Chapter 2

That night, I needed proof he was real.

So I clung to him like I was losing my mind, desperate to convince myself that this wasn’t an illusion.

Ethan gave me everything I asked for, more attentive than he’d ever been before.

Over and over, he whispered, “I love you,” against my ear, his voice so vivid, so beautiful, so real.

By the time I finally drifted off in his arms, I was exhausted to the bone.

Then morning came.

I woke up freezing.

The space beside me was cold.

I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst through my ribs.

“Ethan?”

No answer.

“Babe?”

The luxury condo stood silent around me. Only my own voice came back.

Barefoot, I ran for the storage room.

The door was open.

Inside, there was no one.

Just the same pile of empty cardboard boxes, sitting there in dead stillness.

Ethan had disappeared again.

Terror spread through me from the inside out.

So even coming back to life hadn’t changed the ending.

My hands shook as I grabbed my phone from the nightstand.

I unlocked it with my fingerprint.

I opened my messages and went straight to the pinned contact at the top.

Gone.

The top of the screen was empty.

I scrolled down and searched for Ethan.

Nothing.

Then I dialed the number I knew by heart.

“The number you have reached is not in service...”

My phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor.

I refused to believe it.

I ran into the living room and tore through drawers and boxes looking for our marriage certificate.

My fingers trembled as I opened it.

On the groom’s side, the name field was blank.

It had become an empty shell of a document.

“No!”

The scream ripped out of me as I tore the certificate to pieces.

Impossible.

He had been real last night. The feel of him. The smell of sweat on his skin. The marks his kisses had left on me—

I rushed into the bathroom and yanked down the collar of my pajamas.

In the mirror, my neck was smooth and flawless.

No marks.

Nothing at all.

Like I’d dreamed the whole thing.

Then the doorbell rang.

I stumbled to the front door in a daze and pulled it open.

A woman stood outside.

Loose curls. Perfect makeup. A basket of imported fruit in her hand.

Sophie Lawrence.

My best friend.

The same best friend who, in my last life, had me committed.

And after that... she was also the one who stayed by my side every day, taking care of me.

The moment she saw me—hair a mess, barefoot, looking half-dead—she startled.

“Claire, what happened? Did somebody break in?”

She hurried inside and caught me before I could collapse.

I grabbed her arm with both hands.

“Sophie! Ethan’s gone! Last night he went into the storage room to get something, and then he disappeared! His number’s disconnected, the marriage certificate changed—please, you have to help me find him!”

Sophie froze.

She lifted a hand and touched my forehead, her eyes full of worry and confusion.

“Claire... are you running a fever?”

Then she sighed, and there was something almost pained in her voice.

“Sweetie, you’ve been single this whole time. What husband? Ethan? Have you been watching too many dramas or something?”

I shoved her away and shouted, “That’s not true! We got married over New Year’s! You were at the wedding! You were my maid of honor!”

Sophie looked at me helplessly, then pulled out her phone and opened her photo gallery.

“Look. These are the pictures from our New Year trip. It was just the two of us. There was no man.”

I snatched the phone from her.

She was right.

In every photo, it was just me and Sophie—on the beach, at restaurants, smiling like we didn’t have a care in the world.

But I remembered it differently.

That had been our honeymoon.

Ethan had been right there, one arm around my waist.

Now he was gone.

Erased.

Completely erased.

My legs gave out and I collapsed to the floor, clutching my head as I sobbed.

“No... no, that’s impossible... He was real. He was a real person...”

Sophie crouched down and wrapped her arms around me, patting my back the way one would soothe a child.

“Claire, I know work has been brutal. I know you’ve been so stressed you’re desperate for a relationship. But you can’t just conjure up a husband out of nowhere.”

She paused, then said gently, “If you’re absolutely sure he disappeared in the storage room, then let’s go check again. And if there’s no one there... you come with me to the hospital, okay?”

The hospital.

The second I heard those words, my whole body shuddered.

In my last life, once I went there, I was as good as dead.