The mainland was less than an hour away by boat. We docked at a small marina, the salty breeze carrying a strange sense of familiarity. Narrow streets wound between colorful buildings, the hum of life pressing in around us.

  “Anything feel familiar?” I asked, trying to ignore the unease of being surrounded by strangers when we didn’t even know ourselves.

  Before Byron could answer, a wave of tourists surged past, pushing us closer together. His hand hovered near the small of my back, not quite touching, but close enough to steady me.

  “This way,” he murmured, nodding toward a quieter side street.

  We had barely turned the corner when a cyclist sped by, missing me by inches. Byron reacted instantly, catching me and pulling me against him. My hands gripped his arms on instinct, steadying myself.

  “You okay?” His voice was low, steady. He didn’t let go right away.

  I looked up, suddenly aware of how close we were, of the flecks of gold in his eyes I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Neither of us moved for a beat too long. His hands remained on my waist, warm and steady.

  A car horn blared nearby, breaking the moment. We stepped apart, but something between us had shifted.

  Then my stomach growled, loudly.

  “Food first, detective work second,” I declared.

  We wandered until we found a small restaurant with blue awnings and potted plants lining the entrance. A waitress greeted us with a warm smile and led us to a table, without offering menus.

  “She knows us,” Byron murmured as she walked away.

  “Or maybe they just seat people first, then bring menus?” I suggested.

  But a few minutes later, the waitress returned with two plates, seafood pasta for Byron, a spicy curry for me.

  We hadn’t ordered.

  “Excuse me,” I said, catching her attention. “We didn’t order yet.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Tuesday, isn’t it? You always have the curry on Tuesdays, and Dr. Evans always gets the frutti di mare.”

  Byron and I exchanged startled glances.

  “We’re… regulars here?” he asked carefully.

  “Every Tuesday for the past two years,” she confirmed, now looking concerned. “Is everything all right?”

  “Just… testing your memory,” I said with a nervous laugh. “You passed!”

  She chuckled but still seemed unconvinced as she moved to another table.

  I leaned in, heart pounding. “We live here,” I whispered. “In this town. We have routines, habits.”

  Byron took a bite of his pasta, his expression shifting. “And excellent taste in restaurants,” he said.

  After lunch, we set out to find the address on the postcard. It wasn’t far. When we arrived, we found the apartment building’s entrance locked. With no way in, we decided to wait for someone to come out and slip inside.

  It didn’t take long. The elevator dinged, and a slim Spanish man stepped out.

  “Sylvie! Byron!” he called, waving enthusiastically. His accent carried a soft Spanish lilt. “Where have you two been hiding? I haven’t seen you in days!”

  We exchanged glances before cautiously stepping forward.

  “Uh… hey, you,” I said, far too lamely.

  His eyebrows shot up as he took in our blank expressions. Then, with a dramatic gasp, he said, “You did it again, didn’t you?”

  “Did what again?” Byron asked warily.

  “Messed up your memories,” the man replied, twirling a finger near his temple. Then he burst into laughter. “It’s Miguel! Your neighbor and favorite home cook? The guy who makes the paella you’d kill for? You two are absolutely nuts.”

  “Right! Miguel!” Byron said, forcing enthusiasm. “We’ve been… busy.”

  “I think he looks nuts,” I said, nodding toward Byron. “I, on the other hand, am perfectly normal.”

  Miguel laughed even harder. “That’s rich coming from you, Sylvie. You’re usually the one who suggests this memory-erasing madness in the first place.”

  “What?” I turned to Byron accusingly, as if this were somehow his fault.

  Miguel wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “So, did you two finally stop fighting long enough to take a vacation?”

  “Fighting?” I echoed.

  Miguel nodded. “You never stop! Always bickering, always competing. But I always tell everyone, that’s just how you show love, right?”

  I sneaked a glance at Byron, who looked as startled as I felt. So we were known for fighting… and for experimenting with our own memories.

