A tall and hard appearance but he still handled me with an unexpected level of consideration and gentleness.
An intimidating silent front but soft spoken in the rare moments that he did speak.
A rather expressionless face and yet his eyes still somehow able to carry such raw emotions.
Everything about this man seemed like a contradiction.
After the doctor had concluded that I had temporarily lost about a year’s worth of memories from my concussion, she suggested that I stay overnight for monitoring and told me to refrain from exerting too much energy.
With these instructions, Rafael spent the rest of the day fretting over my every need. Asking me if I was hungry, if I wanted some water, whether I was in pain anywhere, and a whole list more.
Even though he was already hovering over my every move, I could tell that he trying really hard to hold himself back to avoid frightening me.
Every time he reflexively reached out to me in fear of me hurting myself… Every time he accidentally brushed his hand against my skin… Every time he leaned in to give me a kiss out of what seemed to be habit…
He would always catch himself halfway and immediately pull back with a guilty look when he saw how tense I had become.
No matter how much I tried to convince myself that he was a safe person, someone that even Liam trusted, I still couldn’t stop my body from reacting that way whenever he got too close for comfort.
For the life of me, I could not understand how he could be so patient with me when I was clearly being completely unreasonable.
Why would he love someone as broken as me?
He had briefly explained how we met in early November… describing how Liam threatened him the first couple of times they met to when he started officially courting me, gaining my trust step by step until I had apparently accepted his proposal and moved in with him to a new house all within a few months.
He told me that we had only been married for a few weeks, only coming back from our honeymoon trip a week ago before I ended up in the hospital.
I found it hard to believe that I would trust someone like him so willingly in such a short amount of time. But one look at his eyes told me more than enough to know that he was not someone who would ever be able to betray me, to know that he had sworn his soul to me and only me alone.
Love. Respect. Adoration.
His eyes said it all.
This was a man who would go to the end of the world and back for me, and I feared he might just bring the world to ruins if I were to ever die.
He was loyal beyond fault, and it wasn’t fair for him to be chained down to someone like me.
What would happen if I never regained my memories?
“Love…” A soft voice called out to me but my mind barely registered it as my thoughts continued to spiral.
He would most likely stay as my husband out of respect for our wedding vows.
He was a gentleman that would continue to take care of me as his wife even though I wouldn’t be able to reciprocate.
“My love…”
But that would be much too cruel of a fate for him.
He deserved someone who could love him as fiercely as he loved his partner. Not someone like me who would never heal from my past.
What would happen if he eventually got sick of me?
Rather than eyes filled with with love, they would eventually get clouded with hatred. There was no way he would be able to continue to love me unconditionally once I ruined him, selfishly scraping all of his freedom from him until he was a shell of a man from before.
Would he-
“Jane!” The abrupt stop of the car yanked me out of my spiraling thoughts as a deep but panicked voice called out to me, “Please respond to me, love. It’s fine if you are not comfortable with speaking to me, but please at least give me a shake or a nod to let me know if you are alright.”
Rafael’s were filled with worry. His muscles was practically twitching as if he was fighting every inch of himself to hold himself back from reaching out to me and yet he still managed to keep himself firmly situated in his seat out of respect for my comfort.
I diverted my eyes out of guilt for making him worry about me again and mumbled softly, “It’s nothing, Rafael… I was just lost in my thoughts…”
From the side mirror, I could tell that he was not satisfied with my answer by the knitting of his eyebrows and the thinning of his lips. But he chose not to say anything about it.
Instead, he dropped the subject and softly continued, “I just wanted to let you know that we’re home…”
I nodded silently as I looked out the car window, thinking that we would arrive at a normal two-floor mansion based on snippets of his stories.
However, I was taken aback when I found a ginormous castle-like mansion that had enough floors to stretch into the sky and spread across nearly an entire acre, not including the extra space that made up the gardens and backyard.
I lived here?
Taking no mind to my muted shock, he explained, “Benedict’s going to drop Liam off in a few hours once you have gotten a chance to take a bath and settle down. Our bedroom is on fourth floor. I’ll stay downstairs until you’re done, but you can lock the door if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
He paused momentarily for a response, but I was too stunned by the sheer size of the house to say anything.
He sighed and climbed out of the car. Rounding the front of the car, he snapped me out of my trance by opening the door for me and naturally held his hand out to help me out of the car as if it was to be expected.
I was slightly frightened by his extended hand but was unable to refuse his offer outright for fear of offending him. I knew that he had no ill intent, but his large rough hands seemed much too intimidating to lay my much smaller hands into.
