Her head was fuzzy but she could feel someone holding her hand and hear someone trying to talk to her. Where was she? What happened? She couldn't remember anything.
Opening her eyes took tremendous effort and a very handsome, very blurry man appeared in front of her. She squinted trying to get a better look. He had chiseled features and dark hair with hazel eyes that were filled with worry despite his blank expression.
"Angel? Are you alright?" the man asked in as casual a manner as possible considering he was gripping her hand rather tightly.
"Who…who are you?" she asked.
His face fell. "You're messing with me, right? This isn't funny. You know me…you have to know me. I'm Eddie, though you're the only one that has ever called me that. Your fiancé."
Her fiancé? She had a fiancé? So he knew who she was then, right? "If you're my fiancé then who am I? What happened to me?"
"You're scaring me. You're Angel—Angelina Dawson. How hard did you hit your head? They found you at the beach; what were you even doing there? Oh, you wouldn't know if you can't remember anything," Eddie finished in a frustrated tone.
"I don't know," she said miserably.
Angel? What kind of dumb nickname was that? Though she supposed it was better than Angelina. That was quite a mouthful.
She couldn't remember anything about herself or what happened. She had to take this stranger's word for it about who she was. He certainly seemed to recognize her and was worried. He wouldn't be worried if he didn't care, right?
Eddie's previously stiff expression grew stricken. "Angel…you have to remember. I'll get you the best doctors possible. I'll move you to a VIP room tonight and once they've done their observation I'll take care of you personally at home. We'll get through this so you can get back to business as usual as soon as possible."
He held the hand that was holding hers up to his lips and kissed it. Did he do this sort of thing often? It felt a bit strange coming from someone she didn't even recognize on sight.
Eddie went off to talk to a doctor about getting her moved and once that was taken care of he parked himself at her bedside in the private room, looking at her with a sort of fierce determination about him. "If you can't remember right now I'll have to tell you everything. Is that alright?"
"Sure," Angel said.
It wasn't like she had anything better to do. And she didn't like the gaping holes in her memory either. Anything that could get her back to normal faster was welcome.
"You're an only child raised by a single mother who passed away shortly before we met almost four years ago. It was at a cocktail party being held by the organizers of a teen pageant you barely qualified for because you had just passed your eighteenth birthday. You've been in pageants since you were three years old and care about getting the title of Miss Americana more than almost anything," Edward began.
"My parents passed away when I was younger as well and I was raised primarily by the housekeeper. It was something we bonded over. We got into a relationship and you became pregnant with our daughter Aria. She's two. I can show you a picture of her."
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed his phone background, which was a picture of a beautiful blonde woman holding what appeared to be a miniature version of herself with their cheeks squished together. Was that Angel? She hadn't seen her own appearance in a mirror since waking up.
"You…um…we have to keep our relationship a secret for now because you can't compete for the title of Miss Americana if you're married or have a child. It's against the rules. But we plan to get married as soon as the contest is over if you lose or once you pass the title on a year later if you win," he said a bit awkwardly.
Angel blinked at him in surprise. That was quite a story. Wasn't that cheating? She was a cheater? That didn't sit well with her but there wasn't anything she could do about it now.
Eddie was the ultimate source of information about herself. He didn't have a reason to lie to her that she could think of. It was obvious that he cared deeply about her even if he was a bit hesitant about showing it.
A word popped into her head all of a sudden. Tsundere. He was tsundere. And she had absolutely no idea how she knew that.
"How long have we been engaged?" she asked curiously.
Eddie let out a quiet sigh and wouldn't meet her eyes. "Since we found out you were pregnant with Aria. I wanted to marry you right away but you didn't want her to ruin your pageant career so I promised we could wait."
Geez, Angel sounded heartless. She didn't like that at all. How could she leave someone who loved her hanging like that?
"I'm sorry," she said lamely. "When is the Miss Americana pageant?"
"This summer. Not much longer to wait now…though obviously I hope you win even though it will take longer!" Eddie was quick to reassure her.
Angel smiled. His awkwardness was kind of cute. "Got it. So what else can you tell me about me?"
"Well, you have epilepsy. It's the cause you champion when you participate in your pageants. You want to use the scholarship money to become a neurologist so you can help people like you. Your favorite color is sea foam green, you like putting parmesan cheese on most of your food, and the talent you use in most of your pageants is musical glasses. You also play the piano, the flute, and the ukulele. Aria loves it when you play and sing silly songs to her," he reminisced with the ghost of a smile on his face.