Chapter 3

I woke up to the smell of antiseptic and the steady beep of a machine. A hospital. My head throbbed, a dull, persistent ache. I tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness pushed me back down.

Who am I? Ethan Lester. I knew my name. I knew I came from a small, working-class house in East Austin. I remembered wanting to be a musician. But after that... it was a blur. A huge, five-year blank.

How did I get here? A nurse told me I was found collapsed at the Chadwick ranch.

Chadwick. The name meant something, but the connection was fuzzy, like a half-forgotten dream.

My phone was on the bedside table. I checked the emergency contacts. There was only one name: Jocelyn. I didn't recognize it, but a strange, hollow feeling echoed in my chest. I pressed the call button.

It rang twice before she picked up. "What do you want now, Ethan?"

Her voice was angry, impatient.

"I... I'm in the hospital," I said, my own voice sounding strange to me. "I don't remember..."

"Oh, for God's sake, stop it with your pathetic games! I don't have time for this!"

The line went dead. I tried to call back, but it went straight to voicemail. A text message popped up a second later.

[Don't contact me again.]

Then another.

[You've been blocked.]

I stared at the screen, completely lost. A man in a sharp, black suit entered the room. He introduced himself as Mr. Harrison, the head of staff at the Chadwick ranch.

"Ms. Chadwick sent me to settle your bill and take you back to the ranch," he said, his tone polite but distant.

"I don't think I should go back," I said, a sense of unease creeping over me. "I don't remember her."

Mr. Harrison's expression flickered with something like pity. "The doctor explained your condition. Partial amnesia. Perhaps returning to a familiar place will help."

He was persuasive, and I had nowhere else to go. Back at the ranch, in a bedroom that was supposedly mine, I found a laptop. I opened it, and there it was: a password-protected file labeled "Journal." On a hunch, I typed in "Jocelyn." Access granted.

It was five years of my life, written in my own words. Five years of thankless devotion. Five years of her calling me her "dog," her "charity case," her "disposable toy." Five years of a deep, painful love that she trampled on every single day.

Reading it didn't bring the memories back, but it solidified a feeling. A cold, hard detachment.

I was packing a small bag with the few things that felt like mine when the bedroom door burst open. It was her. Jocelyn. She looked tired and angry.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

I looked at her, at this stranger whose face was now linked to so much documented cruelty. "I'm leaving."

She scoffed, a truly ugly sound. "Leaving? Where are you going to go? Back to the gutter I found you in?" She turned to Mr. Harrison, who stood in the doorway. "Let him go. He'll come crawling back in a week, begging."

She watched me, expecting me to break, to plead.

I just zipped up my bag, walked past her without a word, and didn't look back.