Chapter One

Arthur used a glitch in the particle collider's data to make a temporal jump.

He was going back to the past to win back his first love.

I secretly went back with him.

And then I watched with my own eyes as the man I'd personally trained into the perfect lover held his first love's hand and confessed with all his heart:

"I didn't know how to love before. Now I've finally learned."

Chapter One

"Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"

The deafening chant nearly blew the roof off the frat house.

I stood at the very edge of the crowd with a red Solo cup in my hand, coolly watching Arthur at the center of it all under the crystal chandelier.

He was balancing an exquisite handmade fondant cake, his dark, intense eyes locked on Chloe. As everyone around them screamed, Chloe rose shyly onto her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

"That's Chloe's boyfriend. He's literally perfect." The blond girl next to me bumped my shoulder. "He's not just hot, he's so thoughtful. The second he walked in, he put his jacket around Chloe's shoulders. Where do you even find a boyfriend like that these days?"

I watched Arthur casually reach up and tuck a stray strand of hair behind Chloe's ear, and answered offhandedly, "Yeah. He really knows how to take care of someone."

After all, I'd spent five whole years of my youth hammering him, bit by bit, into that shape.

Arthur didn't used to be like this at all. He was the Ivy League's most notorious quantum physics madman, arrogant, hot-tempered, and cold to the bone. Chloe couldn't stand his icy silent treatment, so she dumped him without a second thought.

The genius couldn't stand the one and only loss of his life.

So he buried himself in his underground lab and used a glitch in the particle collider's data to grind out a working model for a temporal jump. To go back to sophomore year and win Chloe back, he left without a second thought.

Even though our fifth anniversary was less than twenty-four hours away.

Time reset. At this rowdy party, he and I were strangers with nothing between us.

Everyone's attention was on the two of them. Someone holding a beer can teased him: "Arthur, this textbook-perfect boyfriend routine of yours, did some ex train you or something?"

Arthur didn't even blink. Instead, he laced his fingers tightly through Chloe's, his voice as steady as a vow.

"There's no ex. Chloe's my first love, and the only person I'll ever love."

He was right. In this timeline, he really didn't have an ex. In my last life, I only took over the mess he'd become in the second year after the two of them broke up for good.

I was just the one who came along later and sat in the shade of a tree someone else had planted.

Too bad that every little gesture he used to win Chloe over now was something I'd taught him, step by step.

Laser lights swept wildly through the huge living room. Arthur's gaze never once strayed past the crowd. Not until it was time to cut the cake, and Chloe, smiling, holding a plate, pulled him from table to table to say hello.

Without warning, Arthur stopped right in front of me.

Our eyes met.

The curve of his mouth froze dead. A flash of pure, shocked panic crossed his black eyes. But he was a top-tier science genius, and his brain processed things fast. In half a second, he'd forced the panic back down.

Still, the way he was staring at me had a dazed look he couldn't quite hide.

I held my cup and kept up a flawless smile. Chloe noticed something was off and tugged at the sleeve of his custom shirt. "What's wrong? Do you two know each other?"

Then she pointed at me and added, "This is Eve. We're in the same big lit lecture."

Arthur finally snapped out of it. He held out a small slice of cake he'd cut, his voice hard and cold, without a trace of warmth.

"No. I don't know her."