The divorce papers sat on my desk like an accusation. Petition number eight. Eight times I'd signed these documents. Eight times I'd watched the man I loved marry someone else—or rather, remarry me when his memories flickered back like a faulty light bulb. I was a divorce attorney. The irony wasn't lost on me. "Mrs. Chen, your three o'clock is here." My assistant's voice crackled through the intercom, hesitant. Everyone in the office knew what day it was. Everyone had seen the headlines. *Divorce Attorney's Marriage Falls Apart—Again! Is This a Record?* *James Chen Chooses First Wife Over Current Spouse in Shocking Courtroom Drama* *Love Triangle or Mental Health Crisis? The Chen Family Circus Continues* I pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to massage away the headache that had lived there for three years. Three years since the accident. Three years since my husband's car was T-boned by a drunk driver, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury and selective amnesia that erased me like I was pencil marks on paper. The cruelest part? It only erased *me*. James remembered his childhood, his parents, his career as an architect. He remembered his first wife, Victoria, with perfect clarity—their college romance, their five-year marriage, even their bitter divorce that I'd helped him process when we met. But me? Sophia Chen, the woman he'd married two years before the accident? The woman he'd proposed to on a beach in Santorini, promising he'd never felt this way before? The woman whose wedding ring he'd designed himself, incorporating both our birthstones in a delicate infinity pattern? I was a stranger. Worse than a stranger—I was the villain. "Give me five minutes," I said into the intercom. I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the photos I couldn't bring myself to delete. James and me at our wedding, his eyes so full of love I could feel it through the screen. Our honeymoon in Japan, where he'd surprised me with a private tea ceremony. Last year's Christmas, just weeks before the accident, when he'd whispered that he wanted to start trying for a baby. My thumb hovered over a video. Against my better judgment, I pressed play. "Sophia Chen," James's voice filled my office, warm and alive. "I know you're working late again, so I'm leaving you this reminder: you are the best thing that ever happened to me. Come home soon. I love you." I'd received that message the day before the accident. I'd been working on a particularly nasty divorce case, and James had sent me a dozen videos throughout the day, each one more ridiculous than the last, trying to make me smile. The next day, he didn't remember sending them. Didn't remember me at all. A knock on my door startled me. My best friend and law partner, Rachel, entered without waiting for permission. "You don't have a three o'clock," she said gently. "I cleared your schedule. And before you argue, the senior partners agreed. You need time off, Soph." "I need to work. Work is the only thing that makes sense anymore." Rachel sat on the edge of my desk, her expression a mix of pity and frustration I'd seen too many times lately. "The video went viral. Two million views and counting." I didn't need to ask which video. Yesterday's courtroom scene had been spectacular, even by our standards. James had stood before the judge, Victoria clutching his arm like a lifeline, and declared that he wanted to "correct the mistake" of divorcing his true wife. Never mind that he'd divorced Victoria of his own free will, years before we met. Never mind that he'd told me countless times how toxic their marriage had been, how he'd felt trapped and diminished. In his current reality, *I* was the other woman. I was the homewrecker who'd somehow convinced him to abandon his loving wife. And Victoria? She played the role of the wronged woman beautifully. "The comments are brutal," Rachel continued. "People are saying you took advantage of him, that you're manipulating someone with a disability. There's a petition calling for you to be disbarred." "Let them try." My voice came out harder than I intended. "I haven't done anything wrong." "I know that. You know that. But the court of public opinion doesn't care about facts." Rachel paused. "The senior partners want you to take a leave of absence. Paid, of course. Just until this blows over." "This won't blow over. It never does." I gestured at the stack of folders on my credenza. "This is the eighth divorce, Rachel. The eighth time I've had to sit across from my husband and listen to him describe me as a manipulative stranger. The eighth time Victoria has smirked at me from the gallery, knowing she's won." "Then stop." "Stop what?" "Stop going back. Stop waiting for his memory to return. Stop letting him divorce you and remarry you like you're playing some twisted game of musical chairs." Rachel's voice cracked. "Sophia, I've watched you break yourself into smaller and smaller pieces for three years. There's barely anything left." I wanted to argue, but she was right. The first time James woke up in the hospital and looked at me like I was an intruder, I'd been devastated but hopeful. The doctors said his memory could return. They said to be patient, to give him time, to surround him with familiar things. But Victoria had gotten to him first. She'd been listed as his emergency contact from years ago, never updated after our marriage. She'd filled his head with poison, telling him I'd seduced him away from her, that I'd isolated him from his friends, that their divorce had been my fault. By the time I was allowed to see him, he'd already filed for divorce. The second time we married—six months after the accident—his memory had returned in fragments. He'd remembered proposing to me, remembered loving me. We'd had two beautiful months together before another episode erased me again. Each cycle broke me a little more. Each time he looked at me with suspicion instead of love, each time he chose Victoria over me, each time he signed divorce papers without hesitation—it was like dying repeatedly. "The doctors said—" "The doctors have been saying the same thing for three years," Rachel interrupted. "'It might improve. It might not. Every brain injury is different.' When are you going to accept that this might be permanent?" "He designed my wedding ring," I whispered, touching the band I still wore. "He spent three months working with a jeweler, sketching designs during his lunch breaks. He wanted it to be perfect because he said our love was perfect. That man loved me, Rachel. He's still in there somewhere." "Maybe he is. But the man who keeps divorcing you, who keeps humiliating you publicly, who keeps choosing his ex-wife—that man is here now. And he's destroying you." My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: *You can't keep him. He was always mine. Stop embarrassing yourself.* Victoria. She'd been sending messages like this for years, each one a little knife to the heart. Another text, this time with a photo attached. James and Victoria at dinner, his arm around her shoulders, both of them smiling. The caption: *Date night with my husband. #SecondChanceRomance #TrueLoveAlwaysWins* Husband. They'd remarried two months ago, right after our seventh divorce was finalized. I'd told myself I wouldn't go through it again. I'd hired my own attorney, prepared to fight back, to protect myself. Then James had shown up at my apartment at two in the morning, confused and terrified, asking why he was living with Victoria when he was married to me. His memory had returned, fragmented but real. He'd remembered our first date, our wedding vows, the way I took my coffee. We'd spent three days together. Three perfect days where he was *my* James again, where he held me and apologized and promised he'd never let me go. Then he'd woken up on the fourth morning and called the police, convinced I'd kidnapped him.