Chapter 8

Life number two. Chloe. Columbia University.

Ethan and Liam were there too, of course. Ivy League.

The Program always kept me in their orbit.

I was a different person. Different hair, different style, different major.

But the objective was the same: Ethan Cole.

I tried again. A new approach. More sophisticated, I thought.

Witty banter. Shared classes. "Accidental" run-ins at campus coffee shops.

He was still indifferent.

Polite, sometimes. Amused, occasionally. But distant.

Always distant.

It was exhausting.

Was he even interested in women? The thought crossed my mind more than once.

He never seemed to have a serious girlfriend, just a string of admirers he kept at arm's length.

Something else was different in that life.

Ethan and Liam.

They were still friends, but there was a new tension between them.

An estrangement I couldn't understand.

They were rarely seen together. When they were, the air crackled with unspoken things.

Their famous boarding school, Ivy League bond seemed fractured.

It was another puzzle I couldn't solve.

Just background noise to my own repeated failures.