Chapter 1

The festival lights blurred, then the world turned into screams and dust.

Liam was on top of me.

Then, nothing but the crushing weight and his blood.

He'd saved me again, for the third time.

The first was a mugging, years ago. They took our wallets, but one came back for my necklace. Liam fought him. The guy had a pipe. Liam's hand was never the same, his dream of being a concert pianist died that night. He joined his family's real estate empire instead.

The second time was a flash flood, a camping trip gone wrong. We had one emergency kit, one bottle of water left. He gave it to me.

This time, the collapsing stage at the city festival, he didn't walk away.

His last words, choked out with blood, were for me.

"If only... I had never met you."

Ten years of a cold marriage, of my unrequited love, ended like that. He loved Jessica, his dream girl, not me. His parents, the Walkers, pushed him into marrying me. They thought it was for his own good.

At Liam's funeral, his mother didn't look at me.

His father's face was stone.

"He was too good for you," Mrs. Walker finally said, her voice low and sharp. "He died because of you. Always you."

The whispers followed me out of the church. Society agreed. I was the reason Liam Walker, golden boy of the city, was dead at thirty-three.

They saw his sacrifice, and I was the burden he'd carried.

I was alone, completely. The Walkers, who once tried to be kind, now saw me as a curse.

Days blurred into a haze of grief and guilt. Liam's words echoed, "If only I had never met you."

I wanted to undo it all, not for a romance that never was, but for his peace, for my peace. To save him.

Then I heard about it, a whisper in the city's underbelly, the "Chronos Device." Experimental, dangerous, a secret government project.

A temporal device. A way back.

Desperation fueled me. I pulled strings I didn't know I had, spent money I didn't care about.

I found it, a sleek, humming machine in a hidden lab.

The lead scientist, a nervous man, tried to warn me. "It's unstable. Limited window. And it's tied to... to the deepest regrets of the person whose fate you're trying to change."

Liam's regrets. I knew them. His old journals, hidden in his desk, were filled with them.

1. Marrying me.

2. Not defying his parents, giving up music for the family business.

3. Failing to "save" Jessica. She died in a car accident years ago, an accident he indirectly blamed on me. He thought my complaints to his parents about her, about his lingering attachment, stressed her out, made her reckless.

I had to fix those. For him. For us to have a different ending, even if it meant I wasn't in his life at all.

I strapped myself in. The machine hummed louder, lights flashed. My mission was clear: rewrite his regrets, give him the life he wanted.

The world twisted, then snapped into focus.

Sunlight. City Hall.

My younger self, ten years younger, stood frozen.

And there was Liam.

Younger, vibrant, no shadows in his eyes yet. He looked impatient, checking his watch.

He was waiting for me, for Maya, to get our marriage license.

Today was the day.

A wave of emotion hit me, so strong I almost buckled. Joy, pain, hope, all mixed. He was alive. I had a chance.

Thirty-six hours, the scientist had said. That's all the Chronos Device gave me. Thirty-six hours to change ten years of tragedy.

He saw me. "Maya. You're late."

His voice, younger, sharper, but still him.

I walked towards him, my heart pounding.

"Liam," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "Before we do this, can I ask you something?"

He frowned. "What is it? My parents are expecting us to have this done by noon."

"Are you sure," I asked, looking him straight in the eye, "that you want to marry me? Not Jessica?"

His face tightened. A flash of annoyance, then that familiar coldness I knew so well.

"Jessica has nothing to do with this. This is an arrangement. You know that."

He didn't deny his feelings for her. He never did.

It hurt, even now, even knowing what I had to do.

His words, "This is an arrangement," echoed in my mind. The same arrangement that led to a decade of quiet misery for both of us, and ultimately, his death.

I remembered his journals, the pages filled with his cramped handwriting, detailing his regrets.

Regret number one: Marrying me.

Regret number two: Giving up his music, his passion, to join the Walker real estate empire, crushed under his parents' expectations.

Regret number three: Not "saving" Jessica. He believed my distress over his attachment to her, my eventual complaints to his parents, had caused her to be upset, leading to her fatal car accident in the original timeline. He carried that guilt, misplaced as it was.

These weren't just regrets, they were my roadmap for the next thirty-six hours.

My own pain from the original timeline, his dying words, his parents' blame – it all fueled my resolve. I had to do this, not to win him, but to free him. And in freeing him, maybe I could free myself too.

The Chronos Device's instructions, or what I pieced together from the scientist and Liam's journals, were clear: Fulfill his three deepest regrets. That was the key to altering our intertwined, tragic fates.

Liam's happiness, his life, depended on it.

My peace depended on it.

The first regret: Marrying me.

I looked at the marriage application form in his hand. That was my first target.

"Let's go inside," I said, trying to sound like the compliant Maya he expected.