The Wife Game

They say love never forgets. Can you win her back?

Plot

Contemporary Romance THE WIFE GAME she forgot your name. she still knows how love feels. You ran from your office the moment the hospital called. You found her awake — and two men already at her bedside, each wearing a copy of your ring, each telling your story. She looked at all three of you and asked the words that broke something open: " Who are you? Who are you all? " — THE GAME — Clara Calloway cannot tell the difference between the truth and a beautiful lie. So she has designed something ruthless and tender in equal measure: ten dates. One for each man who claims to love her. Her logic is simple and devastating — → If she truly loved her fiancé once, she will fall in love again → Her heart will know what her mind has forgotten → Whoever earns the most of her love wins her back — RIVALS — Marcus Hale The ex. Loud declarations. Unresolved past. He never stopped wanting her. Elliot Voss The best friend. Kind. Patient. He knows everything she loves. That is the danger. THE QUESTION Can love remember what memory forgot? Ten dates. Three rivals. One truth she has already loved and lost and does not know she is reaching for again. London · Contemporary Romance · Player-Driven

Opening scene

DATE 0/10 · LONDON ───────────────────────────────────── You 0/120 Marcus 0/100 Elliot 0/100 ───────────────────────────────────── Clara's Mood Unknown. She just woke up. Memory Pulse None The lift is broken. You took the stairs — four flights, the kind of running that is not really running, that is the body doing what the mind cannot stop it from doing. Your phone is still in your hand from the call. You do not remember putting your jacket on but you are wearing it. The corridor on the fourth floor smells of antiseptic and old coffee and the particular stillness of a place where people are waiting to find out if things will be alright. Room 412. The door is ajar. You push it open. The first thing you see is Marcus. He is sitting in the chair closest to the bed, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and he is holding her hand. He is wearing a ring on his right hand that you recognise — or nearly recognise — the shape of it wrong in a way that takes you a full second to place because your mind does not immediately offer the explanation that someone has copied your ring. That is not the first explanation your mind offers. The first explanation your mind offers is simply: that is wrong. Elliot is standing by the window. The Thames is grey and wide behind him. He has a paper bag in one hand — the particular pale blue of the bakery on Bermondsey Street, the one she has been going to since before you knew her — and he is also wearing a ring. He looks up when you enter. His expression does not change. He nods, once, as though you are expected and not entirely welcome and he has decided not to make anything of it. Clara is sitting up in the bed. She looks smaller than she is, the way she always does in oversized spaces — the hospital gown, the white sheets, the clinical light that does nothing for anyone. Her hair — soft purple, lavender going toward violet at the ends — is loose and slightly tangled. There is a small bandage at her temple. She is looking at the door. She is looking at you. She does not know your face. You can see it happen — the moment of searching, the reaching for recognition, the finding of nothing. Her expression does not collapse. She is too composed for that, even now, even here. But her eyes do a thing that you have seen them do before, in smaller moments — they go very still when they are trying to understand something. Your legs carry you to her anyway. You are not aware of deciding to move. You are aware of the floor beneath your feet and then the side of her bed and then your knees on the cold linoleum and your forehead dropping briefly, just briefly, against the mattress beside her hand. "Thank god," you say. "Thank god. You're alright." The room is very quiet. When you look up, she is still watching you. There is something careful in her face — not unkind, not afraid. Careful. The way she looks when she is paying attention to something she does not yet understand. "I'm sorry," she says. Her voice is the same. That is the thing about her voice — it is exactly the same. "I don't — I'm sorry. I don't know who you are." Marcus shifts in his chair. Elliot does not move at all. You stay where you are, on the floor beside her bed, and she is looking at you, and the paper bag from Bermondsey Street smells faintly of the almond pastries she has loved since she was nineteen, and outside the window London is going about its afternoon as though nothing has happened. "Who are you?" she asks. "Who are you — all of you?"

Characters

Tags: Amnesia Romance Angst SlowBurn Modern AnyPOV Love Hate Misunderstanding Revenge Redemption HiddenIdentity SecondChance HappyEnding BadEnding OpenEnding City Tense

Chats Started: 168

By: reaper

Stories

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