Page 54 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

Now there was none of that.

No blood. No shattered glass. No frantic voices shouting for help.

Just my wife, standing in our kitchen, already thinking about work while the morning stretched out before her.

It should have been ordinary.

Instead, it felt sacred.

After coming so close to losing her, I couldn’t look at a morning such as this without understanding how easily it could have been taken from me. She had no idea what that simple sight meant to me, how much I would have given to have another morning exactly like this.

I swallowed against the ache climbing into my throat and turned back to her breakfast before she could read too much in my face. For years, I’d moved through mornings such as this without giving them a second thought. I’d watched her walk into a room, listened to her complain about being late, made her breakfast, and carried on with my day. I had mistaken familiarity for permanence, never considering that the life I took for granted could disappear in a single, terrible moment.

The accident had taught me otherwise.

Now every ordinary moment carried a weight it never had before. Every time she walked away from me, some part of my mind followed, already imagining the possibility of never seeing her return.

I looked at her again.

She was right there.

Alive. Safe. Close enough for me to reach.

And still, fear curled beneath my gratitude.

What if I lost her again?

She stepped closer to the table and eyed the breakfast spread with deep suspicion, her brows drawing together as she inspected it.

“What is this?”

“I made you breakfast,” I told her, clearing my throat when my voice came out rougher than I intended.

She shot me a deeply unimpressed look, one eyebrow arching as her gaze moved from me to the plate and back again. “This is your grand plan? Make me breakfast?” she asked as she slid into her seat. She picked up her fork and poked at the food before giving me a solemn nod. “Well, I suppose that’s it, then. What choice do I have? I’ll have to stay married to you forever and ever because you’ve made me eggs.”

The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it.

How could she say things like that with a straight face and still believe I wasn’t hopelessly, ridiculously in love with her?

She could threaten me, mock me, roll her eyes at everything I did, and somehow my heart still managed to trip over itself every time she smiled.

“This isn’t a plan,” I assured her, settling into the chair across from her. “It’s just breakfast.”

She narrowed her eyes at the plate, then shot me one final, deeply suspicious look. “If you poison me, I’ll find a way to haunt you,” she warned, before finally digging in.

She delivered the threat with such solemn conviction that I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

“Good to know,” I murmured.

I’d take a lifetime of her haunting me over a single day without her.

She ignored me and continued eating, entirely unbothered by my presence.

I couldn’t help watching her.

After agreeing to stay yesterday, she had immediately claimed the master bedroom—our bedroom—and informed me, with absolutely no room for negotiation, that I was to disappear into whichever room was farthest from her presence.

Naturally, I chose the room directly beside hers.