For the first three days after canceling the wedding, Adrian didn’t contact me.

In my previous life, three hours without hearing from him would have driven me insane.

I would have called.

Texted.

Asked his assistant where he was.

Then, inevitably, discovered he was with Evelyn.

This time, I packed.

The Linwood family had given Adrian and me a villa as a wedding gift.

I returned the keys.

I canceled the wedding dress.

I withdrew from the joint investment Grandfather had prepared for us.

Then I booked a flight.

Paris.

I had once been accepted into a jewelry-design program there.

In my previous life, I rejected it because Adrian said:

“Do whatever you want.”

I’d somehow interpreted his indifference as permission to stay.

This time, I chose myself.

The night before my flight, someone knocked on my door.

Adrian.

He stood there in the rain.

For one terrible second, I remembered another Adrian.

Blood on his face.

His coat around my body.

His arms stiffening as he died.

My fingers tightened around the door.

“What happened?”

He stared at the suitcase behind me.

“Where are you going?”

“Paris.”

“For what?”

“School.”

His eyebrows pulled together.

“When did you decide this?”

“Years ago.”

He didn’t understand.

Of course he didn’t.

In this life, those years hadn’t happened yet.

“What about the wedding?”

“There isn’t one.”

“Miranda.”

His voice sharpened.

“If this is another strategy to make me chase you—”

“It isn’t.”

He stopped.

I looked at him calmly.

“Evelyn called. You went to her. That’s what you wanted.”

“She’s sick.”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t leave her alone.”

“I know.”

Every answer seemed to irritate him more.

Finally:

“Then why are you acting like this?”

I almost laughed.

“Because I’m not acting anymore.”

I looked at the man I’d loved badly enough to destroy both of us.

“I spent years believing that if I loved you harder, waited longer, fought Evelyn more fiercely, eventually you’d choose me.”

His expression changed.

“I don’t want that anymore.”

“You’re talking as though we’ve already been married for years.”

My throat tightened.

In another life, we had.

Five miserable years.

And when death came, the man who claimed to hate me had still covered my body with his own.

“I had a dream,” I whispered.

“A very long one.”

He stared at me.

“And in that dream?”

“We destroyed each other.”

I smiled sadly.

“So I’m changing the ending.”

I left the next morning.

Six months passed.

Paris was difficult.

I loved it.

For the first time, nobody introduced me as the Linwood heiress who was obsessed with Adrian Grant.

I was simply Miranda.

I studied.

Worked.

Made friends.

Failed at things.

Improved.

I stopped asking mutual friends about Adrian.

But news still reached me.

Evelyn recovered.

Everyone expected Adrian to finally marry her.

He didn’t.

That surprised me.

Then, eight months after I left, Adrian appeared outside my school.

I nearly dropped my portfolio.

“What are you doing here?”

“Business.”

I looked at the flowers in his hand.

“With peonies?”

He looked down at them.

Apparently, he’d forgotten he was holding evidence.

“They’re for you.”

“No.”

His face darkened.

“You don’t like peonies?”

“I love them.”

“Then take them.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll misunderstand.”

He went completely silent.

I walked past him.

He followed.

“Miranda.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to court you.”

I stopped so suddenly he almost walked into me.

“You’re what?”

His ears actually turned red.

“I said I’m trying to court you.”

“Why?”

That single word offended him more than rejection.

“Why?”

“Yes.”

“You chased me for years.”

“In my defense, I was stupid.”

His mouth tightened.

“And now I’ve stopped.”

“Yes.”

“So naturally you flew across the world?”

He looked away.

I stared at him.

Then realization hit me.

“Oh my God.”

“Don’t.”

“Adrian Grant.”

“Miranda.”

“You like me.”

“Don’t make it unbearable.”

I laughed for the first time in front of him without bitterness.

He watched me.

And something in his expression made my laughter slowly disappear.

“I thought I’d feel relieved,” he said.

“When you canceled the wedding.”

My heart tightened.

“I went to Evelyn. I stayed with her until the doctor came.”

He paused.

“Then I kept thinking about those rings.”

“What rings?”

“The ones in your hand.”

He had noticed.

“I went back.”

I froze.

“To the trash can?”

“Yes.”

My heart stopped.

Adrian reached into his coat.