  “Miguel,” Byron said carefully, “how much do you know about… what we do?”

  Miguel smirked. “Enough to know I shouldn’t know anything,” he said with a wink. “You scientists and your confidentiality agreements. All I know is sometimes you show up acting like strangers, and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I forced a smile. “Well, we should probably get going.”

  “Don’t be strangers!” Miguel called after us. “Well… more than you already are to yourselves!”

  His laughter followed us down the street.

  The adventure was just beginning, and we had no idea how deep the rabbit hole would go.

  “So, we live here… and we’re scientists who experiment on memories,” I said, trying to piece it together.

  “If we’re messing with memory, that probably makes us neuroscientists,” Byron said.

  “I think you might be right. Those books in the island house are mostly about neuroscience,” I replied. “There should be clues in that apartment about our work.”

  A thought was forming. I glanced at Byron, holding onto the idea. “Let’s try other ways first,” I suggested. “If we don’t find any other clues, then we’ll figure out how to get inside.”

  Byron smirked. “Right. And since we don’t have our keys, you’re saying we should break in?”

  “It’s our home,” I countered. “How is getting back into our own place considered breaking in?”

  As we walked through town, more pieces fell into place. A woman greeted me like I was her yoga student. A man nodded at Byron, mentioning something about “those lab results.”

  “Everyone seems to know us,” I said slowly, “but no one finds it weird that we don’t remember them.”

  “Maybe because we’re acting like we do?” Byron hesitated. “Or maybe… memory loss isn’t that unusual for us.”

  A bad feeling crept over me.

  It felt like we were the town’s infamous crazy scientist couple.

  No, a crazy scientist and his normal wife. I corrected my thought.

  As the streetlamps flickered on, Byron exhaled. “We should find somewhere to stay for the night. Pick this up again tomorrow.”

  We found a small hotel, but, of course, there was only one room available.

  “It’s fine,” I said, though my heart beat a little faster. “We’ve already been sharing a house.”

  The room was cozy, one bed, a small balcony overlooking the harbor. Byron stepped outside while I showered. When I joined him, wrapped in the hotel’s plush robe, he was leaning against the railing, watching the lights ripple across the water.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, stepping beside him.

  “It feels familiar,” he murmured. “Like I’ve stood here before. With you.”

  I turned to him, surprised. “You remember something?”

  “Not exactly. Just a feeling.” He faced me fully, the soft glow from the street below casting his expression in quiet vulnerability. “I feel like I’ve known you much longer than three days.”

  “Maybe you have,” I whispered.

  He hesitated, then reached up, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered against my cheek.

  “Sylvie,” he said softly, like he was testing the name, making sure it fit. “Who were we to each other?”

  Instead of answering, I closed the distance between us.

  Our lips met, tentative at first, then with growing certainty. His arms encircled me, pulling me close. It felt like coming home to a place I’d never been.

  When we finally broke apart, breathless, he rested his forehead against mine.

  “I think,” he murmured, “that answers my question.”

  The next morning, we continued our search through the city, walking side by side, our shoulders occasionally brushing. Unlike yesterday’s awkwardness, today the contact felt natural. Welcome.

  Without really thinking about it, I reached for his hand. His fingers intertwined with mine, fitting perfectly.

  “Is this weird?” I asked. “Falling for someone when you don’t even know who you are? Who they are?”

  Byron considered this, his thumb tracing slow circles on the back of my hand. “Maybe it’s more real this way. No preconceptions. No baggage. Just… connection.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Well, when you put it like that…”

  Without warning, Byron yanked me into a shadowed doorway. His hands cradled my face with surprising tenderness before his lips crashed against mine. Every nerve in my body sparked to life as I fisted his shirt in both hands.

  When we finally parted, he smirked. “Sorry,” he said, not looking sorry at all. “I’ve been wanting to do that again since last night.”

  I laughed, straightening his collar. “No complaints here.”

