ARIA'S POV
My head was a cathedral of pain.
It wasn't a normal headache. It was something deeper, more violent—as if my skull had been cracked open and clumsily glued back together. Light, soft as it was, felt like needles against my eyelids.
Beep… beep… beep…
A steady, rhythmic sound. Mechanical. Familiar in a way I couldn't place. A heart monitor. The realization came slowly, wading through the thick syrup of my thoughts.
Hospital.
I forced my eyes open. The white ceiling tiles swam in and out of focus. A sterile smell—antiseptic and bleach—filled my nose. I tried to lift my hand, but a dull ache shot through my shoulder, and my arm felt anchored to the bed.
Panic, cold and immediate, tightened my throat. Where was I? What happened?
The last thing I remembered was… nothing. A vast, empty plain where my past should have been.
The door to the room opened with a soft *swish*. A nurse in pale blue scrubs entered, her smile gentle but practiced. "Ah, you're awake. Welcome back, Miss Blake."
Miss Blake. The name sounded foreign, yet something in me twitched in recognition.
"Wh… what happened?" My voice was a dry rasp, scraping against my raw throat.
"You were in an accident," the nurse said, checking the IV drip beside me. "A car accident. You've been asleep for three days. You're at Hartwood General." Her tone was soothing, but her eyes held a flicker of something else—pity, perhaps. "You're very lucky."
An accident. The word meant nothing. I searched my mind for a flash of metal, the sound of screeching tires, anything. There was only blankness.
"Is there… anyone here?" I asked, the question feeling both desperate and foolish. Who would be here for me? I didn't even know who *I* was.
The nurse's smile softened. "Yes. He's been here the whole time. I'll let him know you're awake."
She left before I could ask who "he" was. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the relentless *beep-beep-beep* of the monitor counting the beats of a heart I didn't trust.
Then, the door opened again.
He filled the doorway. Tall, with shoulders that seemed too broad for the sterile room. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, immaculate, but his tie was slightly loosened, and his dark hair was less than perfectly groomed, as if he'd been running his hands through it. His face was all sharp angles and severity—a stark, beautiful kind of severity that stole the air from my lungs.
But it was his eyes that held me frozen. Dark, intense, and locked onto me with a focus so absolute it felt like a physical touch. They scanned me, assessing, missing nothing—the tremble in my fingers, the rapid rise and fall of my chest under the thin hospital gown.
He stepped inside, and the room seemed to shrink.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the monitor's steady rhythm. I didn't know him. I was sure of it. And yet, a primal, confusing instinct whispered that this man was important. Dangerous.
He stopped at the foot of my bed, his gaze never leaving mine. "Aria."
My name on his lips was not a greeting. It was a statement. A claim.
"Who… who are you?" I managed to whisper.
Something shifted in his eyes—a fleeting crack in the granite of his composure. It was gone in an instant, replaced by a cool, impenetrable calm.
"I'm Damian," he said. His voice was deep, a low vibration that hummed in the quiet room. He paused, as if weighing his next words. "I'm your husband."
The world tilted.
*Husband.*
The word echoed in the hollow chamber of my mind, finding no purchase, no memory to attach to. I stared at him, at this stranger with the commanding presence and the eyes that saw too much. My husband? It was impossible. I would remember *this*. Wouldn't I?
"I… I don't have a husband," I stammered, the protest weak even to my own ears. "I don't remember you. I don't remember *anything*."
His jaw tightened, a barely perceptible movement. "The doctors said memory loss was likely. Temporal, they hope. It's a common effect of the trauma." He took a slow step closer. "But it's me, Aria. Damian Hart. Your husband for three years."
Three years. A lifetime I couldn't recall. A marriage that was a blank page.
Tears of frustration and sheer terror welled in my eyes, blurring his sharp features. "Why don't I remember you?" The plea was torn from me.
For the first time, his stern expression softened, just a fraction. It didn't make him look kind; it made him look weary. Deeply, profoundly weary. He moved to the side of the bed, lowering himself slowly into the chair there, bringing himself to my level.
"It's alright," he said, and his voice was quieter now, though it still carried that undercurrent of absolute authority. "You don't have to force it. The memories will come back when you're ready."
He reached out then, his movements deliberate and slow, giving me every chance to pull away. His hand hovered for a moment before his fingers brushed a stray strand of hair from my forehead. His touch was cool, light, but it sent a shockwave through my system—a confusing mix of alarm and a strange, dormant familiarity.
I flinched.
He withdrew his hand as if burned, his eyes shuttering closed for a brief second. When he opened them, the weariness was gone, replaced by that same resolute control.
"You're safe now," he stated, the words firm, an unshakable decree. "That's all that matters. I'll take care of everything."
*Safe.* He kept using that word. But as I lay there, utterly helpless, my past erased and my future held in the hands of this severe, beautiful stranger who called himself my husband, I had never felt less safe in my life.
And yet, as he sat there, a silent sentinel in the too-bright room, a treacherous, tiny part of me wondered if the fear I felt was truly for him… or for the gaping unknown he represented.
Why did my pulse stutter not just with fear, but with a dizzying, inexplicable pull?
Why did his presence feel like both a threat and the only anchor in a suddenly anchorless world?
**DAMIAN'S POV**
She was awake.
Finally, after three days of watching the slow, torturous rise and fall of her chest, her eyes were open. And they were filled with a terror that carved a fresh wound right through me.
She didn't know me.
The moment she asked who I was, with that blank, beautiful confusion, I felt the foundation of my world crack. I'd prepared for this. The doctors had warned me. But hearing it, seeing the complete lack of recognition in the eyes that once knew me better than I knew myself… it was a punishment I hadn't fully anticipated.
I said the words. *I'm your husband.* Watching her reject them, watching her shrink away from the very idea, was a special kind of hell.
My instinct was to gather her up, to hold her so tightly she'd have to remember the feel of me. To make her see. But the flinch… that minute, instinctive recoil from my touch… it stopped me cold. It was a blade to the gut.
She was afraid. Of me.
The irony was a bitter taste in my mouth. After everything I'd done to keep her safe, the person she needed protection from most seemed to be the memory of *us*.
So I pulled back. I banked the fire inside me—the fear, the guilt, the desperate love—and showed her only the calm, controlled exterior. The protector. The caregiver. The husband who would patiently wait for his wife to come back to him.
I told her she was safe. And I meant it with every fiber of my being. I would burn the world to the ground before I let anything hurt her again.
Even if the thing hurting her now was the emptiness in her own mind. Even if the ghost she was most afraid of was me.
She looked so lost. So fragile. The urge to fix it, to force the memories back, was a physical ache. But I couldn't. All I could do was be here. Be present. Be the steady, unmovable object in the hurricane of her confusion.
She would remember. She had to.
And until she did, I would be her husband. Her shield. Her warden.
Whether she wanted me to be or not.