I Married the Wrong Brother

I went to sleep at eighteen and woke up ten years later—before I'd even gotten the chance to confess to my crush. Now I had money. I also had a husband.

Then my "husband," as the nurse called him, pushed the door open—and it was Todd, the untouchable golden boy from high school who'd never had a single thing to do with me. "I didn't know you'd been in a car accident." He looked at me quietly. "Your sister twisted her ankle.

I was rushing her over here and never checked my phone." I looked at the photo on my phone again. In it, he and my stepsister were pressed close together.

No matter how I looked at it, it didn't seem like an ordinary relationship. Ten years later, I was married, and it looked like my stepsister had settled down too.

Everything seemed to have the most reasonable explanation. So I said politely, "I understand.

Thanks for going to the trouble, brotherinlaw." Todd's expression changed instantly. "What did you call me?" I stared at him blankly.

If not brotherinlaw, what was I supposed to call him—husband? Chapter 1 Todd didn't make a sound. The atmosphere in the hospital room turned strange in an instant.

I lowered my head and felt around for my phone. All I could feel was a cold, searching gaze pinned on me. A few seconds passed.

He strode closer, reached out with long, elegant fingers, and gently slid out the phone that had been tucked under my pillow.

I hurried to take it from him. "Oh, thanks…" I didn't keep grossing myself out by calling him brotherinlaw.

After all, the relationship between my stepsister Janelle and me was practically a blood feud. Honestly, the moment I first saw Todd just now, my brain froze.

A second later, the denial came: No way. Absolutely not. I would never in a million years marry him. Back in high school, we weren't even in the same class.

At most, we'd passed each other in the hallway a few times. We didn't know each other at all. I actually found him pretty annoying.

Once, I saw it with my own eyes: he bent down, picked up a hair tie Janelle had dropped on the ground, and clutched it tight in his hand. He stared at it for a long time.

Then he carefully tucked it into his pocket. Like he'd found some kind of treasure. It was very windy that day, and I'd been standing not far away a little too long.

He looked up and caught me. His gaze cooled instantly. He pressed his lips coldly together and walked past me without a word. Guys like Todd.

Eyecatching looks, topoftheclass grades. Who knew how many girls had secret crushes on him. But he always carried himself with that aloof, keepyourdistance coldness.

So even an arrogant genius like him had a secret crush. And that person was my stepsister. Having stumbled onto a boy's secret, I couldn't help curling my lip.

Todd's taste in girls? Absolutely rotten. Because of the love and hate tangled up in our parents' generation, Janelle and I couldn't stand each other.

Five years earlier, my mom had died. My dad couldn't wait to marry her mom. In that house, I became the one nobody needed. Everyone in the family thought so. Especially Janelle.

She was best at putting on a pitiful act, praising me on the surface while tearing me down underneath. She made it look like I bullied her all day long.

Thanks to her, my dad found plenty of reasons to cut my allowance. Because I hated Janelle so much, I kept my distance from Todd too.

As far as I was concerned, anyone who liked Janelle was as annoying as Janelle.

So when Todd walked in and the first word out of his mouth was Janelle, that photo of them holding each other flashed through my head right away. I let out a huge breath of relief.

I had someone I liked. There was no way I'd ever like Todd. If I put him in the role of Janelle's husband, everything made a lot more sense.

Chapter 2 There was just one thing I couldn't quite figure out. I got into a car accident, and Janelle's husband had to come visit me?

Could it be that ten years later, she and I were putting on some lovingsisters act? In the old days, she'd have been thrilled if I'd just been run over and killed.

Luckily, I was blessed with good fortune, and it wasn't my time to go. A car accident right before I timetraveled, and I got hit again ten years later.

Thankfully it was only a mild concussion. I unlocked my phone with Face ID. I casually opened the photo gallery, and a wedding photo popped up. The subject of the photo was me.

Next to me stood a man with his back to the camera—probably my legal husband. But that back… why did it look so familiar… My hand shook. My head snapped up.

Todd stood straight in front of the bed, eyelids slightly lowered. The way he looked at me was appraising. "Charlotte Prentiss—" he started. My head filled with a buzzing roar.

I didn't catch a word of what he said. The door to the room was open, and at some point, someone else had shown up.

A man leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, watching the show. He looked like he was enjoying the spectacle. His handsome, cleancut face wore a hint of an amused smile.

My gaze went past Todd and met his. My heart pounded harder with every beat. Thurston. The heartthrob of the high school next door, and the guy I'd secretly liked for so long.

What was he doing here? A bold idea slowly surfaced. I gripped my phone and gathered my courage. Tentatively, I called to him. "Husband?" The air went silent.

The smile at the corner of Thurston's mouth slowly froze. He straightened up. It was the first time I'd ever spoken to Thurston facetoface.

