by Ivy Smoak
Because Noah was standing behind him. And that alone was enough to have my brain forming a whole new plan. One that involved absolutely no chance of me winding up behind bars. I just needed a second to think, but Noah’s stupid elf costume was distracting me from focusing.
Detective Torres must have seen the glee on my face, because he turned to see what I was looking at. "Noah?” he asked and then laughed. “Jesus, man. Your wife made it seem like you were dead.” He thrust his hand out for him to shake. “Nice to finally see you in the flesh. I was worried there for a second.”
The plans in my head stopped formulating. I blinked. Detective Torres called him Noah. Detective Torres saw it too? I wasn’t crazy. I touched the side of my forehead as I stared at Noah. Really stared. The laugh lines around his eyes. His dark hair. His slightly lighter stubble. The freckles that were scattered right beneath his eyes. They were all familiar. I’d woken up to him thousands of mornings. He was my husband.
But when I looked harder? Really looked? My eyes narrowed in on him. The stubble was actually a lot lighter than his hair. His hair was really, really dark. Unnaturally so. Like it had been dyed. Like he’d been trying to hide his true identity.
It came back in a rush. A piece clicking back together in my brain. My husband had told me that I was crazy. That I was seeing things. That there was no possible way that there were two of him. But he kept appearing somewhere that he wasn’t. I’d kept it all written down. Every time I spotted him somewhere, he claimed he hadn’t been there. He’d found my calendar tracking him. He’d given me more medicine, trying to erase my memories. He’d whispered lies into my ear. And I’d eaten it up. For a short time. While I was still being drugged.
But they were all lies. And his plan hadn’t worked. There were two of him. This was one of him. And the other one of him…
No. I’d been fighting with myself. Half the time I thought it was really Noah. Half the time I knew it wasn’t. But I was never sure. Never really sure. Because it was easy to doubt yourself when you were belittled for years. And I wanted this to be my actual husband. Because if it wasn’t…
Noah stuck out his hand to shake Detective Torres’. “Nice to finally meet you too.” He flashed me a smile.
No. No, no, no. I blinked again. The Noah standing there shaking Detective Torres’ hand wasn’t the real Noah. He looked like my husband. He even sounded like my husband. Because he was supposed to. But this Noah was not my husband. Because the real Dr. Noah Collins?
I held my breath. I wanted Detective Torres to be right. That this imposter was Noah. I wanted it to be true. Because if it wasn’t…I was pretty sure the nightmares I had been having were true. I was almost positive that the real Dr. Noah Collins was dead. And if he was dead…I was worried I knew where he was. Detective Torres couldn’t know. He wouldn’t believe me. Just like my husband claimed he didn’t believe me. They’d lock me up. They’d think I was crazy. I’m not fucking crazy.
Detective Torres looked between us, eyeing our strange Christmas getups. “So…what the hell is happening?” he asked. “Please tell me this whole thing wasn’t a ruse so you can win that stupid neighborhood Christmas light contest? Some kind of grand entrance to shock your neighbors?”
Noah laughed. “Well, we will be wearing these costumes to that. As for the whole me being missing thing? This has all just been a huge misunderstanding. Actually, I have some files here that I think will clear everything up.” He held up the files that were in his hand. “Ensley, I want you to see these too. Come here, baby.”
I felt like I was going to throw up. I had no idea what was in those files. But I knew it was most likely damning. And even if it wasn’t? A dead body surely would be.
I needed to get Detective Torres out of the equation so I could have a second to think. My hands were still cuffed behind me, so I did the first thing I thought of. I kicked the back of Detective Torres’ knees so he buckled forward.
“What the f…” he started.
But he didn’t finish his statement. Because I kneed him right in the side of his head. He crumpled to the floor with a thud.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Noah said. “I was going to smooth everything over! I had a plan. You just assaulted a detective. You could go to jail, Ensley.” He raked his fingers through his dyed hair. “What were you thinking?”
I took a step away from him.
“Baby, it’s okay we can figure it out.” He closed the distance between us, probably assuming my sudden movement was fueled by regret over kicking Detective Torres in the head. And not out of fear of the man still standing in front of me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you. I’ll keep you safe.”
Safe? I wasn’t the crazy one. He was. Think of a way out of this.
He touched the side of my face and I tried not to hurl. He’d sat in the basement saying he loved me. That he’d never cheat on me. He’d pressured me into believing. He’d said it all with my husband’s face.
But this man was not my husband. And I had no idea who the hell he was or what he wanted with me.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’ll figure it out together.” When he leaned down for a kiss, I let instinct take over again. I bit his lip so hard I could taste blood, and then I kneed him right in the junk.
He groaned and leaned forward, grasping at the front of his tiny elf shorts.
And then I ran as fast as I could.
Chapter 28
Monday
“Ensley, stop!” Noah screamed through a slur of curses.
I ran faster, which wasn’t that fast when my hands were still cuffed behind me and I didn’t want to topple straight onto my face.
I reached the back door in the kitchen and turned around to work on the lock with my hands.
