Chapter 2

Ava didn’t sleep after Adrian left. She stayed on the edge of the bed, the blanket twisted between her fingers, staring at the door long after his footsteps disappeared down the hall. She could still hear him.  

Not the Adrian from the last year of her life. Not the cold, distant man who answered her questions with silence and ate dinner across from an empty chair.  

The Adrian from the rain. Broken and desperate. “Please don’t leave me.”

Ava closed her eyes and hated herself for it. After all the loneliness, after all the nights she spent wondering if her own husband regretted marrying her, that was the one sentence her mind refused to let go of. Memory came back in painful pieces. The calls he never answered. The dinners where one plate stayed untouched. The moments she walked in and found Adrian and Lila standing too close, making her feel like a stranger inside her own marriage.

For a year, she had collected those moments like evidence. Proof that Adrian Laurent had stopped loving her. Proof that she had never mattered enough. So why? Why had the man in her final moments looked like losing her would destroy him?

Ava opened her eyes. Her hands rested in her lap. They were warm and alive. No broken bones. No blood. No pain. She slowly curled her fingers just to feel them move. For the first time in months, she had something she thought she would never have again. Time.

She moved to the desk by the window and opened the notebook sitting there. For a while she only stared at the blank page.  

Then her hand moved. Before she could stop herself, she wrote a name. Lila.

Her fingers tightened around the pen. For a year, she had blamed her sister. She blamed the way Lila always appeared at the right moment. The way Adrian’s attention seemed to shift whenever Lila entered a room. The way everyone looked at Ava like she was the outsider in her own marriage. But now...  

Ava stared at the name. Was Lila really the person who wanted her dead? Or was she simply the easiest person to blame? The thought made her stomach twist. Because the easiest answer had already been wrong once. She had spent months believing Adrian didn’t love her. Believing every silence, every missed call, every distant look meant he had chosen someone else. And then she died. And the last thing she saw was a man falling apart because he was losing her.

Slowly, Ava crossed out Lila’s name. Not because she trusted her. But because she no longer trusted her own memories. She turned to a clean page. Her pen moved. What did she actually know? I died.

She paused. The memory of the crash returned in fragments. Rain sliding down the windshield. Headlights too close and coming too fast. The sound of metal twisting. Then darkness. Ava frowned. No. Not darkness. Something was missing.

She remembered Adrian running toward her. She remembered his voice breaking. She remembered his hands shaking as he held hers. But before Adrian arrived, there was nothing. That was what bothered her.

There was a gap in her memory. A stretch of time she couldn’t reach. She didn’t remember anyone calling for help. She didn’t remember another car stopping.  

She didn’t know how long she’d been trapped before Adrian found her.

A cold feeling settled in her chest. What happened before Adrian found me?

The room stayed silent. For the first time, Ava wondered if the part of her memory that was missing was the most important part of all. Because sometimes the things you don’t remember are the things someone wants you to forget.

        *.  *.  *

Later that afternoon, Ava opened her laptop. If her memory wouldn’t give her answers, maybe the past would. She started with photographs. Wedding pictures. Family gatherings. Company events. At first she wasn’t looking for anything. She was just trying to see what she’d missed. Then she stopped.

A man stood in the background of a charity gala photo. A security guard. Ava frowned and zoomed in. She’d seen him before. Not in person. But somewhere. She opened another picture. A company celebration. There he was, behind the crowd, watching. In another, at her father’s birthday dinner, the same man was there. He was always nearby. Always unnoticed.

Her fingers moved over the keyboard. At their wedding, he was there. At a business meeting, he was there. At a family dinner, he was there again. Her stomach tightened. How had she never noticed him?

Ava leaned closer to the screen. “Who are you?”

Before she could search further, a knock sounded.  

Ava snapped the laptop shut. “Come in.”

The door opened and Adrian walked in. For a second, she forgot how impossible it was to see him alive. To see him before everything fell apart. This Adrian looked younger. Less tired. Less haunted.

His eyes swept the room and landed on the untouched tray by the bed. “You didn’t eat.”

Ava blinked. “What?”  

He nodded toward the table. “Lunch.”

She followed his gaze. She hadn’t even noticed it was there.  

“It’s almost three,” Adrian said. He set another container down beside it. “I asked the kitchen to make something else.”

Ava stared at the food. It was such a small thing. A normal thing. But she couldn’t remember the last time Adrian had noticed something that small.

“You noticed?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.  

Adrian looked at her, and something in his face softened. “Of course I noticed.” His voice was quiet, like he didn’t want to startle her.

Her throat tightened. Because that sounded like a man who’d been paying attention all along.

He studied her. “You haven’t been yourself today.”  

Ava almost laughed. If only he knew. She was trying to understand how she’d come back from the dead. Trying to decide if the man in front of her was her greatest mistake… or the only person who’d tried to protect her.

“I’m fine,” she said.  

The moment the words left her mouth, his brow pulled together. 

“You always say that when you’re not.”

Ava froze. It was such a small sentence. But it hurt more than anger would have.  

Because he remembered. A tiny habit she’d forgotten. A part of herself she thought he’d stopped seeing. Before she could answer, his phone rang.  

Adrian glanced at the screen, and his jaw tightened. “I need to take this.”

Then he was gone.

Ava watched the door close. A year ago she’d thought she knew exactly who Adrian Laurent was. Now she wasn’t sure she’d ever known him at all.

           *.   *.   *

That night, Ava fell asleep with the notebook beside her. The dream came without warning. Rain. Thunder. The smell of gasoline. Her heart started racing before she even saw the car. She was trapped inside it again. The windshield shattered. The storm pressed in. Then Adrian appeared. Ava held her breath. But this time, the memory was different. He wasn’t walking toward her. He was running through the rain like every second cost him something, his face terrified.

“Ava!” His voice cut through the storm.

The scene shifted. And suddenly she saw it… something she’d missed before. A shadow was behind Adrian. Someone stood near the road. Watching and waiting.

The image blurred before she could make out a face. Ava gasped and woke up. The room was dark. Her hands gripped the sheets. Her breathing wouldn’t slow.

For months, she’d believed Adrian Laurent was the man who’d watched her fall apart. But the memory had changed. Or maybe she was finally seeing it clearly. What if the person she’d spent a year preparing to hate… was the person she’d misunderstood the most?

Ava closed her eyes. But before sleep came back, another fragment surfaced.  

The crash. The rain. Adrian running toward her. And someone else was there.  Someone who had been there before him.  

Someone she still couldn’t remember.