Chapter 1

The music was too loud, the crowd too thick. Then came the screams, the smell of smoke.

Fire.

My body moved before my mind caught up, a reflex from a life I shouldn' t remember.

Chloe. I had to save Chloe.

But then the memories flooded back, sharp and cruel.

The burns searing my skin, Chloe' s disgust, her voice echoing, "You' re hideous, Liam. Ethan would never have let this happen."

The years of misery, her obsession with him, my eventual suicide.

No. Not again.

This time, I saw her, Chloe Davis, my girlfriend, reaching for Ethan Hayes, her childhood obsession, amidst the chaos of the campus music festival fire.

She was screaming his name.

I grabbed her arm, trying to pull her away from the collapsing stage rigging.

"Liam, let go! Ethan!" she shrieked, yanking free.

A falling ember kissed my forearm, a familiar sting. Minor, this time.

I let her go.

She scrambled towards Ethan, who was already trapped.

I turned and pushed through the panicked students, towards an exit.

Later, outside, amidst the wailing sirens and flashing lights, a hand cracked across my face.

Professor Davis, Chloe' s mother, her face contorted with rage.

"You left her! You abandoned my daughter!"

Her voice was a shriek that cut through the noise.

I touched my stinging cheek.

"She made her choice, Professor."

"Choice? She was trying to save Ethan! What kind of man are you?"

I looked at her, this woman who would make my academic life hell in my previous life, and in this one too, probably.

"The kind who learns," I said, my voice flat.

I saw Chloe then, being helped by paramedics, her hand bandaged, Ethan on a stretcher beside her, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle.

They were together.

Professor Davis was still yelling, but I walked away.

This life would be different. It had to be.