He didn't sleep. Again.
Kai sat alone in his penthouse living room, the glow of the city casting long shadows over his bare chest and restless hands. The article still sat open on the coffee table: Ariella Vale. Presumed dead. Body never recovered except now she lived and breathed four doors down. He ran his hands through his hair and whispered the truth aloud, just to hear it in the air:
"She's not Aria St. James."
"She's Ariella."
His Ariella.
The girl he was supposed to fight for. The girl who once wrote poems on his skin with her mouth. The girl he left behind or maybe… was forced to leave behind. His head ached from the gaps. From all the things that didn't make sense but one thing did:
He wanted her back not because of guilt, not because of memory but because her kiss still haunted his mouth and her absence was eating him alive.
He saw her the next morning. She wore cream-colored trousers and a champagne silk blouse, hair swept into a low twist, lips glossed but neutral, a professional goddess.
Untouchable. Unbothered but when their eyes met across the hallway, he saw it.
A flicker.
A crack.
She still felt him and she hated that.
He waited until her floor cleared out. Until the others left for the lunch meeting. Then he stepped into her office and closed the door behind him. Aria didn't look up from her screen.
"You're not on my calendar, Mr. Lennox."
He ignored the stab.
"I know who you are."
Silence.
No flinch. No denial.
She just finished typing, then clicked save and finally looked at him.
"Do you?"
"You're Ariella Vale."
"Was."
He stared at her. "You let me think you were someone else."
"You let the world think I was dead."
The words hit him like a bullet.
"I didn't know."
"You didn't ask."
He took a breath. "I was told you died."
"Did you cry?"
He went silent.
She stood then, slow and sharp, like rising smoke.
"You didn't even look for me."
"I lost my memory, Ariella—"
"I know." Her voice cracked. Just slightly. "Do you think I haven't gone over every possible excuse in my head? Accident. Trauma. Pressure. Your family. I made room for all of it. For you."
A pause.
Then her voice dropped, bitter-sweet and ice cold.
"But you still married her."
"I didn't."
She blinked. "What?"
"I didn't marry Brielle."
He stepped closer.
"I couldn't. Because every time I looked at her… I saw you."
"I felt you."
She looked shaken for half a second.
Then: "That doesn't change anything."
"I remember the night you fell."
Her breath caught.
He stepped even closer. "I remember the way you screamed when the car hit the guardrail. I remember pulling you out before it sank. I remember the blood. The panic. Then—nothing."
She stared at him.
Silent.
He whispered, "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
Her eyes glistened and then hardened.
"Because I wanted to see if your soul still remembered me without being told who I was."
He swallowed. "And did it?"
She looked away.
"You kissed me like you were starving," she said quietly. "But you didn't know me."
"I do now."
"No," she said, turning back. "You're just obsessed with the ghost of a girl you forgot."
"I didn't forget you," he said fiercely. "They made me."
He meant his family. The doctors. Brielle's father. Everyone who had something to gain from erasing a scandal.
She didn't reply.
So he reached for her hand.
She let him touch it for one second and then pulled away like it burned.
"Don't"
"You still want me."
"That's the problem."
That night, Aria sat on her bedroom floor with every light off.
The article sat on the coffee table again this time printed. Not the one about her death.
The one about Kai's recovery. The private hospital. The memory loss. The carefully controlled media silence after his mysterious "rehabilitation."
They did erase her.
They made sure he forgot and now he wanted her back but could she ever trust him again?
She picked up her phone and hovered over his number.
She didn't call.
She couldn't.
Instead, she used an old number from her burner account, the one only he used to call and she dialed once.
He picked up on the second ring.
"Hello?"
She didn't speak.
He waited.
"Who is this?"
Then softer. "Ariella?"
Her throat tightened.
She stayed silent.
And then he whispered the only words that shattered her carefully rebuilt walls.
"Please… come home."
She ended the call, collapsed onto the floor and cried.