  A passerby smiled as she walked past. “You two are adorable.”

  “Apparently, we make a cute couple,” I said.

  “Even without knowing who we are,” Byron agreed, lacing his fingers through mine as we stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  And then we saw them, three people in lab coats, watching us from across the street. The moment they realized we’d spotted them, they ducked into a building.

  NEURONOVA LABS.

  “Our colleagues?” Byron guessed.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  We followed them to a nondescript building marked with the same name.

  Inside, the receptionist looked up in surprise. “Doctors! We weren’t expecting you today.”

  “Just… checking in,” I improvised.

  The halls felt oddly familiar. My fingers knew which buttons to press in the elevator before my brain did. We passed a wall lined with photographs, conference presentations, award ceremonies, each featuring us.

  “We’re not just employees,” Byron murmured, examining a plaque. “We founded this place.”

  Before we could process that, a woman with bright red hair cornered us in the break room, arms crossed.

  “So?” she asked, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “How’s the experiment going?”

  “Experiment?” Byron echoed.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Don’t play dumb. The memory wipe? The bet? Ring any bells?”

  We stared at her.

  “Wow,” she said, shaking her head. “You really did it properly, huh?”

  She lowered her voice. “Look, I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything until you found this place. Those were your explicit instructions.” She sighed. “I’m Alex. Your research partner. Now that you’re here, I can answer certain questions.”

  “Alex,” I repeated, trying to force the name into something familiar. It didn’t fit.

  Reluctantly, she explained.

  We had been testing our own technology, a targeted memory erasure system designed for PTSD patients.

  “You two had this ridiculous argument,” she said. “About whether people who are meant to be together would find each other again, even without their memories.”

  I stared at her. “And our solution was to test it on ourselves?”

  “You’re both the most stubborn, competitive people I’ve ever met,” Alex confirmed. “You set a two-week timeline. If you fall in love again and say the trigger phrase, your memories return instantly. Game over.” She paused. “Otherwise, we restore your memories at the end of your vacation leave, two weeks. That way, it's a draw, no winners, no losers.”

  Byron and I avoided looking at each other.

  “What’s the trigger phrase?” Byron asked.

  Alex laughed. “Nice try. That would be cheating.”

  “So we’re guinea pigs in our own experiment,” I said slowly. “We erased our memories of each other… for a bet?”

  “And of yourselves,” Alex added. “You wanted a clean slate, to see if you’d be drawn to each other naturally, without any history.”

  “That’s insane,” Byron said.

  “That’s you two in a nutshell,” Alex replied with a shrug. “Brilliant, passionate, and completely reckless when you’re trying to prove each other wrong.”

  She handed us our apartment keys and IDs.

  "This is ridiculous. We used our vacation to turn ourselves into guinea pigs," I said, watching Byron stir a pot of pasta in the kitchen. "You really are a mad scientist."

  He didn’t look up. "Not just me. We are," he corrected, giving the sauce a careful stir. "But you have to admit, self-targeting memory erasure that leaves basic functions intact? That’s groundbreaking."

  I crossed my arms. "Sure. But what exactly was the bet? Which one of us thought we wouldn’t fall in love again?"

  Byron handed me a plate. "Based on what everyone’s said about us fighting all the time, I’m guessing I was the skeptic."

  "And I believed in destiny," I murmured. "In us."

  His eyes met mine, and for a second, something electric passed between us.

  "Maybe it’s better this way," he said quietly. "Getting to know each other again, without whatever baggage we had."

  In the days that followed, things shifted between us.

  We worked together to reconstruct our past, sifting through old emails, research papers, anything that might reveal who we were. We discovered that we had been together since university, partners in every sense of the word.

  "We were brilliant together," I said one evening, reading through a paper we co-wrote on neural pathway reconstruction.

  "Are brilliant," Byron corrected.

  He was standing close, too close. I could smell the faint trace of his soap, feel the warmth of him beside me.

