I rip the rings off so fast they take a layer of skin with them, but I don't care. Nope. Don't care at all.
Both bands get shoved back into the coin pocket and snap, there, the wallet's shut. Maybe with enough force to bend the clasp and I don't want to know how much this wallet cost, but it's gone. Out of sight. Out of mind.
Who am I kidding?
Married. I'm married.
Which means last night—
Oh, shit. Was that my husband?
My stomach drops straight through the floor for the second time this morning.
Worse… Oh, God, it could be worse. What if it wasn't my husband? What if Vivienne Marshall is the kind of woman who carries nine hundred dollars in cash and keeps a lover on the side? What if I—what if she—
No. Before I spiral, I should… find a picture.
Easy peasy.
I'm moving before the thought finishes, yanking open the nightstand drawer to find nothing useful. Some lip balm and a sleep mask, along with several random charging cables.
Desperate now, I head for the dresser, opening anything I possibly can. Silk camisoles, folded cashmere, a drawer dedicated entirely to hosiery organized by opacity level… no marriage license, though I guess it would be crazy to think someone would hide it in their stocking drawer.
I check shelves, pockets, the top shelf of the closet where normal people keep photo albums or important documents, but find nothing. Not a single photograph of another human being anywhere in this room.
If someone walked in right now, they'd think I lost my marbles. The immaculate floor is now maculated, covered in clothes and hangers.
I stand in the wreckage, breathing hard.
This bedroom belongs to a woman who exists in a vacuum. Beautiful clothes, expensive taste, and absolutely zero proof that anyone else shares her life.
Wait.
Her phone!
I scramble to the nightstand and snatch it off the charging pad, pressing down on the power button impatiently. The screen illuminates under my thumb and I go completely still.
A photograph fills the lock screen. Two people, clearly at a wedding—their wedding, obviously, because the bride is dressed in white with a daring plunge neckline and so much diamond-studded jewelry my neck aches to think about how much it all weighed. Her black hair spills over bare shoulders and she looks smug.
The man beside her—
My body goes numb, but before that I think: Oh, thank God.
His broad shoulders fill out a black tux, but I know exactly how strong and corded his muscles are beneath the fabric. He's clean-shaven in the picture, but he had a rough five-o'clock shadow in the haze of my memory. And his hair looks golden where the sun hits, but looks like it's somewhere between dark blond and a very light brown.
But more importantly, he's not smiling. His hand rests on her waist but I can't feel affection from the way he stands so rigidly, his amber eyes staring through the photographer like he'd rather be anywhere than there.
The difference in their expressions is shocking.
But that's my husband. I slept with my husband.
Thank fucking God. The last thing I needed was some awkward drama with a lover on the side, but good news, I'm not an adulterer. I'm only a… confused wife. Having sex with her own spouse.
Normal.
Totally normal.
You know, when the soul inside matches the body.
It feels like hours spent gazing at the dreamboat grumpy hubby of this body, but in reality it was only a few seconds of intense staring because suddenly the phone scans my face.
Then the home screen opens.
Oh. Right. Because this is my face now. Biometrics don't care about who's inside, they're here to match the features.
Rubbing at my forehead as a headache tries to weasel its way into my list of problems, I scroll through her contact list. No contacts listed except a Dr. Patel, which seems strange. No Mom? Dad? Hubby?
No, really, no contact for her own husband? Considering how steamy it was last night and the way the man threw out demands far beyond my usual comfort zone—it's hot in books but in real life I always tended toward the ever-safe vanilla—they don't have a terrible relationship, even if their wedding photo is weird.
Who knows, maybe they had a fight that day. Maybe the original body was a Bridezilla.
Anyway.
I look again, but that's it. No one listed except Dr. Patel.
Messages, then.
I open the text app and sigh. The inbox is a graveyard of automated notifications, and I scroll through them mindlessly. Sale alerts, shipping confirmations, nothing with a human touch anywhere. All commerce, no conversation. This woman's most active relationship is with her shopping cart, apparently.
There's something deeply sad about it. Nine hundred dollars in cash, a Porsche in the driveway, and not a single person texting to ask how her day went.
Giving up on the neverending scroll of a wealthy shopaholic, I tap the search bar and type husband.
There's one result.
The text thread belongs to an unsaved number—obviously. I tap it open and read.
[UNKNOWN: You can't ghost your entire family, Vivienne. You begged Mom and Dad to set this marriage up. You BEGGED. And now won't even return a phone call? It's been six months.
VIVIENNE: I'm fine.
UNKNOWN: Oh, she lives. Wonderful. Does your husband know you're ignoring everyone or is he too busy working to notice his wife exists?
VIVIENNE: Charlotte, please just leave it alone.
CHARLOTTE: I'll leave it alone when you stop acting like a teenager. You got what you wanted. You got Knox. The least you can do is show up for Saturday coffee so Mom stops calling ME about it.]
The thread ends there. According to the phone's calendar, it was dated eight months ago, so I have no idea how this was resolved. Are they still estranged? Do they talk regularly now?
It sounds like Charlotte is this body's sister. And her husband's name appears to be Knox.
Knox.
Knox Marshall.
I stare at the name in the message until the letters rearrange themselves in my brain.
Knox... Marshall.
Something cold prickles at the base of my skull. It's a half-formed thought, silly really, but the longer it percolates the harder it is to shake.
A memory from the life I lived, of hours spent in a hospital bed, IV drip in one arm, kindle in the other, devouring books like it would help me outrun my personal clock.
There was one book in particular…
No. It's impossible, right?
My Lover Is a Secret Billionaire. Paranormal romance. Werewolf alpha falls for a struggling rookie at his enforcement agency. Grumpy/sunshine. He's taciturn and grumpy, amazing at his job, and hiding a secret identity as the richest man in the city. She's a down-on-her-luck, vivacious, and hard-working protagonist we all wish we could be.
The whole predictable, delicious package was a book I consumed in a single fever-dream night between chemo rounds because I needed something—anything—that felt like hope.
The love interest's name was Knox Marshall.
I set the phone down decisively. Pick it up again. Set it down.
Coincidence. It's a coincidence.
Knox isn't even an unusual name these days. And Marshall is as common as bread. Plenty of people in the world could be named Knox Marshall without being a fictional werewolf billionaire from a mediocre romance novel I read while dying.
Except.
Except.
His first wife's name? The villain. The main obstacle standing between Knox and his true love, the one who gets killed off in act three to make room for the heroine's happily ever after—
Her name was Vivienne, spelled exactly this way. It's one of the reasons I loved the book.
I grip the edge of the nightstand and the phone slips from my fingers to land face-up on the ground as I sway, feeling pale and sick to my stomach.
The wife who dies.
I'm the wife who dies.
No. No, this can't—it's a book. A fictional, published, badly-edited book with a 3.8 rating on Goodreads and a cover featuring a shirtless man in a forest. It's not real. People don't wake up inside novels. That's not how anything works.
But people don't wake up in different bodies either, and here I am.