I was married to Daniel for five years… then I met the man who claimed he was my real husband.

My name is Elena , and until last week, I thought I had a normal life.

I’ve been married to Daniel for five years. We live in a quiet neighborhood just outside the city, the kind with trimmed hedges, polite nods from neighbors, and not much else. Daniel works long hours as a corporate attorney. He’s calm, methodical, distant—but always responsible. The kind of man who sets his watch five minutes early and folds his socks in perfect rolls.

I always told myself I was lucky.
Even if he rarely said “I love you,” even if he never wanted to talk about the past.
Especially the past.

It was a rainy Thursday when everything changed.

I ducked into a small bookstore downtown—Whitmore Books. I had never been there before, and honestly, I didn’t even know why I went in. Something just… pulled me in.

As I stood flipping through a dog-eared mystery novel, someone tapped my shoulder.

I turned around and saw him: mid-thirties, deep brown eyes, worn black coat, a mess of curls that looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

“Elena?” he said, his voice cracking like he’d seen a ghost.

“Um… yes?” I said, cautiously.

He blinked fast. “You’re—oh my god. You’re alive.”

I laughed nervously. “I think you have the wrong person.”

Then he pulled a photo from his wallet.

My breath hitched.

It was me.

Pale, unconscious, lying in a hospital bed. Tubes in my nose.
He was sitting beside me, holding my hand in the photo.

“My name is Liam Carter,” he said quietly.
“You’re my wife. We were in a car crash three years ago. You disappeared. I thought… they told me you didn’t survive.”

“No,” I whispered. “I’m married. To Daniel. We met six years ago at a conference in Chicago. We’ve been together ever since.”

But my voice trembled.

Because something inside me—it shifted. Like a puzzle piece had just been jammed back into place.

He pulled something from his coat pocket. A silver bracelet.

“You wore this every day.”

He turned it over.

Etched on the inside:
“To my North Star – Love, Liam.”

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I waited until Daniel came home. He smiled, kissed my cheek, loosened his tie like always.
But I needed to know.

“Where did we meet?” I asked.

He hesitated for a moment too long.

“At the beach house,” he said finally. “You were working at the café next door.”

But I’d never worked in a café.
And we’d never had a beach house.

The next day, while Daniel was at work, I found the key to the locked room in our basement.
He always said it was for “old tax records and junk.”

Inside were boxes. Dozens of them.

Photos.
Newspapers.
Medical records.

All with my name… but nothing matched what I remembered.
And all of it led to one conclusion:

My entire life had been rewritten.

Liam found me the next day.
He told me everything.

The car crash. The coma.
And how, when I disappeared from the hospital without a trace, he never stopped searching.

Until now.

Daniel had taken me.
Convinced the world I was dead.
And slowly, over years, built a new reality around me.

Now, I’m not sure who I am.

Memories are coming back—flashes of laughter, of ocean waves, of a man reading me poetry under the stars.
Not Daniel.
Liam.

I don’t know what Daniel’s real intentions were.

Was it obsession? Guilt? Something darker?

All I know is this:

I was married twice.
But only one of those marriages was real.

And now… I have to choose.