My Husband Burned My Lover’s Building to Get Me Back

The fog didn’t lift gently; it shattered. For two years, my mind had been a room filled with cotton—muffled, white, shapeless. But when I opened my eyes that morning, the world was violently sharp. The intricate plaster molding on the ceiling wasn’t just a blur of shadows anymore; I could trace every acanthus leaf, every crack in the paint.

I was Everleigh Brooks. I was twenty-six. And three years ago, I had married Hudson Kelly.

The memories of the car accident slammed into me, followed by the humiliating realization of what I had become: a cognitively regressed invalid, a child in a woman’s body. My breath hitched, panic rising in my throat, but the sound of the bedroom door creaking open froze me. Instinct, primal and terrified, forced my eyelids down.

"She’s still asleep," Hudson’s voice said. It was deep, familiar, but stripped of the warmth I remembered from our engagement. Now, it carried the heavy friction of annoyance.

"She’s always asleep, Hudson. Or staring at walls. It’s pathetic." The second voice was like spun sugar laced with arsenic. Lila Hunt.

I felt the mattress dip as Hudson sat, not near me, but on the edge, as far away as possible. "Don't start, Lila. It’s complicated."

"It’s not," she countered, her heels clicking on the hardwood as she paced. "Put her in the facility upstate. The one with the high walls. She won't know the difference. She’s just... a broken doll, Hudson. You can’t play house with a vegetable forever."

"I promised her father," Hudson muttered, though his conviction was as thin as the silk sheets covering me. "Just give it a few more months."

"A few months turns into years," Lila whispered. I heard the rustle of fabric, the wet sound of a kiss. "I want to be Mrs. Kelly, Hudson. Realistically, I already am in every way that matters."

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I forced my breathing to remain shallow, rhythmic. They thought I was empty. If I revealed the light was back on, they wouldn’t celebrate; they would extinguish it.

***

By evening, the Kelly estate was a cacophony of crystal glasses and hollow laughter. It was a gala, ostensibly for charity, but really for the elite to preen. I was dressed in a pale pink chiffon dress that felt infantile, my hair tied back with a ribbon. I sat in a corner of the ballroom, clutching a glass of water, my face a mask of vacant innocence while my mind raced with cold, hard clarity.

"Look at her. Poor thing."

"Hudson is a saint for keeping her."

The whispers were loud, assuming I couldn’t understand. I focused on the condensation sliding down my glass to keep from screaming.

"Everleigh, darling!" Lila appeared, a vision in crimson silk that clung to her like a second skin. Her smile didn't reach her eyes; they were predatory. "Come. Let’s go look at the view. Hudson is busy."

She gripped my arm. Her nails