He Forgot Me for His Childhood Sweetheart

"What is she doing here, Callum?"

My voice shook as I stepped toward them. My fingers curled into fists so tight my nails bit into my skin.

Iris flinched, shrinking behind him like a wounded bird. Her eyes welled with tears that spilled down her cheeks on cue.

"Audrey, please don't be mad at him," Iris whispered, clutching Callum's sleeve. "I never meant to get in the way of your engagement. I swear I didn't. I'll just go. I don't want to ruin your happiness."

"Stop lying," I snapped, stepping closer. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew he had a fiancée before he woke up without his memory!"

"That's enough!" Callum barked.

He didn't hesitate. He thrust his arm out and grabbed my shoulder, yanking me violently away from Iris.

I lost my footing on the slick tile.

The edge of the hard oak side table rushed up to meet me.

A sharp crack echoed in the room as the corner slammed into my forehead. Pain exploded behind my eyes, blinding and white-hot.

Warm liquid trickled down my temple, running past my eyebrow and dripping over my cheek.

"Callum..."

I reached up blindly from the floor, my fingers grazing the hem of his jacket. I needed him to pull me up. I needed him to see what he had just done.

Callum slapped my hand away.

"Don't touch me," he snarled.

He didn't look down at me. Not once. His back stayed firmly turned to my bleeding face as he wrapped both arms around Iris, pulling her trembling frame tight against his chest.

"You're okay, Iris," he murmured, his voice softening into a tone he hadn't used on me since the crash. "I'm right here. She won't lay a finger on you."

"Callum, let me go," Iris sobbed into his collar, her voice muffled against his skin. "I can't do this. I'm not a home-wrecker. I won't let people call me the other woman. We have to stop this."

"You are not the other woman," Callum declared. His voice cut across the room, loud enough for every doctor and nurse outside the cracked door to hear. "And you aren't leaving."

He turned slightly, his jaw rigid, casting a look of pure disgust in my direction.

"The engagement is over," he said coldly. "Hear it loud and clear, Audrey. It's done. I'm not spending the rest of my life tied to a total stranger."

The silence in the room was deafening.

I pressed my trembling palm to my forehead, soaking my fingers in crimson. "A stranger? Callum, we spent seven years together—"

"I don't remember seven seconds of it," he cut me off. "Get out."

***

I sat on the white leather couch in my parents' living room, a sterile gauze pad taped over my brow.

My father slammed his glass onto the marble coffee table, shattering the base.

"He laid hands on you?" My father stood up, his face flushed with fury. "The Lancaster boy dared to draw your blood? I'm pulling every dime of our capital from their development firm tonight. We'll crush them in court."

"Arthur, calm down," my mother pleaded, though her eyes blazed with equal rage as she knelt beside me. "Look at our girl. Audrey, darling, why didn't you let the hospital call the police?"

"No," I whispered, clutching my mother's wrist. "Dad, don't cancel the contracts. Please."

My father stared at me in disbelief. "Are you out of your mind? He threw you into a table for another woman!"

"He has amnesia, Dad!" I cried, the tears finally burning through my pride. "The doctors told us his personality could fluctuate. He doesn't know who he is right now. If you destroy his family's business, he'll hate me forever. I still love him."

"Audrey, have some self-respect," my father said sharply.

"I can't just turn it off!" I shouted back. "Seven years don't vanish just because his head hit a steering wheel! Please... just talk to his parents. Let Uncle Richard handle it. Don't ruin him."

My father let out a harsh, bitter breath. He grabbed his phone off the table.

"Fine. But Richard Lancaster is going to answer for this tonight."

Within an hour, the call was made.

Callum's parents were utterly horrified. His mother wept over the speakerphone, apologizing over and over, while Richard Lancaster roared with shame. They cursed Iris as an opportunistic parasite preying on a brain-damaged man. They promised my father that Callum would be forced to end whatever madness had started in that hospital, and that he would come to our doorstep on his knees to beg for my forgiveness.

I thought their intervention might wake Callum up.

I was wrong.

My phone screen lit up on my lap barely twenty minutes later. Callum's name flashed on the caller ID.

I answered instantly. "Callum?"

"Are you happy now?" His voice was venomous, vibrating through the receiver.

"What?"

"You ran straight home to cry to your parents like a pathetic, spoiled coward," he sneered. "My father just barged into my room threatening to cut me out of the family will if I don't crawl back to you."

"Callum, I didn't want them to threaten you—"

"Shut up!" he barked. "You make me sick, Audrey. You're despicable. You can't win my affection on your own, so you use your family's money and my parents to trap me? You're disgusting."

"I was bleeding, Callum! You shoved me into a table!"

"You threw yourself at me to play the victim!" he shouted. "Iris would never pull a stunt like this. Don't you dare call this number again."

The line went dead with a sharp click.

"Callum? Callum!"

I dropped the phone. The humiliation burned hotter than the gash on my forehead. He thought I staged it. He thought I was weaponizing our parents out of malice.

I couldn't let it sit like that. I couldn't let him rewrite the truth in his head.

I grabbed my coat, slipped past my parents' study, and drove through the dark streets back to the hospital.

The hospital corridor on the third floor was empty, the overhead lights dimmed for the night. I walked briskly toward room 302, rehearsing my words under my breath. I would tell him the truth calmly. I would make him look at me and listen.

I reached the doorway.

The heavy wooden door stood half an inch ajar.

A sharp, ragged gasp slipped through the crack.

"Callum... fuck, right there..."

My footsteps froze. My blood turned to ice water in my veins.

I nudged the door open just a millimeter wider.

The room was lit only by the pale glow of the streetlamps outside the window. Iris was sprawled across Callum's hospital bed, her white blouse ripped completely open, bunched uselessly beneath her armpits. Dark, purplish bruises and bite marks covered the pale skin of her neck and chest.

Callum hovered over her, his broad shoulders blocking half the mattress. He had both hands gripping her thighs, spreading her open as his mouth clamped down on her left breast.

He groaned into her flesh, sucking hard, his jaw working rhythmically. The wet, slick sounds of his tongue and lips pulling at her swollen nipple filled the quiet room.

"Callum... harder..." Iris whimpered, arching her back off the sheets.

Then, her eyes fluttered open.

Through the narrow crack in the door, Iris locked eyes with me.

She didn't startle. She didn't gasp, and she didn't try to pull her shirt over her bare, saliva-slicked chest.

Instead, a slow, venomous smirk spread across her lips. Keeping her gaze pinned directly on my face, Iris buried both hands into Callum's dark hair, thrusting her bare breast deeper into his ravenous mouth.

Callum pulled back for a fraction of a second, breathing heavily, his lips glistening wet in the dim light. He gripped her waist tightly, his fingers sinking into her bare skin.

"I'll break this engagement completely," he whispered against her bare skin, loud enough to cut through the quiet room. "Nobody is ever taking you away from me again."