However, my brief hesitation said enough to make him retract his hand regretfully. He tucked his hand behind his back and covered up his pain with a weak smile. “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It was just a force of habit.”
I nodded meekly, keeping my head low as I hopped out of the car by myself.
It was easy to tell that his smiles were all lies, simply an effort to protect my feelings. The one and only time he genuinely smiled was when I first woke up. The only time his eyes sparkled with in overwhelming joy until he found out I had lost my memories.
I quietly followed him into the house through the front door and up the stairs. From only a brief glance around the house, I could already tell that he must’ve put in a lot of effort to make this house for me to live in. Every nook and cranky held some sort of trinket or decorative piece that was clearly part of my fantasizing preferences rather than his minimalistic style.
But the part that stood out to me the most was the framed photos all along the walls.
There were a few with Liam and me peacefully curled up together, but there were much more pictures consisting of Rafael and Liam. Their similar aura… identical smirks… matching smiles… No one would probably believe it if they were told that the two weren’t actually biologically related…
Then there were even more pictures of only me. Mostly candid pictures of me reading in what appeared to be an elegant private library. Or squatting in a bunch of shrubberies, pulling out weeds from a garden. Or running in an unfamiliar field with a bright smile on my face and my sundress flowing like a river around me.
They were obviously treasures taken by the man walking in front of me. The quality of the photos was much too high for a five-year-old’s shakey hand to duplicate.
I probably didn’t even notice when he took the photos, but I must’ve been really happy living here with him if I could smile so brightly in those pictures.
And the largest one was at the end of the fourth floor’s hallway. It was a portrait of our wedding where Rafael was in a sleek black tuxedo, and I was in a pure white flowery dress that trailed for several feet behind me. His arm was wrapped around my waist, holding me close to him as his large figure towered over me. But I didn’t seem to mind it at all.
I had such a large smile that anyone could’ve spotted it from a mile away, giggling happily as I leaned into his touch. My eyes were closed, so I probably didn’t notice it at the time, but he wasn’t looking at the camera in the picture.
Instead, he was looking at me with such raw, vibrant emotions shimmering in his eyes. It was as if I was his entire world. Incomparably happier than all of his other pictures in the house.
Drawing my attention away from the portrait, Rafael stopped at the closed door just a few doors before the end of the hall. He opened the door for me and told me, “This is our bedroom. The bathroom is in the back of the room, and the walk-in closet is next to it. There should already be a clean towel in the bathroom, but feel free to find me if you can’t find anything.”
I nodded in understanding as I glanced around the ginormous room. The ceiling was so high that it left me speechless, and the entirely-glass wall facing outside only added to it.
This house was really much more than I could ever imagine. Just how wealthy of a man did I marry…
He cleared his throat awkwardly, making me look back at him. He nervously pulled my phone out of his back pocket and carefully slipped it into my hands, making sure not to brush his fingers against my skin. He explained, “The hospital gave it to me along with other rest of your belongings when I was signing your discharge papers. There is a large crack in the screen. I can get fixed tomorrow, but it will still work for now. You can use it to call me if you need anything, okay?”
I was still much too intimidated by his strong presence whenever we were left alone together, so I was only able to offer another mute reply in reply.
Sadly, it only seemed to dampen his mood even further every time I was unable to offer any words in response.
He accepted my answer amicably and politely excused himself, shutting the door quietly with his exit.
I released my breath in relief when his heavy aura disappeared from the room. Even though he has not tried to harm me in the slightest, my body was still unable to relax in presence no matter how much I tried to remind myself that he had only been kind and gentle to me since I woke up.
And now that he was finally gone, my legs decided to give out under me, making me plop down onto the plush carpet.
My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it in my ears.
There was no way I could last like this, but it wasn’t like I could just avoid him.
He was my husband.
And I couldn’t just tear Liam away from his father. The one man he decided to put his full trust in.
Reminded by a hefty weight in my hand, I unlocked my phone in hope for any information that may shed some light on my never-ending dilemma.
Unlike how I had remembered, my wallpaper was no longer the picture that I secretly stole of Liam’s messy face when I gave him box of handmade chocolates for the first time. Instead, it was a picture of Rafael wearing glasses as he read a book aloud to a certain little boy in his lap.
And it wasn’t only my wallpaper that was different.
Almost all of the pictures in my photo album had Rafael in the photos in addition to Liam.
The top of my text messages was no longer only work messages from other VPs or Mr. Serman. Instead, the chat at the very top was labeled “Achi