The Tenth Reset Ended Our Marriage Chapter 01

The Tenth Reset Ended Our Marriage Chapter 01

To celebrate my husband making it safely through another one-week memory-reset cycle, I slipped our anniversary ring onto his finger myself.

He wrapped his arms around me, but the next words out of his mouth froze me where I stood.

“Babe, the ring is beautiful, but I can’t keep it.”

I let go of him in shock. “Why?”

He took the ring off and placed it back in my palm, his expression calm, almost relieved.

“I fell for the grad student I supervise. We spent the whole night in the lab last night. We slept together, and now I have to do right by her.”

“She’s all I can think about. If I celebrate our anniversary with you and keep wearing this ring, she’ll cry.”

My throat tightened so hard I couldn’t make a sound.

That girl was the underprivileged student I’d sponsored through college for four years. She was also the woman who had knowingly become the other woman and destroyed my first marriage.

His voice was apologetic, yet somehow innocent. “Tessa, I know this is unfair to you, but she’s really pitiful.”

“She’s been the only thing on my mind these past seven days. Now I finally understand why your ex-husband chose her back then.”

“You helped her once already, so why not see it through? Be generous and accept her, okay?”

The ring hit the floor, and something in my heart broke with it.

But he had forgotten one thing. I had only ever given him ten chances. If he still wasn’t better by the tenth, I was done with him.

Good for him.

This was the tenth.

…

Evan Holt bent down, picked up the ring, and tossed it into the tr@sh.

Then he pulled out a wet wipe and carefully cleaned his fingers, as if the ring I had spent three months choosing were something filthy.

His collar hung open, and I could clearly see faint marks scattered across his collarbones.

They were glaring proof of just how wild they’d been last night.

Just last month, when he found out one of his own grad students was Sloane Shaw, he pulled me into his arms and ground out through clenched teeth, “That womanwho ruined your marriage? Tessa, don’t worry. Now that she’s in my hands, I won’t let her off easy.”

And now he had just spent the whole night with that same woman.

Evan sounded perfectly matter-of-fact. “Sloane’s health is fragile. She can’t handle emotional stress.”

“To make her feel secure, we’re going to go through a paper divorce. I’ll even sign marriage papers with her, but it’ll only be on paper.”

I stared at the man in front of me.

It was the same face and the same voice.

And yet all I could see in his eyes now was concern and tenderness for Sloane.

He had some kind of strange illness.

Every so often, his memory would reset for seven days.

During those seven days, he would forget that he loved me.

He would only return to normal on the eighth day.

In the past three years, this was the tenth time.

I closed my eyes, but the memories came rushing back anyway.

Back then, I had thought Sloane was pitiful. I paid for her education and even brought her home for meals.

At first, Julian Pierce couldn’t stand her.

He thought she was clumsy. He was furious when she shattered an antique vase worth a fortune in our house.

He had even pointed at the front door and thrown her out right in front of me.

But in the end, Julian still ended up in bed with her.

The day I found them lying na//ked together in the master bedroom, I didn’t cry and I didn’t make a scene.

I drafted divorce papers on the spot.

I never regretted it.

Julian did.

He waited outside my office building every day, kneeling in the pouring rain and begging for forgiveness.

I never went to see him, not once.

Because back then, Evan stood in front of me with an umbrella, shielding me.

Evan was insanely jealous.

Whenever he saw the remorseful texts Julian sent me, he would curse him out on the spot.

He held me so tightly in his arms that it almost hurt, his eyes red.

“Tessa, you only get to look at me. tr@sh like Julian doesn’t deserve a single glance from you.”

“I swear I’ll never betray you for as long as I live. If I ever do anything to hurt you, I’ll die.”

Later, he really was good to me.

So good that I, an orphan who had woken up inside a novel and had never known what family felt like, started believing in love and marriage again.

That lasted until his first episode.

He fell madly in love with a singer at a bar and picked fight after fight with me over her.

On the eighth day, when he came back to himself and saw the wrecked house and the divorce papers in my hand, he snapped.

He grabbed a small blade and hurt himself in extreme grief without a second thought.

bl0od spilled everywhere. He dropped to his knees in the pool of it, clinging to my legs and sobbing like his heart had been ripped out.

“Tessa, I don’t know what happened!”

“Please don’t leave. Please don’t throw me away…”

“From now on, whenever it happens again, I’ll lock myself up. I’ll chain myself down. I won’t see anyone. I swear!”

I softened.

I took him to psychiatrist after psychiatrist, but no one could find the cause.

I gave him ten chances.

I told him that if the tenth time was still like this, then we were over for good.

The first nine times, he locked himself in the basement before an episode hit.

But this time, because he was running an experiment with Sloane, he didn’t lock himself up.

“A paper divorce?” I looked at Evan, my voice calm.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Sloane doesn’t have parents. She only has me. She struggles with severe mental health issues.”

“I’m just giving her the title of Mrs. Holt to reassure her. The marriage will only be on paper. Everything I own will still belong to you.”

My nails bit into my palm, and the sharp sting forced me to stay clear-headed.

“Fine,” I said. “I agree.”