Part 1All Roads Lead Away from You

The city’s elite knew my nightly ritual: hunting for my husband, Asher Thorne, who slept in a different woman’s bed each night.

He hated me for driving his first love to her death. I hated him for refusing to look at me for a decade. We were caged animals, tearing each other apart.

But when a truck careened toward us, he shielded me with his body, coughing up blood but smiling.

“My debt is paid,” he gasped. “Next life… let me go. I miss her.”

I crawled from the wreckage, refusing to die with him.

Later, I stood before my father. “I’ll marry into the Bartlett family.”

This time, I’d give Asher what he wanted—his freedom, his love. All of it.

* * *

The grand crystal chandelier in the ballroom came crashing down again.

But this time, Asher Thorne, the man I was supposed to save, shoved me out of the way.

A flicker of relief crossed his face.

The next second, to my horror, he was swallowed by a shower of shattering crystal.

The deafening crash was followed by a wave of screams that ripped through the ballroom. I stared, numb, at the blood blooming across the pristine white carpet.

I understood. He had been reborn, too.

In our last life, I saved him. But I wasn’t fast enough to save myself. The chandelier had crushed my leg, leaving me with a permanent limp. I used that injury, that debt, to force him to marry me, even though I knew his heart belonged to my stepsister.

This time, he chose to be buried under a ton of glass and steel rather than owe me anything.

They carried him out on a stretcher, a bloody mess. Well-meaning guests pushed me towards the ambulance.

“Go on, Vivienne! Asher needs you right now!”

The words were a dagger in my heart. I turned and pushed my stepsister, Chloe, towards the open doors instead.

“You go.”

She gave me a surprised look, but before she could speak, the paramedics shut the doors and the ambulance sped away.

The guests stared at me, bewildered.

“Vivienne, why aren’t you going? He was trying to save you.”

“Exactly! You two grew up together. How can you let someone else be with him at a time like this?”

I didn’t answer. I just watched the ambulance disappear into the night. Twice now, he had chosen such a brutal way to sever our connection. I couldn’t understand it. What was it about me that he found so repulsive?

After the disastrous gala, I returned to the family mansion.

“You want to take Chloe’s place and marry into the Bartlett family?” my father asked, thinking he’d misheard. He knew how much I despised Chloe, the illegitimate daughter who had stormed into my mother’s hospital room during her final days. She’d stood over my dying mother and sneered that the one who isn't loved is the real homewrecker. It was the final blow that broke my mother’s will to live.

“Just yesterday you were swearing you’d marry Asher Thorne or no one,” he reminded me.

I paused, avoiding the question. “Chloe came to you again today to try and break the engagement, didn’t she?”

My father’s expression tightened. In our last life, around this time, Julian Bartlett, the sole heir to the Bartlett fortune, had a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. The Bartletts were not a family to be trifled with. Breaking the engagement at a time like this would bring ruin upon our entire family.

After a moment of thought, his face grew grave. “The wedding is next month. You can change your mind anytime before then.”

I hid a bitter smile. He was thrilled. He had always preferred the sweet-talking Chloe to me. If it weren’t for the fear of being seen as a man who mistreated his late wife’s only child, he would have forced me into this marriage from the start.

By the time I left his study, my phone was blowing up with messages. Everyone assumed Asher had been injured saving me. Even if it was just for show, I had to go see him.

When I pushed open his hospital room door, he was propped up against the pillows, a thick bandage wrapped around his forehead. Chloe was sitting by his bed. When he saw me, his voice softened.

“Chloe, could you give us a minute?”

She nodded obediently, murmuring a timid, “Sister,” as she passed me.

The door clicked shut, and the room fell silent. His eyes scanned my legs, and a visible wave of relief washed over him. My mouth filled with a bitter taste. He was checking to make sure I didn’t have a broken leg to hold over his head this time.

Seeing his pale, bloodless face, a lump formed in my throat. “Does it hurt…?”

“Vivienne.” He cut me off, his voice weak but firm. “I saved you. Can you do one thing for me in return?”

My heart sank. “What is it?”

He took a deep breath. “Don’t force Chloe to marry Julian Bartlett. Your mother’s death had nothing to do with her. She was just a child.”

My hands, hanging at my sides, clenched into fists. He hadn’t changed at all. He still thought I was forcing Chloe into a marriage with a disabled man out of spite.

I managed a brittle smile. “Asher, you’re always so presumptuous.”

He frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

He wanted to ask more, but I turned and left, giving him no chance. I wasn’t going to tell him that I was the one getting married now. I would let him wonder, let him worry, let him toss and turn in his hospital bed. I would let his heart hang in suspense.

Until the day I married Julian Bartlett, he would suffer right alongside me.