Chapter 1

For seven years, my home was a cold place.

Jake, my husband, the firefighter captain, moved through it like a ghost, his silence a constant weight.

He blamed me.

For Chloe.

Chloe, his high school sweetheart, died in the wildfire. The same fire where he pulled me, pregnant with our son Leo, to safety.

He chose me, he said once, his voice flat, because I was carrying his child.

A choice he never let me forget.

"If it wasn't for you," he'd mutter, not looking at me, "Chloe would be alive."

His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, they tried at first. Tried to bridge the gap.

But Jake' s bitterness was a wall too high.

Even Leo, our son, learned the chill.

"Daddy's sad because of Chloe," he' d say, his small face serious. "You made him sad."

My mother died young. My father remarried Brenda, a woman who specialized in making my childhood a misery. Jake had been my protector then, my friend.

Now, he was my tormentor.

One evening, Jake came home, his eyes holding a strange light.

"They're starting it," he said. "The Second Chance Program."

I knew about it. Experimental. Time travel, they called it. A chance to fix a single past event.

My breath caught.

"I'm going," he stated, no room for discussion. "I'm going back to the fire."

My heart hammered. "Jake, no."

He looked at me then, really looked at me, for the first time in what felt like years.

His face was cold, set.

"I have to save her, Sarah."

He packed a small bag. As he stood by the door, ready to leave our life, ready to erase it, he turned.

"You know," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth, "if I wasn't worried Chloe would be judged for me saving her first, why would I have saved you?"

Then he was gone.

The words hung in the air, sharp and brutal.

Universal blame crashed down on me. His parents, their friends, even strangers who heard the story.

Sarah, the woman who cost Chloe her life.

Sarah, the reason Jake had to rewrite time.

The weight of it was unbearable.

But his final words, they sparked something else.

A desperate, cold resolve.

He wanted a second chance to save Chloe.

I wanted a second chance to save myself.