After He Mistook Me For Her, I Walked Out

When the doctor warned me that the crash might have taken Weston's memory, the first thing I was afraid of was being erased from it. I had watched enough soaps to know how those stories usually went. I still remember the way he looked at me when he first opened his eyes. "Who are you?" It took everything I had to push the answer out. "Your girlfriend." Weston said nothing. For those few seconds, my whole body twisted itself into knots. I lost track of how long the silence dragged on before one corner of his mouth curved up. "You're lying to me." My eyes were already burning when he finished the rest of it. "You're my fiancée, Vivi. I remember getting down on one knee." I threw myself against his chest and sobbed until my throat ached. Between sobs, I kept asking him how he could joke about something like that. He hushed me and said he was sorry, that he would never make me cry again. Then I brought his best friend into the room. He had no idea who he was looking at. That was the strange part. He had lost every single person in his life and kept only me. The relief I had barely gotten used to drained straight out of me, and I cornered the doctor to ask how long it would take him to come back. Weston just took my hand, unhurried, looking at me like I hung the moon. "It doesn't matter. At least I still have you." Now I stood outside his hospital room and watched him trace Seraphina Hale's face through the glass of a picture frame, and everything inside me went to ice. The nurse's aide was talking to him, and I caught every word. "You two are something else, sir. She steps out for five minutes and you're already missing her." Seraphina and I were twins. Strangers could never tell which of us was born first. Only the people closest to us could look at that photograph and know it was Seraphina and not me. Weston kissed the glass over her wide, easy smile and turned to stare out the window. "She's not coming back. I don't even get her in my dreams anymore." The aide looked completely lost. "You're pulling my leg, sir. Miss Hale is here with you every single day." My eyes spilled over before I could stop them. Weston, what were the last three years supposed to mean? Every kind thing you ever did, every time you told me you loved me, was all of it really for Seraphina? Weston, this hurt worse than being forgotten. "Vivienne." His voice came from behind me before I could get my face under control, and when I turned, my eyes locked with his through the open door. "What are you doing standing in the doorway? Come in."