He Pushed Me Into the Sea, So I Forgot Him

On my birthday, my fiancé pushed me off a yacht to make another woman laugh.

Miles Hart was Boston's most notorious heir. I had loved him for three years. I had said yes when he proposed.

I nearly drowned as a child. And he knew I was terrified of deep water. I had told him I didn't want a birthday party at sea — he talked me into it anyway.

I trusted him enough to step aboard. Even when I saw Lila Cross among our friends, I told myself it was just Miles being Miles.

It never crossed my mind that he would hurt me.

The push came without warning. One moment he was beside me; the next, the deck tilted and the water closed over my head.

I surfaced once, choking, and saw Lila at the rail in her white dress.

She covered her mouth, but I could see her smile. Miles laughed beside her.

"Nora! Come on," he called. "Lila's had her fun. You can stop pretending now."

I tried to tell him I couldn't swim. Water filled my mouth instead. I kicked toward the yacht, but it drifted farther away.

"Miles, I think she's really drowning!" someone shouted.

A life ring hit the water beyond my reach. Then the hull and the faces at the rail disappeared.

I remember hands hauling me over the rail, someone pressing on my chest, seawater in my throat, and then nothing.

I woke in a hospital bed with a pounding headache. The room smelled of disinfectant. Miles hurried to me and took my hand.

"Nora. Thank God. I thought you weren't going to wake up."

I pulled my hand free and stared at him.

"Who are you?"

The relief left his face.

"It's me. Miles Hart. Your boyfriend." He laughed, but it faltered when I drew the blanket up to my chest.

"Look, I shouldn't have pushed you. You're fine now. So you can drop the act."

"My boyfriend is Adrian Vale," I said. "I don't know you."

He slammed his fist on the bedside table.

Adrian had been his rival since childhood — the one man he'd never managed to beat. Hearing Adrian's name from me hurt him more than my fear did.

I called for help when Miles came closer. A nurse ushered him into the corridor while a doctor examined me.

I answered the doctor's questions and rested. He told Miles that after an accident of this kind, symptoms could be hard to assess. I needed time, not an interrogation.

Miles demanded to know why I could name Adrian if I'd forgotten him.

The doctor didn't give him the answer he wanted. Instead he told Miles to stop upsetting me.

Not ten minutes later, he was back.

"I only pushed you into the sea." he leaned over me, gripping my shoulders. "Say my name. If you can name Adrian Vale, you can say mine."

The nurses pulled him away. One of them blocked the doorway. "You don't come in here again unless she asks for you."

By the time my parents arrived that evening, the nurses had stationed themselves outside my door.

Miles hadn't told them about the yacht. The Hart Group depended on my father's investment, and I'd been the one keeping its projects running.

Even Miles understood what my family could do if they knew how I'd ended up in the water.

"Nora's pretending," he told them. "She says she doesn't recognize me."

Three years. Three years I had loved him — and on that deck he had brought Lila drinks, offered her fruit, handed her the first slice of my cake.

Now he stood beside my bed telling my parents I was the one lying.

My mother knelt beside the bed. "Sweetheart, do you know us?"

"Of course I know you. Both of you."

They both exhaled. Then came the question I'd been dreading — why I'd gotten on that yacht at all when they knew I was frightened of water.

Miles appeared in the doorway before I could answer. I shrank back against my mother.

"Don't let him touch me. He keeps saying he's my boyfriend. He's not. My boyfriend is Adrian."

My mother looked from me to Miles.

He tried to smile like it was all a mix-up. But I'd seen what happened when he heard Adrian's name.

They showed me pictures on their phones. I recognized my parents and Adrian. I denied knowing the man beside me in three years' worth of photographs.

Miles watched with his jaw clenched.

My parents looked to the doctor, searching for an explanation he couldn't promise them.

They knew I had loved Miles. They still didn't know how I'd ended up in the water.

And I couldn't say any of it with him standing in the doorway, hearing every word I might let slip.