One Phone Call Talked Me Out of My Own Marriage Chapter 05

One Phone Call Talked Me Out of My Own Marriage Chapter 05

Landon’s mind was in a complete fog.

He stared at his grandfather’s deeply furrowed expression, unable to make sense of anything he had just heard.

“Grandpa, what are you talking about? What do you mean I haven’t seen her in ten years?”

Beside the bed, Elise’s eyes reddened as if she had been deeply hurt.

His grandfather patted her hand reassuringly before turning back to Landon, his face dark with anger.

“Landon, I’m warning you right now. No man in the Prescott family is going to humiliate his wife by carrying on with another woman.”

Landon went completely blank.

His lips moved, but there were so many questions racing through his mind that he did not know which one to ask first.

His grandfather let out a cold snort.

“Serena, the woman you keep asking about, rejected you ten years ago.”

“You went all the way into the mountains to find a doctor who could treat her legs, but when you came back, she turned down your proposal and left. Have you forgotten?”

The words struck Landon like a bolt of lightning.

None of it made sense.

“She rejected me?”

He stared at his grandfather as though the older man had lost his mind.

“Grandpa, have you lost your mind? Serena and I have been married for ten years. You adored her too.”

Elise finally broke down.

“Landon, how can you keep talking about another woman right in front of me?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Am I invisible to you? I’m your wife.”

Landon looked up at her and was suddenly struck by how unfamiliar she seemed.

Not completely unfamiliar, perhaps. In his memory. Elise was still the young, naive woman he had

known years ago.

The woman before him now looked mature and carried herself with the natural familiarity of

someone who had supposedly been his wife for years.

But that was impossible.

He shook his head, his gaze sharpening with suspicion.

“What did you tell Grandpa?” His voice turned cold. How did you convince him to play along with

this?”

The color drained from Elise’s face, and she began crying even harder.

His grandfather swayed on his feet with rage and shouted,

“Landon Prescott, I think you really did knock something loose in that head of yours!”

“Elise has spent years taking care of you as your wife, and now you’re turning on her like this. What

on earth has gotten into you?”

Landon’s breathing grew heavier.

Wave after wave of panic and disbelief threatened to overwhelm him.

“Enough, Grandpa!”

His voice thundered through the hospital room.

His hand trembled visibly where it clutched the blanket.

“How long are you and Elise planning to keep this up?”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe that my memories are wrong?”

He shook his head, pulled out his phone, and tapped the screen.

For as long as he could remember, his lock screen had been a photograph of Serena.

“Look for yourself. How could I possibly…”

His voice died. The hand holding his phone froze in midair.

His eyes widened in shock.

The woman on the screen was not Serena.

It was a photograph of him and Elise.

It was a photo of him and Elise, one he had never seen before.

His grandfather pressed his lips together. “Landon, are you done with this?”

Landon didn’t hear him.

He stared at the phone, too stunned to look away.

Then he unlocked it and frantically opened his photo gallery, desperate to find even one picture of Serena.

There was nothing. Every photo was of Elise.

His face went deathly pale.

He searched his contacts and message history for Serena’s name.

There wasn’t a single contact, message, photograph, or trace that Serena Caldwell had ever been

part of his life.

Elise sniffled beside him. “Landon, what is happening to you?”

He didn’t answer.

All his attention remained fixed on the phone as he struggled to steady his trembling hands.

Clinging to his last shred of hope, Landon logged into the county clerk’s online marriage-records

portal and entered his full name and date of birth.

A marriage record appeared almost immediately.

[Name: Landon Prescott

Marital Status: Married

Spouse: Elise Harper]

Landon’s eyes widened sharply.

His breath stopped as he stared at the screen, his eyes shifting helplessly over the same three

lines.

“What is this…?”

His voice barely escaped his throat. “What the hell is happening?”

He swallowed, but his throat was so dry that it hurt

“A dream.”

His gaze snapped up.

“That’s it. This has to be a dream.”

Almost without hesitation, he grabbed the fruit knife from the tray beside his bed and cut his

forearm.

Blood welled instantly from the cut.

“Landon Prescott!”

“Landon, what are you doing?”

His grandfather and Elise both lurched forward in horror. Neither of them had imagined that the man who had awakened speaking nonsense would suddenly hurt himself.

Landon said nothing. Nothing they said registered.

He simply stared at the blood running down his arm and waited for the pain to tear him out of the

nightmare.

It never did.

The room blurred around him, and darkness crowded the edges of his vision. He felt as though he

were trapped inside a thick fog with no way out.

A nurse hurried in and cleaned and bandaged the wound. The moment she finished, Landon ignored everyone’s attempts to stop him, got out of bed, and forced his way out of the hospital.

Blood was already beginning to seep through the bandage when he climbed into his car and drove

toward the house he remembered sharing with Serena.

His hands tightened around the steering wheel.

A phone could be hacked, and digital records could be falsified.

But he had checked the time. Less than half a day had passed since he collapsed in his office.

The house was real. It had stood there for years as proof of the life he remembered building with

Serena.

No one could change that in a few hours.

He slammed on the brakes outside the house.

Landon rushed to the front door and entered the security code.

The keypad flashed red.

[Incorrect code.]

He froze.

The code had always been a combination of his birthday and Serena’s. They had used it for ten

years and had never once changed it.

Elise arrived moments later, terrified that he might hurt himself again.

“Landon.” Her face was stricken. “Did you forget the code too?”

She stepped forward and entered a combination of her birthday and his.

The lock clicked open.

Landon’s eyes widened again.

Without stopping to process it, he brushed past Elise and rushed inside, only to stop dead in the

middle of the living room.

His gaze swept across the room.

Everything was different.

Why had everything changed?