Chapter 1

The acceptance letter to Northwood University felt heavy in my hand, a death sentence I'd already served.

My first life flashed before my eyes, a horror film I couldn't unsee. I had pushed Ethan, my high school boyfriend, to go to Northwood with me, believing it was our golden ticket.

We married, young and hopeful. Then Tiffany Bell, his forever crush, died. Muggers, they said. But Ethan, he saw a different killer. He saw me.

He said if he hadn't gone to Northwood, if he'd stayed, he could have saved Tiffany. His grief twisted into a monstrous blame, and one night, his hands, the same hands that once held mine, ended my life.

He thought I was the reason Tiffany wasn't his, the reason she was gone. His delusion was my executioner.

Now, I was back. The air in my lungs was real, the excited chatter of my parents a distant buzz. I was standing in our living room, Ethan beside me, both of us holding identical Northwood acceptance letters.

And then Tiffany Bell, blonde and beaming, made her announcement, the one that triggered my return.

"Northwood said no," she chirped, not a hint of disappointment in her voice. "So, I'm going to work at the auto parts plant with my dad!"

This was it, the exact moment. My second chance.

Tiffany turned to Ethan, her eyes wide and hopeful, a look I knew too well. "Ethan, why don't you come work at the plant with me? It'll be fun, just like old times." She fluttered her eyelashes, a practiced move.

Ethan, standing beside me, didn't hesitate. "Yeah, Tiff, that sounds great," he said, a strange light in his eyes. He dropped his Northwood letter onto the coffee table like it was trash. "Northwood can wait. You're more important."

He was reborn too, I realized with a sickening lurch.

His obsession with "saving" Tiffany was already in motion. He was making the exact choice he thought would have saved her before, the choice that, in his mind, I had prevented.

He actually looked at me, his expression unreadable. "You wouldn't understand, Sarah. This is something I have to do."

He was already distancing himself, already painting me as the outsider to his grand, heroic narrative with Tiffany. He was rejecting the path we'd shared, the path that, in his twisted memory, led to his pain and my supposed culpability.

I felt a cold wave wash over me. He knew. Or at least, he thought he knew how this was all supposed to play out. He was operating on his own script from a life I now desperately wanted to rewrite.

Trying to convince him otherwise would be like talking to a brick wall, a brick wall that had already crushed me once.

So, I wouldn't. I wouldn't try to change his mind. I wouldn't beg him to come to Northwood with me like I did the first time. My own survival was paramount now. Let him chase his ghost.

Ethan then had the nerve to look at me, a smirk playing on his lips. "Hey, Sarah," he said, his tone dripping with condescension. "Maybe you could get a job at the plant too. We could all hang out."

I almost laughed. Me, at the auto parts plant? After what I knew? "No, Ethan," I said, my voice flat. "I don't think so."