I looked at him nervously, my heart pounding like a drum. I'd never known a heartbeat could be so loud.

I'd just been about to confess, then I timetraveled overnight and found out my crush had turned into my husband.

Guess that Temu popup calling me today's lucky winner wasn't lying after all. Thurston's expression was weird in a way I couldn't put my finger on.

He narrowed his eyes and, of all things, asked the same question. "What did you call me?" Ten years later, Thurston had shed his boyish rawness.

His shirt hung lazily open, the top two buttons undone. Paired with that fair, beautiful face, it gave him a touch of cool, untouchable allure.

I covered my burning cheeks. "Ththen what do I usually call you? Baby? Honey?" Thurston burst out laughing.

Beside him, Todd's face went dark as a thundercloud. "Are you even listening to me?" I turned to look at him.

Sensing his notexactlyfriendly attitude, I was a little baffled. "Go find Janelle.

There's—probably nothing here you need to worry about, right?" Before I timetraveled here, I was only eighteen, still at the age where I didn't know how to say things tactfully.

I was even a little annoyed that he was standing there as a third wheel. Thurston couldn't hold back a laugh and walked over.

He patted Todd on the shoulder. "Hey, big bro." My anger fizzled out. I was completely stunned. These two were actually brothers? My brain raced through the possibilities.

I finally understood why Todd had reacted so strongly when I called him brotherinlaw. So he wasn't my sister's husband at all—he was my husband's big brother?

I immediately sat up straight. I was just about to say something.

Thurston looked at me again, his beautiful eyes curving as he smiled. "Sisinlaw." "You usually just call me Thurston." Todd looked at me too, his eyes cold enough to freeze. "Charlotte Prentiss, are you thinking clearly yet?" … I knew every one of those words on its own.

Put together, why couldn't I make sense of them? Chapter 3 My fingertip brushed the screen by accident and swiped to the next photo. It was a stamped marriage certificate.

In the bride's field, my name was written clear as day. And in the groom's field, printed in big letters: Todd Hartwell. I was silent for a long time.

Finally, I tugged at the corner of my mouth and said, refusing to accept fate: "I don't believe it." Before I timetraveled here, I'd still been working on my love letter to Thurston.

The giddy, fluttering feeling was still vivid. He was the only person I'd ever liked in my whole life.

If I'd really ended up marrying Todd, there was only one possibility— Revenge on Janelle. I'd known for ages that she had a secret crush on Todd.

One year, in the dead of winter, the washing machine at home broke. The repairman kept not showing up. My stepmom said snidely that the adults were busy earning money.

Janelle still had to go to dance class, so they just dumped the whole family's laundry on me to wash by hand. My spineless dad always did whatever his wife said.

That stifling feeling of living under someone else's roof, not even daring to fight back, humiliatingly crushed every bit of my teenage rebellion.

I didn't even have the right to say no. It was while I was doing that laundry that a note fell out of Janelle's jacket. It was covered with Todd's name and hers. In her handwriting.

In the most cliché way, she'd circled their names with a heart. Her adoration was written all over it. So it was a mutual secret crush.

Anyone else might have been moved to tears by now. Too bad I was Janelle's sworn enemy. I didn't care why neither of them had ever made a move.

But there was no way I was going to play matchmaker for them. They liked each other? Then they could miss their chance.

With a blank face, I crumpled the note into a ball and tossed it in the trash. As far as I was concerned, it had never happened.

After thinking it over, I was still a little too mad to let it go. So I snuck around and cut a small hole in the pockets of everyone's clothes. Todd called the doctor over.

Time travel was way beyond the realm of science. Faced with my strange condition, the doctor studied me for a long time.

In the end, he reluctantly came up with a halfway reasonable diagnosis. "Ms. Prentiss, this is most likely traumainduced retrograde amnesia.

Head trauma can sometimes erase a block of recent autobiographical memory." With a faint, deadinside air, I took the easy way out he'd handed me. "Yes.

I only remember things from ten years ago, right around when I'd just graduated from high school." Both men's faces changed. Thurston looked thoughtful.

Todd glanced at me, his lips pressed into a tight line. At the end of it, a phone call pulled him away. A little girl's clear, bright voice faintly came through the other end.

He turned and walked out of the room. He answered in a low voice, a trace of gentleness showing on his face. I watched Todd leave.

A horrifying guess suddenly popped into my head, and I stammered: "That kid… it's not mine and his… is it…" Thurston sat down by my bed and kindly explained, "Janelle's." I froze.

Why did I suddenly feel like the one getting cheated on? "Todd and Janelle's?" He casually picked up an apple and started peeling it. "Janelle and her exhusband's.

