The Day My Husband Called Me His Sister Chapter 06

The Day My Husband Called Me His Sister Chapter 06

Adrian loved kids.

Every time we walked past the playground near our building, his steps would slow without him realizing it.

Kids had never been something I wanted for myself. But I loved Adrian, so after we got married, we stopped

using protection.

Three years. Nothing happened.

Neither of us mentioned that night again.

Neither of us asked why there were condoms in the nightstand of the spare room. In Evelyn’s apartment.

Who’d put them there. What they’d been for. It didn’t matter anymore.

After all, people with amnesia didn’t dwell on things like that.

Two more weeks dragged by. It rained on and off the whole time.

Every morning, Adrian drove me to work. Every afternoon, he showed up early to pick me up.

And every day, Nolan was already downstairs waiting, posted up by the entrance like he came with the

building.

Adrian’s car sat parked across the street. He watched us through the windshield, and his expression got

darker by the day.

One morning, Nolan and I were alone in the elevator.

I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Nolan, do you actually hate Adrian?”

Nolan’s jaw dropped.

“What? Hold on. You think I’ve been doing all this to mess with him?”

He pointed at himself.

“I was flirting with you. With you! And you thought it was about Adrian?” He threw his hands up. “God, you’re both completely hopeless!”

I blinked.

Nolan let out a dramatic sigh and side-eyed me. I gave him nothing.

Finally, he dropped the act.

Our reflections stared back at us from the elevator doors. When Nolan spoke again, the joke was gone from his voice.

“I don’t hate Adrian. We’re just… not the same kind of people.”

“He’s too selfless. I’m too selfish. My philosophy is you have to put your own oxygen mask on first. If I’m broke and miserable, I can’t help anyone anyway.” He paused. “And I’d never pretend to love a woman just

because I owed her father.”

“But I did hear something once. About a girl Adrian met.”

I looked up and caught his gaze in the reflection.

“So Adrian was up in the mountains doing fieldwork. A group of college kids had come out doing a rural outreach program. There was this creepy local who lived nearby. Every time the female volunteers showed up, he’d hang around. Said he wanted to ‘help.’ But the way he looked at them kept getting worse.”

“The students figured he was just being friendly. They didn’t want to be rude. So they let it go. And he kept

pushing.”

“Then one day, the guy reached for one of the teachers. Adrian saw it and started to step in, but someone beat him to it. This girl grabbed a chair and cracked it over the guy’s back. Dropped him.”

“Then she grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the dirt. Got right in his ear and said, ‘Listen to me, you piece of shit. There aren’t any cameras out here. Nobody’s watching. You touch another girl and I’ll cut it off and feed it to the hogs. I’ll come back here every single day just to beat your ass. Try me.”

“Adrian went from playing hero to trying to physically drag her off the guy. He could barely hold her back. She still managed to kick the man in the crotch twice before she was done.”

“The whole volunteer program got shut down after that. The girl was put on disciplinary probation. People kept telling her, ‘Just apologize. This is going to follow you.”

“And she said, ‘Good. Let him be scared. Let every girl in this town see what happens when someone fights

back. I’m so sick of people telling girls to protect themselves. How about we start telling creeps to protect

themselves before someone beats them to death?””

“Adrian just stood there watching her. He told me later, he knew, right then, that he’d never meet anyone like

her again.”

Nolan shrugged.

“So yeah. When I ran into Adrian at that pub and the woman on his arm was Evelyn, I was surprised.”

That girl was me.

I stood frozen, like the amnesia had actually been real and the memory had just come flooding back.

Before Adrian… had I really been that person?

When did I stop being her?

The elevator chimed and opened.

Nolan held the door and let me step out first.

“Adrian’s a good man. Maybe too good. His own sense of duty is strangling him. If he keeps going like this,

he’s going to destroy himself and take everyone around him down with him.”

I don’t know if it was because of what Nolan said, but I felt off the rest of the day.

I kept nodding off at my desk. The humidity was suffocating, and just the smell of coffee from the break

room turned my stomach.

That afternoon, I was staring blankly at my computer when I realized my hand had drifted to my stomach

again.

And then it hit me.

I ran to the pharmacy downstairs and bought a pregnancy test.

Two lines. Positive.

I sat on the toilet and didn’t move.

The last time Adrian and I had been together was the night before the accident.

That night, he’d been gentler than usual.

He turned off the lights, pulled me close, kissed my forehead, and whispered that he loved me.

In that moment, I believed we were the same. That we wanted the same things.

I thought we’d love each other like that for the rest of our lives.

And that was the night we made this baby.

Three years of waiting. And here it was.

When I got back to the apartment that evening, I still hadn’t figured out how to tell Adrian.

Should I just tell him? You’re going to be a dad.

He’d lose his mind with joy.

But then what?

In the middle of dinner, Evelyn set down her fork.

“Adrian, Paige, there’s something I need to tell you both.”

Her smile was tired but strangely peaceful.

“I’ve decided to stop treatment.”

Adrian’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth.

No treatment meant her time would run out faster.

“Evelyn.” Adrian’s voice broke.

“You don’t have to do this… If you give up, I promised your father I’d take care of you.”

Evelyn shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes. “I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to keep being a burden

to the people I love.”

“But before I go, I have one selfish request.”

“Adrian, I want the wedding we never got to have.”

My head snapped up.

“It doesn’t have to be big. Just the two of us is enough.” Her voice cracked. “I just want you, and my dad, wherever he is, to see me in a wedding dress. One time.”

Her hand slid over Adrian’s on the table.

I stared at Adrian.

Adrian closed his eyes. He didn’t pull his hand away.

“…All right.”

Something cracked open in my chest. My fingertips went numb.

Then I didn’t feel anything at all.