Snuggle Muffins was still sleeping in the middle of the kitchen floor, as if my assaulting a detective and kneeing Noah in the crotch was uneventful.
My hand paused on the knob. I couldn’t leave Snuggle Muffins behind. He was more than just my accomplice. He was…all I had left. “Come, Snuggle Muffins. Now.” I couldn’t lift him up with my hands behind my back. He needed to get up and run to me. Run to Mommy.
His ears twitched up but he stayed exactly where he was. Eyes closed and all.
Noah came barreling into the kitchen with a terrifying scowl on his face that didn’t match the joy of his costume in the slightest.
I opened the door behind me successfully, but I couldn’t leave without Snuggle Muffins. I refused to.
Noah reached me and slammed the door closed. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He kept his hands on either side of me, caging me in.
And in a flash I saw my husband again. Angry and cruel. I cowered beneath him. Waiting for the sharp pain of his palm hitting my skin. But it didn’t come in.
Because he wasn’t my husband. He was… I looked back up at him. “Who are you?” He was too close to me. He looked too similar. And my mind loved to play tricks on me when it came to my husband.
“Are you kidding me? You knew I wasn’t Noah this whole freaking time?” He took a step back and ran his fingers through his dyed hair. “You’ve been calling me Noah for days. You had me believing I was your husband after you knocked me unconscious. All of this could have been cleared up a lot earlier if you didn’t keep acting like I was your husband. Messing with my head. You had me believing everything.”
And I just stood there staring at him. “You know you’re not Noah?” Part of me had been playing along with him being my husband. It had been so easy to get lost in that fantasy. To hope. To believe I hadn’t done something terrible.
“I didn’t realize the truth until this morning. I was looking all over the place trying to piece together what happened. Trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t remember my own family.”
Family. He thought we were a family. Wasn’t that all I’d ever wanted to be? Part of a family?
I looked past him into the ransacked family room.
I knew he had been searching for something. But I had no idea he was trying to piece together his past. Or that I’d confused him into thinking he was actually my husband. When he was confusing me back by acting like my husband. And having my husband’s face. We’d done the ultimate role-play, all completely by accident.
“And when I found your phone, with all those appointments with Dr. Collins, I lost it. You’d been saying I was cheating on you. When really it seemed like you were the one cheating on me.”
I nodded. All the Dr. Collins notes in my calendar were just me tailing my husband. Trying to figure out where he was going. Where he was at all times. “But then I mentioned Sophia. And her face looking like mine.” I remembered his hands falling from my skin. The angry look on his face. I thought he was angry with me. But…that must have been when he remembered the truth. That he wasn’t Noah.
He nodded.
“You remember now?” I asked.
“I remember everything,” he said.
I swallowed hard. I didn’t. I knew most of it, but there were still blurry parts. It had been so long since I’d been able to think clearly. “If you’re not my husband, then who are you?”
“I work for him.” That was all he offered.
I’d been to his office before. No one there had his face. I shook my head. “I know all of his employees.”
“His other business. Ensley, your husband was doing illegal procedures.” He grabbed the files he’d tried to show Detective Torres. “Like this.”
I opened the first file. It was medical records for a man named Aiden Brown. The man looked a little like my husband. I turned the page. There were sketches outlining a reconstruction procedure. The shaving down of his jaw. Tweaks to his nose. Even changes to his ears. The final effect was a picture of a man that almost looked identical to my husband. I looked up. “You’re Aiden?”
He nodded and handed me another file. This one was for a woman who looked a little like me.
The sketches of the procedures were on the next page. And on the next…a woman that looked so eerily like me that you could easily mistake us as the same person. Or was it me? I touched my cheek. Was I this woman? I wanted to claw my skin off. “Is this me?”
He grabbed my hand, his touch comforting. “No. That’s Sophia Tremblay. Your replacement.”
“My what?”
“It all came back to me this morning. When you said Sophia looked like you. That she had been beaten up. This woman.” He stabbed a finger at Sophia’s face. “She’s your replacement.”
I shook my head. Replacement?
“You knew that, Ensley. You knew your husband was cheating on you. It’s why you kidnapped me.”
I shook my head. I did know that. But this? The files felt heavy in my hand. He put my face on another woman. To steal my money. To leave me. That was insane. But I also believed it. Because for months I’d been suspicious that my husband had a doppelgänger. He’d tried to erase the memories. Swearing he was just cheating and that he’d stop. Promising it wasn’t true. But this was what he’d been doing behind closed doors. Creating monsters.
“I was supposed to keep you…preoccupied until he came back from Canada. But whenever I came around, you just peered at me through the dining room window like you were seeing a ghost. You wouldn’t let me inside.” He shook his head. “You finally answered one of my calls, agreeing to meet me at that bar on Friday night. I figured you knew I wasn’t your husband. But you didn’t even flinch when I said my name was Noah.”
I touched the side of my head. I remembered him coming around the house the past week. I’d thought I was staring through the glass at my husband’s ghost. And then I’d gone to the bar that night, wanting to believe he was real. I wanted to believe I hadn’t done something terrible. Because I never got my answers. I needed the fucking answers. “And what about my money?”
