Chapter 1

My boyfriend, Zach, woke up from a car accident with temporary amnesia.

The catch? He mistook my best friend, Chloe, for his fiancée.

To keep him from suffering any more brain trauma, the doctor suggested I play along.

So, I had to swap identities with my best friend.

We agreed to only act the part. No intimacy. No real relationship.

We were just supposed to wait until Zach got his memory back, and then everything would return to normal.

But six months passed.

Zach showed absolutely no signs of getting better.

Until today, when I was mindlessly scrolling through Reddit and stumbled upon a trending advice post.

[I got into a car crash, lost my memory, and mistook my girlfriend's best friend for my actual girlfriend. Now that I have my memory back, I realized I've actually fallen in love with the best friend. How do I explain this to my original girlfriend?]

The top comment, which had thousands of upvotes, offered a piece of advice:

[Keep faking the amnesia, obviously! It's the perfect chess move. If things go well, you get the best friend. If you regret it later, you can just pretend you "just" got your memory back.]

The poster had liked that comment.

And the username of the poster belonged to Zach.

I looked up just as Zach and Chloe walked through the front door.

He was carrying several grocery bags, following closely behind Chloe.

When he looked at her, the adoration in his eyes was so thick it practically spilled onto the floor.

As it turned out, Zach had stopped acting a long time ago.

He had made the lie his reality.