Chapter 1

The screech of tires was the last thing I heard, then a sickening crunch of metal, and then nothing.

We were on our way to Thanksgiving dinner, Ethan and I, though "we" felt like a generous term for two people who barely spoke anymore.

Seven years of marriage, and it felt like seventy years of him chasing a dream I was no longer part of, his eyes always on Chloe, on her connections, on anything but me.

He never wanted kids, he'd told me that in a rare moment of brutal honesty, or maybe just cruelty, a few weeks before the end.

He regretted being with me, he said.

Those words echoed as the world went black.

Then, light.

Not heavenly light, but the cheap fluorescent kind that buzzed in my old college dorm room.

I sat bolt upright in a narrow bed, my heart hammering.

The air smelled of stale pizza and old textbooks.

My hands, they were younger, smoother.

I scrambled for the mirror on the back of the door.

Nineteen. I was nineteen again.

The accident, Ethan, our miserable marriage, it all flooded back, a nightmare I'd lived and now, somehow, escaped.

My phone, an ancient flip model by today's standards, lay on the nightstand.

It vibrated. A message from Ethan.

*"Hey, you free later? Thinking of grabbing a bite."*

This was it, the beginning. The moment our lives intertwined in that first, doomed timeline.

I remembered the seven years of unhappiness, his emotional neglect, his obsession with Chloe, his final, cutting words.

"I regret being with you."

My fingers, steady despite the tremor running through me, found his contact.

Delete. Confirm delete.

I blocked his number.

I went to the shared computer in the common room and unfriended him on the primitive social media of the time.

He would misinterpret it, I knew. He'd think I was being difficult, playing games.

Let him.

He'd move on quickly, probably to Chloe, the one he always thought could help his ambitions more.

Good.

This time, my ambition was me. My scholarship, my architecture degree, my future.

A future without Ethan.

A wave of relief, so profound it almost buckled my knees, washed over me.

I had a second chance. I wouldn't waste it.