Chapter 4
509words
"No," I whispered, my voice breaking on the single syllable. "No, no, no."
The morning light sliced through my blinds, painting stripes across my trembling hands. I stared at them—my hands, younger than I remembered, no engagement ring, no evidence of the life I'd lived with Alexander.
I stumbled to the bathroom, legs buckling beneath me. The face in the mirror was younger—no fine lines around the eyes, no subtle hollowness in the cheeks that had developed during my time with Alexander. I splashed cold water on my face, gasping at the shock of it.
The water dripped down my chin as reality crashed over me in waves. I was back. Three years before I would meet Alexander. Three years before I would drown.
My knees gave out. I slid to the cold tile floor, a sob tearing from my throat so violently it felt like it ripped something inside me. The tears came then—hot, relentless, my body convulsing with the force of them.
"Alexander," I gasped, curling into myself. Despite everything—despite his betrayal, despite watching him choose Vivienne, despite knowing he'd let me fall—my heart still ached for him. For the man I thought he was. For the future we'd planned.
I pressed my hands against my flat stomach, the emptiness there a physical pain. My baby. Our baby. Gone as if it had never existed.
Because it hadn't. Not yet. Not ever, if I chose differently this time.
I don't know how long I lay there, sobbing on the bathroom floor. Long enough for the tiles to warm beneath my skin. Long enough for my tears to run dry, leaving me hollow and aching.
The sound of my phone ringing in the bedroom finally pulled me back to the present. I dragged myself up, legs unsteady, and stumbled back to bed. The caller ID showed "Professor Harlow."
My thesis advisor. In this timeline, I was still a graduate student.
I let it go to voicemail, collapsing onto the rumpled sheets. My laptop sat on the nightstand, a relic from another life. With shaking hands, I opened it and typed "Alexander Blackwood" into the search bar.
There he was—younger than when I'd met him, but unmistakable. Alexander Blackwood, rising tech entrepreneur, featured in Boston Business Monthly. His smile, the one that had once made my heart race, now made my stomach turn. Yet even now, knowing everything, I couldn't deny the pull he had. The charisma that radiated even from a digital image.
"I loved you," I whispered to the screen, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. "God help me, I really loved you."
I clicked through photos of him at charity galas, tech conferences, yacht parties. And then I saw her—Vivienne Sinclair, standing in the background of a gallery opening, her predatory eyes fixed on Alexander even then.
She'd been watching him, waiting for her moment, long before I entered the picture.
