I woke up in a hospital bed remembering my parents, my best friend, the apartment I rented, and even the name of my third-grade teacher—but when Harper pointed to the handsome man on my phone and said I had spent five years destroying myself for him, I felt absolutely nothing.
Chapter 2
When I regained consciousness, Harper was crying beside my bed.
Two police officers stood near the window. A doctor explained that I had suffered a second concussion and needed six stitches across my forehead.
But I barely heard him.
Because I remembered.
Everything.
The memories did not return gently. They came like broken glass.
I remembered waiting three hours in the rain outside Ethan’s office because I had made him lunch.
He threw the container away unopened.
I remembered accepting an exhausting finance position at Hayes Group because I believed proximity might someday become affection. Ethan assigned me brutal workloads, hoping I would quit.
I stayed.
I remembered his friends laughing at me during a charity dinner.
One of them asked why Ethan tolerated my devotion.
He lifted his champagne glass and said, “She’s like a stray dog. Toss her a scrap of attention once in a while and she keeps following.”
Everyone laughed.
Including me.
I had laughed because humiliation hurt less when I pretended it was funny.
Then I remembered the staircase.
Veronica had cornered me at the landing and insulted my late mother. When I tried to move past her, she grabbed my sleeve and deliberately stumbled backward just as Ethan approached.
He assumed I had attacked her.
He yanked me away.
His hand struck my shoulder.
I fell.
He ran past me to Veronica.
While I lay at the bottom of sixteen marble steps unable to focus my eyes, Ethan was checking Veronica’s wrist for scratches.
The officer beside my bed spoke gently.
“Ms. Vance, do you want to make a formal statement regarding today’s assault?”
Harper gripped my hand.
“Please do.”
I stared at the white blanket over my legs.
For five years, every decision I made somehow revolved around Ethan Hayes.
I would not give him my next five years too.
“I want the incident documented. I want his security staff prohibited from contacting me. My attorney can handle the medical settlement.”
The officer nodded.
“And criminal charges?”
I closed my eyes.
“No.”
Harper looked shocked.
“He almost killed you.”
“I’m done spending my life on him, even in court.”
After the officers left, I turned toward her.
“When is my flight to London?”
“Next Friday.”
“Move it up.”
“You just had stitches.”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Chloe—”
“I remember everything now.”
She became very still.
I touched the bandage above my eyebrow.
“And remembering is exactly why I need to go.”
By the next afternoon, my resignation had been accepted. My attorney handled the remaining paperwork. I canceled my apartment lease, shipped what I wanted overseas, donated most of what I did not need, and boarded a flight out of New York.
I left one thing behind.
A repaired platinum watch Ethan had discarded three years earlier.
I had once spent four months saving to restore it because I thought returning something he loved might finally make him look at me kindly.
He called it garbage.
I placed the watch in a velvet box with a short note.
Ethan,
I remembered.
That is why I am leaving.
The five years I gave you were my choice, and I accept that. But whatever debt I once imagined existed between us ended at the bottom of those stairs.
Do not look for the woman who loved you.
She no longer exists.
Chloe.
Then I left.
At Hayes Group, Ethan apparently spent the morning waiting for me to surrender.
He assumed my resignation was another tactic.
He thought I would call.
I had always called.
When his assistant told him I had boarded a flight to London, Ethan refused to believe it.
Then he went to my empty apartment.
He found the watch.
And the note.
Only then did he understand that my memory had returned before I left.
I had not abandoned him because I had forgotten.
I had abandoned him because I remembered too much.
