Chapter 1
The night of our graduation party, I led the drunk campus queen to the bad boy’s room.
But my childhood friend, the man I was supposed to marry, mistook me for her.
One night of chaos.
Afterward, everyone said I had deliberately torn him and the campus queen apart.
For years of our marriage, I tried everything to warm his heart, but it remained a block of ice.
Until one day, I overheard him on the phone on the street corner.
“As long as Bella is happy, I’m willing to spend my whole life tying Laurie down.”
“Besides, who would want to marry a nerd anyway?”
“She wants a kid? Fine. I’ll give her one.”
The piercing shriek of a car horn cut him off.
He instinctively turned and saw me standing around the corner.
Panic flooded his face
In the next second, we
When I opened my
as he lunged toward me, trying to push me out of the way.
were both thrown into the air by the impact.
again, I was back at the graduation party.
This time, I decided to
1
giv
him and the campus queen the happy ending they both wanted.
Only my childhood friend, James Stanton, knew that I had a crush on the campus bad boy, Jáx.
1
The night of our university graduation party, the campus queen, Isabella, asked me to help her to a room to rest.
I didn’t know it was Jax’s room.
And Isabella’s acting was flawless.
The moment we were
out of sight, she was instantly sober, a mocking glint in her eyes as she looked at me.
In my past life, I was too naive to understand any of it.
After all, to everyone else, I was just the scheming, malicious nerd.
It wasn’t until I was dying, until I heard James’s phone call, that I finally woke up.
I never imagined he would sacrifice his entire life just for Isabella.
And I had been foolish enough to believe him when he’d proposed, when he’d said he loved me.
Before I died, James and I lay together in a pool of our own blood.
As the speeding car barrelled towards us, he had thrown himself in front of me, shielding me with his body.
But at that moment, it was useless.
The violent impact sent me flying more than a dozen yards.
As my consciousness faded, I vaguely saw him.
06.48
06 49
Chapter 1
06:48
James, not far away, covered in blood, was stubbornly trying to crawl to my side, his body wracked with tremors of pain.
The bones in his fingers were visible through the mangled flesh, and his voice was a broken, trembling mess.
“Laurie, don’t scare me.”
“Wake up! Let me explain!”
“I was wrong, Laurie. I was so wrong.”
His heartbroken cries made me want to vomit, and a mouthful of blood gushed from my lips.
In the last moment of my life, I summoned one final act of defiance.
With all my strength, I moved my fingers, pulling away from the hand he was desperately reaching out, trying to lace his fingers.
with mine.
Too late for apologies now.
“Laurie? What’s too late?” a voice asked, pulling me from the memory. “You haven’t had that much. Come on, have another.”
I blinked, realizing I was back. I had been reborn into my senior year of university.
Jax was hosting a graduation party for our class at his family’s empty villa.
For most, a graduation party was the start of a new life.
For me, in my past life, it was the entrance to hell.
The voice belonged to Isabella. Sweet and cloying.