“He had this whole plan to use Sophia to steal all your money. That’s why he changed her face. To get access to your accounts through her. And I guess they covered their tracks afterwards by hurting her. To make her look less like you again in case they were contacted by the police.”
I shook my head. “He’d need my license. They wouldn’t just trust that she was just me without identification.”
“He took your license.”
I walked past him into the family room where I’d left my coat and purse. I rummaged through my purse and grabbed my wallet. The clear sleeve that always held my license was empty. I frantically pulled all my credit cards out. But my license wasn’t there. Son of a bitch. “Is the money with her?”
“Or him.” He shrugged. “I know you probably still have a million questions, but we need to get out of here. Before Dr. Collins comes back. If he finds out I told you the truth, he’ll kill both of us.”
I just stared at him. “Why did you agree to it?” I touched my own face to show him what I meant. I couldn’t say the words.
“I wanted an out. When he first started this, he was doing good. He was helping people without insurance. But it turned into something ugly. I owed a debt to your husband. But I never agreed to this crazy shit. I didn’t know he was drugging you. I didn’t know he hurt you. He said if I did this, he’d let me leave. Alive. Which was something that had become rare in the past year. All I had to do was run some errands pretending to be him. That was the deal. His face for freedom in a few months. You were supposed to be my last assignment.”
He changed his face for freedom? I didn’t blame him for that. I’d get plastic surgery on my whole body if it meant I could leave my husband.
“Like I said, we can talk about this in the car. But we really have to get going.”
“You still want to come with me?” I asked. “Even though you have your memories back?” For some reason, the face alterations made sense. But him wanting to escape with me? That was impossible.
“I meant every word I said the past few days.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“That’s not exactly true. Part of this assignment was to know everything about you. Yeah, I forgot when I fell down the stairs.” He said it like it was a question, probably still suspicious that I’d pushed him. “But I remember now. Your favorite color is green. Like the nursery color upstairs.”
Something in my throat constricted. My husband didn’t understand why I chose green. But Aiden had put the pieces together pretty easily.
“You fell in love with this neighborhood and the white picket fences. You inherited a hell of a lot of money when your grandparents passed away.” He shook his head. “You’re smart. And stubborn as hell. And so beautiful it hurts.”
I felt my cheeks heating.
“And you taste like cinnamon. The curve of your body fits perfectly against mine. You have a birthmark on the inside of you right thigh that looks like a heart. And I’m pretty sure I fell in love with you before we ever even met.”
I didn’t know whether he meant a word of it. Or if Snuggle Muffins was right and he had Stockholm syndrome. But it felt like my Grinch heart grew a few sizes. I barely knew a thing about this man. But God, how many years had I been hoping for a knight in shining armor to come save me from this hell.
I stepped forward and leaned my head against his chest.
He wrapped his strong arms around me.
I breathed in his familiar, yet different scent. He wasn’t scary like my husband. He wasn’t threatening my life. He was trying to save it. I’d been slowly slipping the past few days. Wanting to believe in a second chance. That I could still have a life that wasn’t in shambles. I love you too. I didn’t know if it was true, but I was pretty sure I loved him more than I had ever loved my husband.
“Now let’s get the hell out of here before your crazy ass husband comes home. I checked in with some of our colleagues and he hasn’t gotten back from Canada yet. But he could arrive any minute. And I’d feel a hell of a lot better if we could get a few states between us and him. Maybe we can clear up what happened to him too.
” He gestured to the hall behind him where Detective Torres was still passed out. “Figure out a way to make Detective Torres understand that none of this was your fault. But the distance will make me feel better, just in case he doesn’t understand.”
I took a deep breath. Aiden wasn’t my husband. And I wasn’t insane. It should have been a relief. But with a clear head came the most terrible realization of all. After what I’d done, I didn’t have a choice.
As Aiden grabbed the keys off Detective Torres’ belt and uncuffed me, all I wanted to do was run away from this mess. I ran my thumb along my wrist. For some reason, it still felt like the cuffs were on me. Shackling me to this house. Keeping me locked up in this nightmare.
“Come on, we have to go,” he said.
I didn’t move. “He already came back.”
“What?”
“My husband came back Tuesday.” I wrung my hands together. “I knew he was seeing someone behind my back. I knew he was up to something shady. And I was so freaking mad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I did something bad. And putting a few states between us and this house isn’t going to solve our problems.” Aiden wasn’t the first person that I drugged and tried to bring to the basement for questioning. But when I shoved my husband down the stairs…he didn’t just lose his memory. He lost his life. The blood seeped into the wooden steps. It had taken hours to scrub away all the stains. I didn’t know how I’d forgotten about it. Joyful moments were always easy to remember. And God, I’d never felt more joy than when I saw all that blood drain from my husband’s head.
He waited. I was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing.
“I killed him. Don’t look at me like that. He deserved it, and we both know it.”
Chapter 29
Monday
Aiden stared at me in a way that my husband never had. Almost as if he was frightened of me. It was weird being on the other side of someone’s fear. I was usually the one trembling. Until I realized I didn’t have to anymore. Until I took things into my own hands.