Chapter 2

That night, Wesley Fowler showed up at my door.

He leaned against the frame of my small house, looking smug in his expensive boots and clean shirt. He held a bottle of whiskey, the good stuff, not the cheap rye I kept in my cabinet.

"Thought you could use a drink," he said, stepping inside without an invitation. "It's been a rough couple of weeks for you."

I just stared at him, my fists clenched at my sides. "What do you want, Fowler?"

He poured two glasses, pushing one toward me. I didn't take it.

"I came to clear the air," he said, taking a slow sip. "I don't want any bad blood between us. We're going to be family, after all. Sort of."

The rage I'd felt earlier was now a cold, hard knot in my stomach. "You're not my family."

Wesley chuckled. "Look, I get it. You're upset. But you need to understand something. Maria... well, Sylvia now... she made a choice."

"She faked her own death."

"She did what she had to do," he said, his voice dropping. "To get away from this. From you."

The words were a physical blow. "What are you talking about? We were happy."

"Were you?" Wesley leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. "Or were you just poor? Maria... she remembered the last life, Matt. She remembered sixty years of scrimping and saving, of fixing junker cars and never having anything nice. She didn't want that again. Can you blame her?"

I couldn't breathe. She remembered. She remembered everything, and she still chose this.

"She wanted more," Wesley continued, enjoying my pain. "She wanted what I could give her. A big house, nice things, a future. You couldn't give her that. You have nothing."

He was right. I was a mechanic. I had greasy hands and a small savings account. I had a life of hard work to offer, but it was an honest life. It was our life.

"And there's something else you should know," he said, his smile turning cruel. "The baby. Your first kid, in the last life. The one that came 'early'?"

I thought of our son, Daniel. He'd been small, but he'd been a fighter. We had loved him fiercely.

"He wasn't yours, Matt," Wesley said, delivering the final, killing blow. "He was mine. Maria was already with me before you two got married last time. She was pregnant with my child."

My world shattered. Sixty years of memories, of love, of shared history-all of it collapsed into a pile of lies. The foundation of my entire existence, in this life and the last, was a fraud. Daniel... my son... he wasn't my son. The love I thought was my destiny was just a convenient lie she told herself, and me.

I lunged at him. The rage was blinding. I wanted to smash his perfect face, to wipe that smirk off with my knuckles. I was a mechanic; my hands were strong from years of turning wrenches. I landed one good punch that sent him stumbling back, the whiskey glass shattering on the floor.

But he was bigger, and he fought dirty. He came back at me, and we crashed against the wall. Maria-I mean, "Sylvia"-suddenly appeared in the doorway, screaming.

"Stop it! Matthew, stop it!" she shrieked, rushing to Wesley's side, ignoring me completely. She looked at me with pure hatred. "Look what you've done! You're a monster!"

Her words cut deeper than any punch. She chose him. She protected him. She looked at me like I was the villain.

The fight went out of me. I sagged against the wall, the truth of it all crushing me. Wesley, holding his bleeding lip, pulled Maria behind him.

"You see?" he spat, his voice thick with anger. "This is why she left you. You're just a violent, poor piece of trash. She's with me now. She's carrying my baby again. And there's nothing you can do about it."

He was right. There was nothing I could do. My love was a lie. My son was a lie. My past was a lie. My future in this town was a smoking crater.

I was nothing.