XSTORIES4U: Tales of Love, Lies, and Betrayal - Book 2

Part 3 Unexpected Return: Caught My Husband Marrying My Twin!

I was supposed to be out of town for a work conference, but a last-minute cancellation brought me home unexpectedly. As I walked through the garden towards the backyard, I heard familiar laughter and music. Peeking through the hedges, my heart stopped. There they were, my husband and my twin sister, holding hands beneath an arch of roses, exchanging vows in an intimate ceremony. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him slide a ring onto her finger, the same ring I thought he had lost months ago. Their eyes sparkled with a love I hadn't seen in our marriage for years. Rage and betrayal surged through me, but I couldn't look away. When they kissed, a sickening realization hit me: every business trip, every late-night work call, it was all a facade. I stumbled back, trying to make sense of it all, when a hand clamped on my shoulder. Spinning around, I found my mother, eyes filled with tears. "They've been waiting for you," my mother whispered, her voice trembling as much as mine felt.

I blinked, confusion overtaking the fury in my chest. "What?"

"They've been waiting for you to accept the truth," she continued, her grip on my shoulder tightening. "You've been gone for so long. We didn't know how else to tell you."

My heart pounded, adrenaline crashing with bewilderment. "What truth, Mom? What are you talking about?"

She looked at me with a mix of pity and sadness, brushing a tear from her cheek. "Honey, this isn't real. You've been in a coma for almost two years. The accident... it took everything from you. The life you remember, the husband you think betrayed you—it's all just a fragment of the world your mind created."

My knees buckled, the ground spinning beneath me. "No... no, this is real. I'm here, right now!"

"Not in the way you think," she said gently, guiding me towards a bench by the garden. "This is the life your mind built while your body was healing. But they couldn't wait for you forever. Your sister... she loved him too. And he couldn't live in limbo, not knowing if you'd ever wake up."

Tears welled in my eyes as I looked back through the hedges at the scene I'd just witnessed. My husband, my twin sister, the vows. Was any of it real? Or was I the one who had been lost in a dream?

"They moved on, sweetheart. They had to," my mother whispered, as the world around me seemed to blur. "But it's time for you to wake up now."

A sharp pain shot through my chest, and suddenly everything began to collapse—the garden, the roses, the arch. It all fell away like crumbling pieces of a dream dissolving in daylight.

The last thing I heard was my mother's voice, fading into an echo: "Wake up..."

With a gasp, I opened my eyes to the blinding light of a hospital room. Monitors beeped, nurses rushed around me, and I realized—this time, I was really awake. But nothing, and no one, was waiting for me.