A small box.

Inside were the two rings I’d thrown away.

“You took them?”

“I don’t know why.”

He closed the box.

“But every day after you left, I looked at them.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Evelyn asked me to marry her three months later.”

There it was.

The sentence I had once feared more than anything.

“What did you say?”

“No.”

“Why?”

His eyes met mine.

“Because apparently when nobody was forcing me to marry you anymore, I finally had to ask myself what I actually wanted.”

I looked away.

“Don’t say it.”

“Why?”

Because I’d already died loving him once.

Because I didn’t know if rebirth meant I was supposed to repair our love or escape it.

Because some wounds existed even when only one person remembered them.

“I can’t survive loving you like that again.”

Adrian became very still.

“Again?”

I said nothing.

He didn’t press.

Instead, he put the ring box away.

“Then don’t.”

I looked at him.

“Don’t love me the way you did before.”

His voice softened.

“If I want something from you, I’ll earn it differently.”

And he did.

He didn’t ask me to return.

Didn’t involve our families.

Didn’t use Grandfather.

He simply appeared.

Sometimes in Paris.

Sometimes through messages.

Sometimes by sending photographs of terrible meals he’d attempted to cook.

A year passed.

Then another.

I graduated.

Started my own jewelry studio.

Adrian invested in nothing.

That mattered.

He offered contacts once.

I refused.

He never offered again.

Evelyn eventually married someone else.

When I heard, I looked at Adrian carefully.

He noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re checking whether I’m heartbroken.”

“Maybe.”

He thought for a moment.

“I loved her.”

Past tense.

“But?”

“But sometimes we love the person who represents the life we thought we wanted.”

He looked at me.

“And sometimes we don’t understand what someone means to us until they stop standing where we left them.”

Three years after our first canceled wedding, Adrian proposed.

Privately.

No grandparents.

No family debts.

No pressure.

He placed a ring on the table but didn’t touch my hand.

“Miranda Linwood, will you marry me?”

I cried before I could answer.

Not because I was happy.

Because I remembered another wedding.

His red eyes.

His humiliation.

My desperate victory.

“This time,” I whispered, “you can say no.”

He smiled.

“So can you.”

That was when I knew.

“Yes.”

Our second wedding was small.

When the officiant asked Adrian whether he entered the marriage willingly, he answered before the sentence was finished.

“Yes.”

Everyone laughed.

I cried.

Seven years later, on a winter evening, Adrian and I were driving home when snow began falling.

My body went rigid.

The road.

The snow.

Headlights behind us.

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

“Stop the car.”

Adrian pulled over immediately.

I stumbled outside and vomited beside the road.

He followed, wrapped his coat around me and held me.

Exactly like before.

I started sobbing.

“Miranda?”

I clutched his coat.

“You died.”

He froze.

“What?”

And finally, after all those years, I told him everything.

The first life.

Our forced marriage.

Evelyn.

The divorce papers.

The truck.

His body protecting mine.

His last words.

Adrian listened without interrupting.

When I finished, dawn was beginning to lighten the horizon.

“So that’s why you canceled the wedding.”

“Yes.”

“And why you sometimes looked at me like you were grieving.”

“Yes.”

He was silent for a long time.

Then he asked:

“Did I really save you?”

“You died trying.”

He looked down.

I touched his face.

“In that life, I thought you hated me.”

“Maybe he did.”

My hand trembled.

Adrian covered it with his.

“But hatred doesn’t always erase love.”

Tears filled my eyes.

“In your last moments, you told me that in the next life we shouldn’t torture each other.”

He smiled faintly.

“Sounds intelligent.”

I laughed through my tears.

Then he pulled me against him.

“So we listened.”

Years ago, I thought being reborn meant I had been given another chance to make Adrian love me.

I was wrong.

I had been given another chance to stop forcing love.

I set him free.

Then I built a life that didn’t require him.

And only after neither of us owed the other anything did Adrian walk back to me.

Not because our families arranged it.

Not because I begged.

Not because death had tied us together.

He came because he chose me.

And this time, when we promised each other a lifetime, neither of us was trapped.

We were simply two people who had already learned, once at the cost of our lives, that love held by force becomes a prison.

So in our second life—

we left the door open.

And still chose to stay.