Chapter 1 – The Year That Vanished
1164 Words
(Adrian’s POV)
The first thing I noticed was the silence.
Not the gentle kind that lets you breathe—
but the heavy, unnatural kind that presses against your ears until you start wondering if the world has stopped moving without you.
The kind that feels wrong.
It sat on my skull like a weight, shaking loose every thought I tried to hold. My head throbbed. My chest felt too tight. Even breathing sounded like someone else was doing it for me.
I blinked.
White light flooded my vision, sharp and merciless.
Hospital light.
My body felt like lead pinned to a bed. Muscles stiff. Throat raw. Something cold tugged at my arm—a needle, an IV, machines I didn’t recognize humming beside me. A steady beep stabbed through the fog in my head, rhythmic and irritating, like a reminder that I was alive whether I wanted to be or not.
Then a voice reached me.
Soft. Shaky. Familiar in a way that didn’t make sense.
“Adrian… you’re awake.”
My eyes struggled to focus. I tried to turn my head toward the sound. Pain shot down my neck, but I managed to see her.
A woman.
Sitting inches from me. Hands clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. Her hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders, framing a face that looked like it had spent hours crying and then forced itself to stop. Her eyes—large, bright, trembling—locked onto mine like she’d been waiting for this moment.
Like I mattered.
She leaned forward slightly, voice trembling like a cracked mirror trying to hold itself together.
“I—I’m your wife.”
My pulse stuttered.
Wife?
I opened my mouth, but the words scraped out like broken glass.
“I don’t… know you.”
Her breath hitched. Her lips parted, trembling but determined.
“Yes, you do.” She swallowed hard, like the truth hurt her. “You just… can’t remember. Please. I have to explain.”
That word—have—struck me like a warning.
I didn’t trust it.
I didn’t trust her.
And yet… something in my chest tugged painfully at the sight of her face. A pull I couldn’t explain. A sensation I didn’t ask for.
I tried to sit up, and pain exploded behind my ribs. Panic rose, icy and sharp.
Before I could speak again, a nurse slipped into the room with the soft urgency of someone used to chaos. She murmured apologies while adjusting my IV, her presence doing nothing to calm the storm building in my chest.
But the woman—this supposed wife—didn’t move.
She just watched me with that unbearable mix of hope and fear. Like my next breath could save her or destroy her.
Then she lifted something into view.
A thick folder. Worn edges. Bent corners. Thumbprints smudging the cover.
“Proof,” she whispered. “Everything… our life. You’ll see. You’ll remember.”
I felt my jaw clench.
Proof?
Of something that couldn’t be true?
My mind screamed that she was lying. Manipulating. Taking advantage of a man who couldn’t defend himself.
And yet—
Somewhere deep, in the blank spaces of my memory, a flicker sparked. A sensation. A touch. A laugh. A warmth I didn’t have a name for.
I shoved it away.
“No,” I rasped. “Step back.” My voice came out harsher than I intended. “I want nothing to do with this.”
Her shoulders crumpled for a heartbeat. Pain flashed across her face—raw, silent, devastating. But she steadied herself. She didn’t look away.
And that… that somehow made it worse.
The door slammed open.
My mother’s voice sliced through the room like a blade coated in ice.
“Who is she?”
Victoria Cole was elegance sharpened into a weapon—perfect posture, flawless hair, jewelry that whispered money and authority. But her eyes… cold, assessing, merciless.
She skimmed the room like it was beneath her.
“Who dares sit at my son’s bedside and claim he’s theirs?”
The woman—Eva, apparently—rose slowly. She didn’t bow. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t step back.
Her voice, though quiet, held something unbreakable.
“I am Eva Hart. I am his wife.”
Victoria’s lips curved into something that was not a smile.
“Liar.”
The word echoed in the room like a slap.
Confusion churned in my chest. Rage simmered beneath my ribs. But buried under all of that was something else—a strange, suffocating ache that didn’t belong to either emotion.
My eyes dropped to the folder in her hand.
A flash of paper. The corner of an official seal. A signature I recognized instantly.
My name.
My handwriting.
My stomach twisted.
“What is this?” I whispered, but neither woman heard me.
Because my mother was already advancing like a queen defending her throne.
“You leave this hospital now,” she said, each word dripping venom. “You will not disturb him again. Whatever game you’re playing ends here.”
Eva didn’t move.
Instead, she took a slow breath. Reached into the folder. Pulled out a sheet of paper with trembling fingers.
A marriage certificate.
My signature inked across the bottom.
My lungs froze.
My memories—every one of them—ended a year before the accident.
And this document sat right in the middle of the missing pieces.
My heartbeat pounded unevenly, loud in my ears. The room blurred at the edges.
Eva stepped closer. Close enough that I could see the tiny scars on her fingers. Close enough that I could smell something faint on her skin—jasmine, maybe? Familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.
Her hand lifted toward mine. Barely a ghost of a touch. Trembling.
“Adrian,” she whispered, voice cracking. “You loved me once. You just don’t remember.”
The words hit harder than any pain in my body.
Loved?
No.
Impossible.
And yet—
A phantom image flickered behind my eyes.
Me. Laughing. Holding someone. Her voice in my ear. A warmth in my chest I couldn’t remember having before.
I sucked in a shaky breath.
My mother’s voice sliced through the moment, low and lethal.
“She’s not your wife. And I will make sure you never see her again.”
The air tightened. The machines beeped faster. My hands shook uncontrollably.
And then I saw it.
Peeking from the folder.
A photograph.
Me.
Her.
Arms wrapped around each other.
Smiling like we belonged to a world I didn’t remember.
My vision blurred. My throat closed.
Because the truth was terrifyingly simple:
I didn’t know this woman.
But some forgotten part of me…
some buried, aching part…
reacted to her as if I did.
And that was the moment I realized—
Nothing about my life was what I thought it was.
And nothing about today would ever be normal again.
- Writer
