“Husband. Husband. Husssssbannnnnnd.”

Nope. It didn’t matter how many times I said it, out loud or silently, it was still ridiculous and insane and . . . just nope.

Dr. Anand had cleared the room almost immediately, but not soon enough. The moment someone had uttered the actual word—amnesia—my mother fainted dead away, knocking down my brother and a tray of urine samples in the process. After the orderlies helped my dad drag her out and clean up the pee mess, Jen patted me on the foot. She made a soothing shush noise before she got up to leave.

It was only then that I realized I’d been babbling incoherently under my breath. But what did they expect? They’d just told me I was a married woman. I hadn’t even had a boyfriend, last I knew.

“Annie,” said the man who was apparently my husband, still pale as a ghost, “it’s going to be okay.”

I gulped, unsure of whether he was saying it for my benefit or for his own.

“Wait,” I said, before he made it out the door.

“Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

“Evan.” His lips split into a grin, but there was a sadness behind his smile. “Evan Gaines.”

“Okay.” I nodded then stopped him again. “Wait.”

He leaned against the door frame. Dr. Anand shot him a look that said, “move it.” But I could tell he viewed me as the sole authority in the room. He didn’t intend to go anywhere until I bid him leave.

“Am I Annie Gaines, then?”

“You hadn’t decided yet. And for the record, I’m one hundred percent fine with whatever you do choose.”

He didn’t have to say who wouldn’t be fine with me keeping my maiden name. My mother, grand southern dame that she was, would have kittens at the thought of it.

After they left, the room was eerily quiet. I stared out the window at those bare branches, undeniable proof of the time and memories that I had lost.

“It’s actually quite common,” said Dr. Anand, settling into a chair next to the bed.

“What? Waking up from a coma with a mystery husband?”

“No, amnesia. After a head trauma, confusion and memory loss are to be expected.”

“But I think I’ve lost several months. Not just the accident.” I strained to recall my last vivid memory. It was my birthday party in August. I’d gone out with a group of friends to grab food truck tacos at a concert in the park for a local band. The memories seemed too bright, though. Too crisp compared to the blurry haze I’d woken from.

“That’s normal. You took a severe knock to the frontal lobe. The brain is a complex but resilient organ. Most people achieve at least partial memory restoration after post-traumatic amnesia.”

“They do? What can I do to hurry it along?”

“Nothing. Or I should say, nothing but rest.” She folded away my chart. “Focus on your overall health. And the more you’re in your familiar surroundings, the better the chance of retrieving those lost memories. But I’m being serious when I say that you shouldn’t try to force it. You could end up harming more than helping your recovery.”

She went through more technical jargon—timeframes and percentiles and statistics. I glanced over at the clipboard that Evan had left on the bedside table. He’d taken pages and pages of notes.

“Did Evan already write all this down?” I gestured to the notepad.

“Yes. Although he’s done research on his own as well. If he’s not in here watching you, he’s on his laptop googling every word I utter.”

“He has? I mean, he is?”

“Talk about someone who needs some rest.”

I felt a stab of guilt that someone who I didn’t even know was sacrificing so much time and effort for me. But that someone was my husband. And I was back to square one of disbelief.

Husband.

* * *

The new room wasn’t actually much bigger than the one in Intensive Care, but it sure had less whirring and beeping and wires and tubes. For that alone, I was thankful.

The nurses also had a different definition of “rest” down in the regular ward. Every half hour, one of them came in to poke, jab, and force me to get up and pee. At first, it took two of them to hold me up and steady me, but by the end of the day, I’d gotten it down to a sore shuffle on my own.

“Excellent,” said one of my minders as I climbed back into bed. “Keep that up, and you’ll get underpant privileges back in no time.”

“I never thought of underwear as a privilege before, but—”

“Oh, umm, hi.” Evan stood in the doorway holding a paper bag in one hand, his other poised to knock. Judging by the flush that bloomed across his cheeks, he had heard our underwear exchange.

I realized a moment too late that it might also have been my bare ass hanging out of the paper-thin, see-through hospital gown that had caused him to blush. Whichever it was, he recovered quickly.

“I brought you a gift.” He handed over the bag as I settled into bed. But I didn’t need to open it to tell what it was.

“Extra mayo?” I took a deep whiff of the contents of the bag.

“And double bacon. Your favorite.”

“Mmmm.” BLTs from Bucky’s were my all-time favorite. “If I hadn’t already married you, I would right now.”

“Well, I wish I’d known. It would have saved me a chunk of change on this.” He held out a dazzling platinum solitaire, dangling on a silver chain. It spun and caught a sun ray that had broken through the gloom outside, bursting into a light show of sparkles that danced up the walls.

“The nurses said it might be awhile before the swelling in your fingers went down. But I thought you might want to have it with you.”

“It’s beautiful.” Exactly what I would have picked out given the choice. I realized with a startle that I might have done exactly that.

“Sorry,” said Evan. “We don’t have to . . . . Maybe that was too fast. I’m kind of treading on unfamiliar ground here.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“I bet you have questions,” he said.

