. Danger. Complication. Something that belonged to the missing two years.
He heard footsteps in the hallway.
The door opened quietly and Lily slipped inside. She was wearing a nightshirt that hung off her shoulder. Her hair was down around her shoulders. She looked soft and vulnerable and scared.
"You were having a nightmare," she said softly. "I heard you wake up."
"Stay," he said, and it wasn't a question or a request. It was a plea. "Please just stay."
She hesitated for only a moment before climbing into bed beside him. She was careful of his injuries, positioning herself so she wasn't putting pressure on his broken ribs. But she was close enough that he could feel her warmth. Close enough that when she let him pull her against him, it felt like he was holding onto the only real thing left in a world that was becoming increasingly unreal.
"Did you dream about something specific?" she asked carefully, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
"I don't know," he said. "I can't remember. Just fragments. Papers. A woman I don't know."
She stiffened.
He felt it. Felt her body go rigid against his.
"What kind of woman?" she asked, and her voice was different now. Tight. Afraid.
"I don't know," he said again. "Blonde. Beautiful. Someone important maybe? But not important in a good way. Important like dangerous."
Lily didn't answer. She just held onto him tighter, like she could keep him safe from a threat he didn't understand. Like she could protect him from whatever truth was waiting in those missing two years.
But Ethan's instinct was screaming that she was the one who needed protection.
From what, he didn't know.
But as he drifted back to sleep with her in his arms, he made a silent promise to himself. He would find out. He would recover those missing two years. He would understand why Lily looked at him like he was both her greatest love and her worst fear.
And when he did, everything was going to fall apart.