He Joked About Breaking Up. I Said Yes.

For three years, I loved my brother's best friend in secret. Ethan Blake promised that on his twenty-eighth birthday, he would finally tell everyone I was his girlfriend. Instead, he leaned close at dinner and joked that he was tired of me.

In my first life, I fought for him, married him, and died waiting for a husband who never came. In this life, I smiled and gave him exactly what he asked for.

Chapter 1

The last time Ethan Blake told me he was bored of me, I begged him to marry me anyway. It killed me. This time, I was ready to say yes.

For three years, Ethan Blake and I dated without a single person knowing.

Not my parents. Not my friends. Not even my brother, who had called Ethan his best friend since college.

Ethan always had a reason to keep us quiet. The timing was bad. His family would make it complicated. My brother would overreact. We should wait until our relationship felt more settled.

Then, two weeks before his twenty-eighth birthday, he took my hand in the dark and promised, "At my birthday dinner, I'll tell everyone. No more hiding."

I believed him.

I had even bought a dress for the announcement. It was dark blue, simple enough that no one would accuse me of stealing attention from the birthday boy, but beautiful enough that I had stood in front of my mirror imagining the moment Ethan reached for my hand. I pictured my brother swearing, my mother crying, and Ethan laughing as he told them we had wanted to be sure before sharing the news.

I pictured my brother swearing, my mother crying, and Ethan laughing as he told them we had wanted to be sure before sharing the news.

On the way to the restaurant, Ethan had texted that work was hectic and asked me to arrive separately. I told myself it was only for another hour. After three years of entering rooms ten minutes apart and leaving by different doors, I could survive one more hour.

Then the cake came out. The speeches ended. The hour passed, and he still introduced me exactly as he always had: his best friend's kid sister.

That was before I died once.That was how the night had gone the first time, before I died and woke up at this same table again.

At his birthday dinner, our friends filled a private room at an upscale restaurant downtown. Candles flickered in glass holders. Empty wine bottles crowded the table. Everyone had already sung to him, toasted him, and demanded a speech.

Ethan never mentioned me.

Near the end of dinner, he leaned toward my ear. Whiskey warmed his breath, but his eyes were clear.

"Mia, it's been three years," he murmured. "I'm getting bored. Maybe you should find someone else to marry."

He smiled when he said it, as if he had tossed me a harmless joke and expected the usual performance in return.

In my first life, that sentence had shattered me. I had cried in front of everyone, though no one understood why. I had cornered him afterward, demanding that he take it back. When he refused, I had begged my parents to help me marry him anyway.

They eventually did.

Marriage did not make Ethan love me.

It only gave him a new reason to resent me.

I remembered the cold bedroom we barely shared. The nights he came home after midnight and turned his back to me. The last phone call, when I was in labor too early and bleeding across the bathroom floor.

He had been in Hong Kong with Claire Monroe.

I remembered telling him I needed help. I remembered him saying, "Call an ambulance, Mia. What do you expect me to do? I'm not a doctor."

I remembered the line going dead.

The paramedics came. The hospital tried. I still died before morning, and Ethan spent hours believing my emergency was another trick to drag him away from Claire.

Now I sat beside him again, alive, twenty-six, and back at the birthday dinner where I had made the worst choice of my first life.

This time, I nodded.

"Okay."

His smile faltered.

I lifted my glass and took a slow sip. "Let's break up."

Ethan stared at me. "What?"

"You said I should find someone else. I heard you."

"Mia." He studied my face, waiting for tears or anger. "You know I was kidding, right?"

"I know what you said."

His expression tightened. "What's going on with you tonight?"

Before I could answer, glass shattered near the far end of the room. A server apologized. A woman in a red dress hurried through the doorway with one hand over her mouth.

Noah Brooks, sitting on Ethan's other side, twisted around in his chair. "Was that Claire?"

Ethan went still.

Noah elbowed him. "Did you invite your ex to your birthday and then let her run out crying? Go check on her."

Ethan was already on his feet.

He crossed the room and disappeared into the hall without another word to me.

For one brief second, the old pain rose on instinct. It felt like reaching for a light switch in a house where I no longer lived.

Then a platter of garlic-butter shrimp arrived.

I peeled one for myself.

For years, whenever Ethan and I ate together, I served him first. His job kept him on his phone. He was always stepping away from meals, and I worried his favorite dishes would be gone before he returned. I made sure he had shrimp, steak, whatever he liked, sitting on his plate when he came back.

My brother had noticed.

"Why do you always feed Ethan before me?" he had complained more than once. "I'm the one who's actually related to you."

Then he would squint at me and add, "Wait. Do you have a thing for him?"

Every time, my heart had jumped.

Every time, Ethan had laughed first.

"Don't be ridiculous," he would say. "Mia's your little sister. That makes her mine too."

He never risked leaving even a joke unanswered.

No pictures together. No gifts that might raise questions. No birthday posts, anniversary texts I was allowed to keep, or dates in places where friends might see us. On social media, I did not exist in his life.

He had erased our relationship so carefully that, looking back, I wondered how I had mistaken invisibility for protection.

My brother leaned over while I ate my shrimp. "You're weirdly calm. Ethan's been gone forever. Aren't you worried he'll leave with another woman?"

"Why would that be my problem?"

He blinked.

I wiped my fingers on a napkin. "He's your friend, not my boyfriend. If he wants to chase someone, that's his business."

My brother watched me as if I had started speaking another language.

Tonight was supposed to be the night Ethan made us public. Instead, Claire Monroe had returned from overseas, and apparently he had invited her without telling me.

The door opened again.

Ethan came back with Claire.

She had changed into a white dress. Her eyes were pink, as if she had been crying. Ethan held her hand while guiding her around the table, bending close whenever she spoke.

Noah gave a low whistle. "Well, this looks familiar. Are you two back together?"

Ethan's head snapped toward me.

For the first time all evening, panic crossed his face.

My brother saw it too. He looked from Ethan to me, but I kept eating.

"Don't start," Ethan said. "Claire and I went to school together. She needed a minute. That's all."

My brother slung an arm around Ethan's shoulders. "You went to school with me too. I don't remember you ever holding my hand through an emotional crisis."

Everyone laughed. Claire ducked toward Ethan, smiling as if she wanted the room to keep talking.

I stood and caught my brother by the sleeve.

"Leave them alone," I said. "Come finish dinner."

Then I looked at Ethan.

He had spent three years telling the world I was only his best friend's kid sister.

I gave him the same polite smile I would give any longtime family friend.

"Right, Ethan?"

His jaw tightened.

For once, he seemed to hate the distance he had built between us.

My brother returned to his seat, still watching me. Under the table, he nudged my shoe with his.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked quietly.

"I'm fine."

It was not the automatic answer I had given in my first life while waiting for Ethan to rescue the evening. I really was fine. Hurt lived underneath the calm, but hurt was different from uncertainty. I no longer had to guess whether Ethan would choose me when it mattered. I had already seen the answer once, all the way to its end.

I no longer had to guess whether Ethan would choose me when it mattered. I had already seen the answer once, all the way to its end.

Across the table, Ethan reached for his phone, typed something, and stopped. My own screen stayed dark.

That silence used to frighten me. Now it felt like the first quiet room I had entered in years.