The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 365

Chapter 365 In His Dreams

Kyle’s POV

The medication pulled me under like warm, thick water and impossible to fight. In that deep drowning, time folded in on itself like origami made of memory, each crease revealing another moment I’d thought I’d forgotten.

I was seventeen again, standing in the doorway of Mia’s high school art classroom, watching her work on a canvas that seemed to glow under the afternoon light streaming through tall windows. Her hair caught the sun in threads of copper and gold, and she held her brush with the kind of reverence other people reserved for prayer.

I’m just passing by.

I’d stepped closer, drawn by the quiet confidence in her. She carried her own atmosphere, serene and untouchable.

The canvas showed a landscape that shouldn’t have existed–trees that grew upward and downward simultaneously, their roots and branches intertwining in impossible geometries. A river flowed through the center, reflecting a sky that held both moon and sun, stars scattered like seeds across twilight blue.

In my dream, I could smell the turpentine and acrylic paint, could feel the particular warmth of classroom air heated by afternoon sun and adolescent possibility. I wanted to tell seventeen–year- old Mia that she was right about connections, that invisible threads would bind us together across years and mistakes and the careful architecture of pretending not to care.

But the dream shifted, as dreams do, and suddenly I was twenty–two, standing in the registrar’s office at Columbia, staring at a list of graduate students in the architecture program. Mia Williams, it said in neat black type. Student ID 4847291. Email: .

I’d memorized that email address without meaning to.

In the dream, I could feel my twenty–two–year–old heart hammering against my ribs as I walked across campus, searching crowds of students for a glimpse of copper hair, for the particular way Mia held her shoulders when she was thinking hard about something.

She was always sitting alone in the library, surrounded by architecture books with pages so glossy they reflected the overhead lights like mirrors. She wore a green sweater that made her eyes look like sea glass.

“Kyle?” Her voice had been uncertain, as if she couldn’t quite believe I was real. “Kyle Branson?”

I’d looked up with what I hoped was casual surprise. “Mia? I didn’t know you went here.”

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Chapter 365 In His Dreams

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“Small world,” she’d said, gathering her books with slightly nervous efficiency. “I should… I have a class.”

“Me too,” I’d lied again.

But she’d hesitated, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “Maybe we could get coffee sometime? Catch up on old times?”

For a stupid reason, I turned her down. Shame and vulnerability immediately flashed in her eyes.

I’m such an idiot.

Then the dream jumped forward, past graduation and first jobs and the careful dance of staying in each other’s orbits without ever quite touching. I was twenty–six, standing in my office at K.T. Enterprises, when Linda announced that my new secretary had arrived.

Mia walked through my office door wearing a navy dress that hugged her slight frame and heels that made her legs look like they went on for miles. Her hair was pulled back in a style that managed to be both professional and slightly messy.

“Mr. Branson,” she’d said, extending her hand with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m Mia Williams. Your new assistant.”

She’d worn a delicate perfume that reminded me of spring rain and growing things, and when she’d leaned over my desk to review my calendar, I’d had to concentrate on breathing normally.

It shifted to our wedding day. Not the elegant ceremony that might have been, but the quiet afternoon at City Hall when Mia had signed the contract that made her my wife in name only. She’d worn a simple white dress and carried a small bouquet of daisies, and when the clerk had asked if we had rings, I’d felt a stab of something that might have been regret.

“We do,” Mia had said quietly, producing two simple gold bands from her purse. “I thought… just in

case,”

I’d slipped the ring onto her finger with hands that trembled slightly, noting how perfectly it fit, how right it looked against her skin. When she’d done the same for me, her touch had been gentle and sure, as if she’d performed this gesture a thousand times before.

“You may kiss the bride,” the clerk had announced, and for a moment, the world had held its breath.

I’d leaned forward and kissed her cheek, a chaste brush of lips that had somehow felt more intimate than anything I’d ever done with Taylor. Mia had smiled a real smile this time, soft and private— and whispered, “Thank you.”

In the dream, I could taste the regret on my lips, sharp and metallic. I should have kissed her properly. I should have told her that the contract was just words on paper, that what I felt for her was

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real and terrifying and bigger than any legal document. I should have been brave enough to admit that I’d been in love with her since I was seventeen years old.

I remembered the morning I’d found her in the kitchen at five AM, wearing one of my old college t- shirts and making pancakes while humming something under her breath. Her hair had been mussed with sleep, and she’d had flour on her cheek, and she’d looked so perfectly at home in my space that I’d had to leave the room before I did something stupid.

But then the dream turned darker, showing me the moments I’d tried hardest to forget. The night Mia had told me she was pregnant, the way her hands had shaken as she’d held the test results. The look on her face when I’d reacted with cold professionalism instead of the joy she’d been hoping for.

I saw myself pushing her away with careful cruelty, citing the contract when I should have been celebrating. I watched my own face close off when she’d tried to explain, when she’d reached for me with desperate hope in her eyes.

“This changes everything,” I’d said, the words like glass in my throat.

“It doesn’t have to,” she’d whispered. “Kyle, please. I know this isn’t what we planned, but-”

“We didn’t plan anything,” I’d interrupted. “This is a business arrangement. You signed a contract.”

The dream forced me to watch as her face crumpled, as hope died in her eyes and was replaced by something harder and more distant. I saw myself walk away from her, heard the sound of her quiet sobbing through the bedroom door, felt the weight of my own cowardice pressing down like a stone.

The medication pulled me deeper, and the dreams became fragments–broken pieces of memory that cut like glass. Mia falling down the stairs, blood on marble, my hands shaking as I’d reached for my phone to call for help. But in the dream, I called for her instead of an ambulance, called her name over and over while she lay so still and pale.

The moment I’d learned that we’d lost both babies. I saw myself standing in the hallway.

Once, I thought I heard children laughing, bright and musical, impossibly close. In my half- conscious state, I tried to follow the sound, but it dissolved before I could grasp it.

Our divorce, signed in silence while lawyers shuffled papers and pretended. The moment I’d seen Mia’s signature on the final documents.

The dreams grew stranger as the medication deepened its hold. I was five years old again, trapped in that warehouse with a little girl who’d comforted me with steady hands and a voice like music. But now I could see her face clearly–green eyes and copper hair and a smile that would stay with me for decades.

“We’re going to be okay,” dream–Mia told dream–me, her child’s voice carrying impossible wisdom. “I promise we’re going to be okay.”

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