“That, I do.” I licked a dollop of mayonnaise off my thumb, and when I glanced up, Evan was biting his lip to hold back a smile.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. It’s just, man, I love watching you eat.” He reached over with a napkin and wiped another smudge of mayo off the corner of my lip. He’d shaved this afternoon. With his face so close to mine, I took in a tentative sniff, wondering if he smelled as good as he looked.

And promptly gagged and started to cough.

He reeked of the strongest aftershave I’d ever smelled in my life.

I mean, it was a good scent. Great, even. But it was too much. Like . . . swimming in a river of cologne.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to hide both my revulsion and the urge to wash out the inside of my nostrils with soap.

I was saved from explanations by Jen, who walked into the room and promptly plugged up her nose and grimaced. She sniffed her way over to Evan and made a retching sound.

“What the hell, Gaines? Did you fall into a vat of leftover Neiman Marcus samples?”

He sniffed his shirt and turned crimson.

“Oh, gosh. Sorry, Annie. I read this study about the connection between the olfactory system and memory, and I thought maybe . . .”

“You thought maybe you’d send her back into a cologne-induced coma?”

“I think I overdid it.”

“Yeah, I think maybe you did.” I started giggling.

“I’ll wash it off.” He grabbed a backpack out of the corner, and I realized it was his. His stuff. Because he planned to stay here. With me.

Evan disappeared into the bathroom, and soon I heard the shower turn on. A puff of steam escaped the cracked door, and I pulled my covers up higher. I closed my eyes and tried not to picture him stepping into the shower. Naked. It was like trying to have a conversation with someone who tells you to think about anything but purple giraffes, so of course, you can’t picture anything but purple giraffes. But that was no giraffe in the other room. It was my husband.

My naked husband.

“I brought you a present,” said Jen.

“I like presents,” I said, opening my eyes. Honestly, any distraction right now was a gift in and of itself.

She plopped a large, leatherbound book on the bedside table. I gingerly lifted the cover.

“It’s proof,” she said.

“Proof of—?” But when I flipped the first page, I didn’t have to ask what she meant. It was a photo album, page after page of pictures with me and Evan. Mostly phone selfies but also some artsy shots I’d taken with my real camera.

I gulped.

“I thought pictures would be the one thing you’d trust without question,” she said.

Jen knew me well. I’d been a professional photographer for five years, and if my own shots couldn’t bring the last few months into focus, nothing could.

“How did we meet?” I asked, looking at page after page of us kissing, embracing, laughing, dancing, snuggling.

“You were doing a shoot for one of his houses.”

“His houses?”

“He’s a builder. Specializes in historical restorations for the most part. He hired you through Mandy. He’d contracted with her agency to list the house.”

I nodded. The story added up. My friend Mandy was a real estate stager. I’d shot houses for her agency before.

“When?”

“September.”

I nodded again. That part didn’t make sense, though. It was January now. If we’d met in September, that was four months. Four months. To meet and fall in love and get married? I’d spent six months last year debating whether or not I wanted to get bangs.

The next few pages were from our wedding. I sighed. It looked like it was a small, intimate affair. My close friends and family, and what I could only assume were his close friends and family gathered at sunset on a beach I recognized from Amelia Island. Grief clutched my heart that I couldn’t remember it. My critical eyes took in the lighting, the angles, the framing. But I felt nothing. It was like looking at a client’s proofs.

“It was perfect.” Jen clutched my hand. “You’re going to remember it. All of it. I know you will.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ve still got a husband with the finest arse this side of the Mississippi.”

I laughed and turned the page then busted into giggles and threw my hands over the page. Because that fine arse was there on Fujifilm paper displayed for all to see. In the picture, he was lying on his side, clutching a sheet in a fist. He stared at me over his shoulder and in my expert eye, I could tell he was looking at me, not the lens. The expression on his face made it clear he was barely holding on and wanted me to join him in that bed. Fast.

Jen glanced discreetly away, but her cheeks burned bright.

“Sorry,” she said. “I asked him for an album that had pictures of you together, and he told me where this one was. I didn’t realize it also had pictures of him in the all together.”

“Has my mom looked through it?” Oh, Lord, have mercy. “Or my dad?”

“No, of course not. I haven’t even seen it before. I think these were just some of your favorite shots so that’s why he suggested I grab it.”

“Okay.” I put my finger in the album to mark my spot but closed it.

“Meanie,” said Jen.

“Pervert.”

The shower stopped, and Jen hopped up, grabbing her purse.

“That’s my cue,” she said.

“But, wait. Why don’t you stay and—” Stay and what? Protect me from my gorgeous, loving, devoted husband?

The mood in the room had changed, and Jen had sensed it, too. I had met my husband. Now, I needed to meet my husband.

“He loves you.” She squeezed my hand. “A lot.”

“If I had just one memory, I’d feel better.”

“You do have one memory.” She nodded her head at the empty dinner bag. “He brought you a sandwich. And a keg of cologne.”

“Bye,” I said.

“Bye.” She bent over and kissed my forehead. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

“So am I.”