  Four days before the deadline, we got trapped in an elevator at Neuronova Labs.

  The power flickered, then cut out entirely, leaving only the dim emergency lights casting an eerie glow.

  "Perfect," I muttered, slumping against the wall.

  "Could be hours," Byron sighed, sliding down next to me. "It’s Sunday. Skeleton crew."

  With nothing else to do, we talked, really talked, for the first time.

  Without knowing our history, without the weight of old arguments, we just… connected.

  He told me what he’d figured out about himself over the past week. I shared my own discoveries. We laughed, a lot.

  And then, somewhere between shared confessions and easy silence, he kissed me.

  It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  By the time they rescued us three hours later, everything had changed.

  The rest of our experiment passed in a blur.

  During the day, we worked in the lab, piecing together our research. At night, we rediscovered each other. It felt new and familiar all at once, like déjà vu.

  "I think I loved you before," I murmured, tracing the outline of his face in the darkness.

  Byron caught my hand, his voice soft. "I think I never stopped."

  The night before our two weeks were up, we laid everything out.

  "So if I say the trigger phrase, we get our memories back instantly," I summarized.

  "And if you were right, that we'd fall in love again, then I have to do all the chores for a year and obey your every command for six months," Byron added with a grimace.

  I grinned. "That sounds promising."

  Then I froze. "Wait. We never actually figured out what the trigger phrase is."

  Byron shrugged. "I don’t mind."

  "Of course you don’t. You’ll lose," I shot back. "Help me."

  "Help you come up with the phrase that makes me your slave for half a year? No way."

  I narrowed my eyes. "What if you get it right, and we cut the punishment in half?"

  That got his attention.

  We speculated wildly. I love you? Too obvious. Neuronova? Too work-related. Remember? Too on-the-nose.

  The next morning, our colleagues were waiting in the lab, ready to restore our memories.

  "Time’s up," Alex announced. "Ready to remember?"

  Byron and I exchanged glances.

  Part of me didn’t want to go back. What if things weren’t the same? What if we started fighting again? What if we weren’t us anymore?

  "Just to be clear," Byron said, looking at Alex, "we didn’t say the trigger phrase. So technically, neither of us won the bet."

  Alex raised an eyebrow. "If you say so."

  The procedure was quick. One moment, I was sitting in the lab chair. The next, everything flooded back, our first meeting, our research breakthroughs, the highs and lows of our relationship. The endless competition. The passionate reconciliations. The stupid argument that started all of this.

  Byron’s eyes widened as his memories returned.

  "You tricked me!" he accused.

  "What? How did I trick you?" I demanded.

  "You knew we’d fall in love again! That’s why you suggested this whole experiment! "

  "Well, duh!" I threw up my hands. "Because we’re perfect for each other, even when we’re driving each other crazy!"

  Our colleagues exchanged knowing looks and quietly left the room.

  I exhaled. "Whatever. I’m getting coffee. You want one?"

  I had won, hadn’t I? But since we’d called it a draw, it felt like a king without a crown.

  In the small kitchen, I overheard Alex’s voice.

  "The trigger phrase was 'You win.'" She smirked. "I knew it would be a draw. Neither of them could ever bring themselves to say it to the other. That was the joke."

  I froze. My eyes widened. That phrase… Byron had suggested it.

  I whirled around. "You tricked me!"

  Byron leaned against the doorframe, smirking. "But you were right. And you made me wear those Star Wars pajamas! " Then, before I could retort, he pulled me into a hug.

  We stared at each other for a beat, then, simultaneously, burst out laughing.

  "That’s actually pretty smart," Byron admitted.

  "So we’re both losers," I said.

  "Or both winners." He pulled me closer. "I think I can live with that."

  I smiled against his lips. "You’re still doing the dishes for a year."

  "We’ll negotiate," he murmured, then kissed me again.

  Some things never changed. Memory wiped or not.

  The End