It has nothing to do with my brother." Even so. I still felt awful—awful and grossed out. Future me, what on earth are you doing?

Even if it was revenge on Janelle, there was no need to go as far as stealing Todd. Using a move that disgusting would hurt me more than it ever hurt her.

Thurston handed me the peeled apple. "Charlotte." Chapter 4 I hugged my knees and answered weakly. "Hm?" "In your eighteenyearold memories, what kind of person am I?" I lifted my eyelids and met his eyes.

The easygoing, untamed boy I remembered was now looking at me very seriously, his eyes dark and deep. I opened my mouth. He'd already looked away with a small laugh. "Never mind.

You probably didn't know me yet back then." He stood up, pulled out a tissue, and wiped his hands carelessly. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just asking.

Maybe it's better you forgot all that. In this family now, whenever my brother doesn't look after you, I'm the one who does.

Next time something comes up, just come to me." Hearing that made my heart ache. My open mouth quietly closed again.

I'd wanted to become family with him, and the dream had actually come true—in this form.

The feelings I'd never said out loud had been strangled in the cradle by one word from him: sisinlaw. This ridiculous, soapopera love rectangle!

After I asked my friends one by one about everything that had happened over the years, I went quiet.

Everyone said I was famously head over heels for Todd and had chased him for years. Marrying him was something I'd forced by crying and threatening my own life.

A textbook bitter, neglected wife. I cringed so hard my toes curled. My gut still didn't quite believe I'd go that far just for revenge.

My best friend of many years said, like she was fed up with how hopeless I was, "Oh, come on.

You're crazy in love with Todd, total lovesick fool! "If it were really about revenge, would you go back to have Thanksgiving dinner with your dad and your stepmom just because he said so, and then get kicked out? "Would you willingly suck up to Janelle's daughter? "Would you cry your eyes out every single day because he ignored you? "—There's more of that than I can count.

I'm too embarrassed to even say it!" After hearing all that, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. This was absurd… Right now, inside, I had an eighteenyearold soul.

At that point in time, Janelle and I were at war. And I hated Todd by extension. There was no way I'd actually fall for him. I let out a deep breath. I took out my phone.

I started searching for how to get a divorce. The day I was discharged from the hospital, I saw Janelle ten years later. At the hospital entrance.

She was holding the hand of a little girl in a pink dress, and Todd stood beside them. The picture was so warm they looked like a family of three.

I almost thought I was seeing things.

Until the man scooped the little girl into his arms with practiced ease, and she tipped her head back and sweetly called him, "Daddy Todd." Todd patted her head.

The three of them walked toward the car, all happy together. The little girl suddenly twisted around, stared straight at me, and yelled, "Daddy, Mommy, run!

The bad lady's here again!" Janelle and Todd looked over at the same time. I was standing alone not far away. Todd seemed to have only just remembered something.

He paused for a moment. "You're being discharged today? Sorry, I forgot." I held back the urge to roll my eyes.

I stared at them. "Huh," I said, genuinely confused. "Why does she call you Daddy?

If I really married you, then by the family tree, shouldn't she call you Uncle Todd?" Janelle explained from the side. "Bea's dad is gone.

Kids want someone to lean on, so that's what she started calling him." It looked like Todd had already told her about my "amnesia." Janelle looked me up and down, then curved her lips. "Charlie, can you try to be more understanding?

You know how hard it is to grow up with just one parent." She was the same as ever—soft and gentle, looking perfectly harmless.

Chapter 5 The malice under that skin could barely be contained anymore. Her daughter, draped over Todd's shoulder, secretly made a face at me. "I hate you!

Every time you come, you try to break up Daddy Todd! You're the bad guy! If they were together, they could take me to do lots of fun stuff!

Daddy Todd and Mommy are the ones who should get married!" Janelle covered her mouth and pretended to scold her. "Bea, don't say things like that." Then she deliberately glanced at Todd to see how he'd react.

Seeing her start up the act again, I couldn't help letting out a cold laugh. "Of course I understand. But you'd better be careful.

If you push me too far, I might just make your daughter an orphan." "That's enough." Todd's voice was low. "She hurt her ankle.

I'm only here this time to give her a hand." "Whatever it is, I'll talk to you about it when we get home.

Don't make a scene in front of the kid." Just now, when the grownup and the little one were both taking shots at me, he didn't say a word.

The moment I fired back once, he frowned and cut me off. Such blatant favoritism. That was the last straw. "Nobody would take you for a mute if you kept your mouth shut.

They're not your wife and daughter, so why are you protecting them? Me getting hit by a car and ending up in the hospital—that was convenient for me, was it?

Why didn't you come give me a hand?

You've really got the double standard down to an art." I hated fighting with Janelle, and I hated it when someone jumped in to take her side—especially someone close to me.

