Chapter 1: The Boy I Swore to Avoid

After I got my second shot at life, I made a promise to myself: stay away from Ethan Whitmore.

Even after everything that went down before, I was dead set—this time, I’d keep my distance. Believe me, I had learned my lesson the hard way. That pain? It was always there, a low, steady ache that never let me forget.

When he got picked on by the jocks at Maple Heights Academy, I just watched from a distance. I didn’t step in.

I saw the whole thing from across the quad—the way they boxed him in near the gym, laughing, shoving, tossing his books into the snow. It made my hands clench tight around my backpack straps. Still, I kept walking. In this life, I was invisible, and I meant to stay that way, no matter what.

When he scored the highest SAT score in the state and rode through town in the homecoming parade, I turned down my friends’ invitation to go watch and stayed home, working on my embroidery instead.

The whole town buzzed for days. Banners fluttered along Main Street, and the high school marching band played as Ethan passed by on horseback. I just sat by the window, needle in hand, listening to the distant cheers and the faint sound of hooves on the asphalt. I told myself I didn’t care. Yeah, right. I focused on each careful stitch, the thread pulling through thick cotton, the rhythm steadying my nerves.

When he brought his widowed sister-in-law to a charity dinner and people whispered about them, I didn’t step in to defend them either. My jaw clenched, but I kept my mouth shut.

Gossip traveled fast in Maple Heights. I overheard it at the grocery store, at church, even in the teachers’ lounge when I dropped off Dad’s lunch. I just kept my head down. Let them talk.

In my last life, he handed my only child over to be raised by his widowed sister-in-law.

That decision broke something inside me. The memory haunted my dreams: Ethan’s calm, reasonable voice, the cold detachment in his eyes, the way he just handed over our son like it was another chore. No matter how many times I replayed it, I couldn’t find a way to make it hurt less. Some wounds never heal.

He stopped calling me “Mom.” To him, I was just “Savannah Brooks.” When he was older, he even told me I should “do the right thing” and let Dad marry someone else to “keep the family name going.”

It cut deeper than I could ever admit. Hearing my own name from my son instead of ‘Mom’—it made me feel like a stranger in my own home. Even now, the ache of that rejection lingered, like an old bruise that never quite healed. Did he ever realize how much it broke me? Probably not.

But I never expected that, just like last time, Ethan would turn down every other offer and show up at my house to propose.

It was almost laughable, the way fate circled back around. Of course it did. No matter how much I tried to change things, some patterns just wouldn’t break. I braced myself for the inevitable, my heart pounding in my chest like a warning drum.

That’s when it hit me—Ethan must have been reborn, too.

There was no other way to explain the way he looked at me, those subtle changes in how he acted. A chill ran down my spine—the kind you get when you realize someone knows your secrets. It was like staring into a mirror. My past, reflected back at me. Clear as day.