第二章

The bass from the frat party still thumped in my skull when I pushed open the heavy glass doors of the Computer Science lab on Monday morning. I hadn't slept. I spent the weekend ripping apart my own source code, securing every backdoor, and locking down my intellectual property.

I walked into the lab and stopped.

Liam sat at the center workstation. Chloe sat right next to him. He was carefully peeling a pastel-colored sticker and pressing it onto the lid of her rose-gold MacBook. He smoothed out the air bubbles with his thumb. It was an incredibly intimate, domestic gesture.

He didn't look up when I approached my desk. He didn't miss a beat.

"Maya," Liam commanded. He kept his eyes on Chloe’s laptop. "Send Chloe the LinkedIn profile of your friend at the design firm. The one with the internship hookup. It’s her lucky day to get a referral."

I dropped my backpack onto the floor. I stared at the side of his face.

Liam finally looked up. His eyes were dead, stripping away any history we shared. "Chloe and I are applying to Stanford for grad school," he stated. His voice carried across the quiet lab. "With your current GPA, you should probably look at a state school. Don't push your luck aiming too high."

The keyboards around us stopped clicking. The other students stared at us.

"While we prep our applications, you can help Chloe out around campus," Liam continued. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He looked like a king dictating orders to a peasant. "Do a good job, and I’ll introduce you to one of her frat buddies. Get you a real boyfriend."

Chloe shifted in her seat. She glanced around the room. Even she looked slightly taken aback by the sheer brutality of his words.

Liam tilted his head. He delivered the kill shot with a casual smirk. "Speaking of taking care of people, you take great care of your sick dad. You definitely have experience in that department."

My left hand shot into my jacket pocket. I curled my fingers into a tight fist. My nails dug into my palm. I pressed harder, biting through the skin until I felt the warm, wet slide of blood.

My dad.

In my past life, a doctor diagnosed my dad with Parkinson’s disease exactly five years from today. I drained my savings accounts. I blew every paycheck from my first tech job on expensive, imported medication just to keep him functional.

Liam stayed right beside me through all of it. He drove us to the emergency room at two in the morning. He lost two major venture capital pitches because he refused to leave the waiting room while my dad was in surgery.

“He’s my dad too, Maya,” the old Liam had said. He held my shaking shoulders in that sterile hospital corridor. “My parents bounced. My grandma died when I was twelve. Your parents fed me. They paid for my textbooks. They raised me. Without them, there is no Liam.”

He was right. My parents treated him like a blood son.

I stared at the man sitting in front of me now. The blood on my palm felt sticky. My chest burned. A raw, violent anger clawed up my throat. He was using my father’s declining health as a cheap punchline to impress a billionaire's daughter.

Was this really the man I spent thirty years with? Did something else hijack his brain during the reincarnation process? He was repulsive.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket. I grabbed my backpack off the floor.

"My mom wants me home early," I said. My voice came out flat, slicing cleanly through the heavy silence in the room.

I walked past their table. I paused right behind Liam’s chair. I leaned down. I lowered my voice so only he could hear me over the hum of the servers.

"By the way," I whispered. "That project file you asked me to hold on to. Come pick it up sometime."

I stood up straight and walked out the door. I didn't look back.

It was a code. It was a specific, private lie from our past life. Whenever we got stuck at a miserable corporate dinner party and wanted to escape, one of us would lean in and say that exact phrase. It was our emergency exit. If he was my Liam, his muscle memory would react. He would know exactly what I meant.

I took the bus off campus. I unlocked the front door of my parents' house.

The television blared in the living room. My dad sat in his worn leather recliner, watching a baseball game.

He looked over his shoulder and frowned. "Where's little Liam? He didn't walk you home?"

My throat tightened. "He's busy, Dad."

I walked over and sat on the armrest of his chair. "Dad, you need to go to the hospital. You need a full checkup. Tomorrow."

He waved his hand, dismissing me instantly. "Waste of money. I'm fine. My joints are just a little stiff, that's all."

"I won a coding competition," I lied smoothly. I looked him dead in the eye. "First place. The prize is a hundred grand. The money hits my account next week."

My dad's eyes went wide. He looked at me, pride instantly washing over his tired, lined face. "A hundred grand? Maya, that's..." He sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping. "Fine. I'll go tomorrow. But we're using the insurance."

I leaned my head against his shoulder. I breathed in the familiar scent of his old drugstore aftershave. Tears pricked the back of my eyes, hot and fast. I blinked them away immediately.

In my past life, the Parkinson's destroyed his muscles. He suffocated in a sterile hospital bed. I held his hand as he gasped for his last, agonizing breaths. His final words still echoed in my head, carving a hole in my chest.

“Liam will take care of you. I can go in peace.”

I stood up and went to my childhood bedroom. I shut the door and sat on the edge of the mattress.

My mind spun furiously. We were childhood sweethearts. We went from sharing cheap high school hoodies to wearing custom designer wedding attire. The media called us the perfect Silicon Valley power couple. For decades, we were rock solid.

He hugged me every single morning before walking out the front door. He brought home cheap grocery store roses on random Tuesdays just to see me smile. When the air conditioning broke in our first cramped apartment, he fanned me with a magazine until my eyes closed. When it snowed in New York, he pulled my freezing feet under his shirt and warmed them against his stomach.

Even when his startup exploded and gorgeous women threw themselves at him at every networking event, he never looked twice. “My wife is waiting for me at home,” he told the press.

He even convinced me to be DINKs—Double Income, No Kids.

“I don't want you to ruin your body,” he whispered one night, kissing my forehead in the dark. “I don't want to see you in pain in a delivery room. Just us, Maya. Let's just live a good life, the two of us.”

I buried my face in my hands. A sharp ache throbbed behind my ribs. The betrayal stung worse than a physical blow. Why? Why throw me away like garbage the second we woke up in the past? Was Chloe’s fatal car accident really enough to erase thirty years of absolute devotion?

I stared at the wall. The anger swallowed the pain.

12:00 AM.

The sound of keys jingling echoed through the thin walls. Liam lived in the apartment right next door to my bedroom. Our parents rented the units side-by-side.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. The screen lit up the dark room.

[Liam: Come over.]

My heart slammed against my ribs. He understood the code phrase. He confirmed it. He was the reincarnated Liam.

I shoved my feet into my sneakers. I walked out my front door and crossed the small landing. I knocked once on his door and pushed it open.

The apartment was pitch black. The streetlights from the window cast long, sharp shadows across the hardwood floor. Liam stood by the kitchen counter. He still wore the clothes from the computer lab. He looked exhausted. The arrogant, untouchable mask he wore all day was completely gone.

I walked straight up to him. I stopped two feet away. I let the anger harden my spine into steel.

"Why?" I asked.

One word. It carried the weight of a lifetime of betrayal, a stolen company, and a murdered marriage.

Liam stared at me. The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. He studied my face, searching for the heartbroken, desperate girl he expected to find. He didn't find her.

He opened his mouth. He delivered the final, fatal blow with zero hesitation.

"I see you as a sister."