It made my disgust for Todd, my husband in the eyes of the law, climb another level.

Holding the child, he stared at me steadily for two seconds, then turned and left, his voice cold enough to freeze. "Know when to stop.

Looks like there's no need to explain much to you at home." "Wait." That wouldn't do. I chased after him a couple of steps. "Aren't you coming home?

I have something to discuss with you." Todd slowed down. "What is it?" In front of Janelle and this brat, I suddenly didn't really want to give them the satisfaction of hearing me say "divorce" outright.

I only said irritably, "Something between the two of us." I needed some time to sort out our assets. "The day after tomorrow—you'll be back, right?" Once the words were out, he gave an almost imperceptible "mm." His attitude inexplicably softened a lot. "Today I'll take them home first.

As for you, Thurston should be coming to pick you up." After they left, Thurston watched from the side for quite a while. "Come on, sisinlaw." He was the one picking me up from the hospital.

A few days earlier, it seemed he'd also been the one who brought me to the hospital. I got into the passenger seat and had just buckled my seatbelt.

He suddenly spoke. "My brother might not be free the day after tomorrow. He doesn't go home often. If you want to give him a present, it might have to be a few days late." "Huh?

Whose birthday?" "My brother's." I went silent. So Todd thought I wanted to celebrate his birthday? I only wanted to have a proper talk with him about the divorce.

I opened my phone to explain things to him clearly, but found I didn't have his contact info. "Why isn't he in my contacts?" Thurston started the car, eyes on the road ahead. "You two had a fight a long time ago, and he blocked you.

All this time, his assistant and I have been the ones passing messages for you." "So what kind of present are you planning this time?" He curved his lips lightly, looking a little mocking. "But whatever you give him, he probably won't appreciate it.

I'd suggest just ignoring him." "Of course not." I flipped my phone face down on my thigh, a bit glum. "I want to talk to him about getting a divorce." The light ahead turned red.

He hit the brakes and turned his head to look at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. "You want a divorce?" Chapter 6 "Yep." "You've made up your mind?" I nodded. "Look, he doesn't care about me at all.

Anyone with eyes can see his heart belongs to my stepsister, and he's even rushing to be some kid's standin dad. We'd be better off cutting ties early.

Everybody wins." This was the result of careful thought. Marrying Todd had made me a rich wife with plenty of money and free time every day, which was undeniably great.

But I just felt bad in a way I couldn't describe. Getting half the assets in a divorce would be pretty freeing too.

I felt a little relieved. "At least there are no kids." This world was way too scary. For a long while, the car was completely silent. The light turned green.

His eyes went back to the road ahead. "Sure. I'll find you a lawyer." I was a little surprised. I'd thought Thurston only looked out for me because I was his sisterinlaw.

I never expected he'd be willing to help with this too. What a genuinely good guy. He'd anticipated my reaction and gave a light snort. "Knowing when to walk away.

That deserves support." "Eighteen really is better. Brave enough to love, brave enough to hate. That's good." I felt a bit awkward.

Over the years, he must have suffered plenty from lovesick, loveblind me.

Thinking of that, I couldn't help saying sincerely: "Thanks for putting up with all of it these years." Our destination was the most expensive luxury penthouse in the city's best location.

Thurston opened the door for me like he'd done it a hundred times. I walked in and looked around curiously at everything in the place. The location was great.

If we divorced, I wondered whether this place could go to me. The huge wedding portrait in the living room was impossible to miss.

In the photo, Todd and I leaned against each other. Both of us were smiling. Just looking at it, you could even pick up a hint of polite, pictureperfect harmony.

It was only a marriage in name, though. I rubbed the goosebumps off my arm. I was thinking I should get someone to throw it out right away.

Thurston was on the balcony, calling a lawyer. My gaze suddenly stopped on his arm.

His white shirtsleeve was rolled up, revealing a lean, strong stretch of wrist, and coiled over it was a long, vicious scar.

The high school Thurston could wear his school's athletic jacket with a kind of untamed flair. Standing in the sunlight, his skin was so cool and pale it seemed to glow.

That was why I remembered it so clearly. There had been no injury on that arm of his before. He noticed me looking, hung up, and walked over. "Hungry?" "No.

Angry." I pointed at the eyesore of a wedding portrait. "Angry at myself for being so blind." "I must have been possessed.

Otherwise I really can't figure out why I'd marry your brother." He glanced at it twice and looked away, uninterested.

He said to me, "You liked him a long time ago." I looked up, stunned. "Who said that?" He looked like he didn't want to talk about it, but he still kindly helped me remember. "Years ago, you got into a car accident on your way to confess to him.

Not long after that, you were stuck to his side." "How could I have been confessing to him? I was clearly—" Midsentence, I stopped short. VIP