Chapter 1The Unusual Boyfriend

My cool, impossibly reserved husband has been acting strange lately.

He insists on going out in a full disguise—hoodie, sunglasses, the whole nine yards. The moment the doorbell rings, he dives into the nearest closet. And I catch him, day after day, staring at the ring on my finger with a look of pure, grinding agony.

Then one day, I stumbled upon an encrypted memo on his phone:

"Woke up and I've time-traveled from eighteen to twenty-eight."

"Good news: I actually ended up with the girl I've been secretly in love with for years."

"Bad news: There are no wedding photos in the house, I'm not wearing a wedding ring, and the suits in the closet aren't my size."

"...I'm screwed. I'm the other man."

Me: ?

* * *

The day after we moved into our new home, my husband, Liam, was in a horrific car accident. He spent a day and a night unconscious in the hospital.

The doctors said that apart from losing the last ten years of his memory, all his vitals were perfectly normal.

But I had a growing suspicion that it wasn't just his memory that was gone. The man who came home with me was a stranger in more ways than one. His behavior was... bizarre.

Take right now, for instance.

It’s been three hours since we got back from the hospital, and Liam hasn't stopped moving.

He's been pacing the house relentlessly, his eyes darting everywhere. First, he examined the freshly painted walls with the intensity of a crime scene investigator. Then, he pulled an old suit from the back of the wardrobe—the one he wore to his college graduation—and held it against himself over and over again, a frown deepening on his face.

Finally, his gaze fell on his left hand. He squeezed his bare ring finger, where a faint, pale band of skin marked the spot a ring had occupied for years. It had been lost in the crash.

When he finished his inspection, all the strength seemed to drain out of him. He collapsed onto the sofa, his face a ghostly white.

"Nina," he said, his voice trembling.

I looked over, and his eyes flickered to the ring on my own hand before he swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"How long... have we been like this?"

I followed his gaze to my ring, and a warm blush crept up my neck. "Two years."

It was a strange and wonderful story, really. In high school, we were bitter rivals, fighting tooth and nail to be top of the class. But a chance reunion in a new city during college transformed our animosity into a surprising, fierce friendship. After graduation, we became an unbeatable team at work, a perfect partnership in every sense. It was like we just clicked.

And just like that, a decade had flown by.

The two people everyone at school swore would kill each other before they'd ever date were now two years into a marriage so perfect, so in sync—from the boardroom to the bedroom—it felt like we were made for each other.