Chapter 2
After waking, I found the bedroom unnervingly cold and silent.
The ceiling light pierced my eyes.
I stared blankly at the ceiling, replaying everything that had happened.
I wondered if it had all been a drunk nightmare.
The alcohol hadn't fully worn off, and my head throbbed violently.
Struggling to find my phone, I made a call to Mateo.
"Mr. Lopez, is Maxine back in Harbor City?"
The line went quiet for a long moment before he sighed.
"Yes, Miss Anderson.
"Maxine... is getting married at the end of the year.
"He's in Harbor City to pick up his fiancée's parents."
So he really was back.
But wait, hadn't Maxine already married me?
Then it hit me. I'd forgotten one crucial detail.
We'd divorced.
Three years ago, we got married.
Two years ago, he came back covered in blood, and that was when we got divorced.
How could I have forgotten?
Two years ago, Maxine barely escaped alive from those drug dealers.
He'd left with his childhood friend Scott.
He returned missing two fingers, clutching an urn.
The urn held not Scott's ashes, but some charred fragments.
Scott's cover was blown just as their undercover mission was about to end.
The drug dealers skinned him alive and cut him apart piece by piece, torturing him for two days.
In the end, it was Maxine who delivered the mercy kill.
What remained of Scott was tossed into the sea.
The police soon received a tip and wiped out the largest drug ring on the border.
But one man never made it out of Newshore City.
Maxine came back with PTSD so severe that he'd forget or confuse many things.
But he'd never forget that he'd killed a man.
A man who should never have died.
His episodes of disorientation grew more frequent.
Hallucinations nearly got him killed multiple times.
Later, he tried to end his life again and again.
The third time, he bolted into traffic. He was rushed into the emergency room, his life hanging in the balance.
I sat outside the ER, waiting all night long.
When dawn broke, I finally decided to follow the advice of both the police and the doctors.
I would let him undergo hypnotherapy and make him forget everything from the past.
Everything, including me.
We arranged a therapist for him.
But his years as a narcotics officer had honed his instincts too sharply.
He quickly saw through our intentions and showed fierce resistance.
Maxine grew even more insecure and volatile.
Nights, he'd jolt awake from nightmares.
Once, in the dark, he'd fix me with a wary, helpless stare and ask.
"Katherine, you're trying to make me forget you, aren't you? Are you leaving me?"
My eyes welled up with tears for a moment.
I'd rather die than lose him.
But I knew that for him to survive, he had to let go of all the pain from the past, including me.
So in the dim moonlight, I kissed him gently and whispered.
"I promise, it's just therapy. You will never forget me."
He believed me.
We'd known each other since childhood.
From childhood friends to closest confidants, from lovers to life partners.
In all our twenty years together, I'd never once lied to him.
No one else in the world could earn his trust like that.
So he followed me into my psychotherapy room willingly.
When I handed him a thick stack of forms to sign, he didn't even glance at them.
He didn't notice the divorce papers slipped in among them. With this, he wouldn't know that he was ever married, let alone who I was.
I told him to lie on the therapy couch. He said it still smelled like me.
Trusting as always, he let me hypnotize him and deceive him into forgetting everything.