Chapter 8: Every Detail

I lay still on the pillow and let the dark settle between us.

I had practiced this for a year.

In the first life, I would have said, "I was dreaming," and rolled over.

"I wasn't dreaming," I said.

Ethan waited.

He did not touch me.

He lay with one arm under my head and gave me the quiet.

He didn't ask me to speak.

"I died once," I said.

I had meant to start somewhere gentler.

"I was thirty-six.

"I was married to Leighton Prescott for twelve years, in a house in Brookline.

"He spent every one of them certain I'd killed my sister."

Ethan said nothing.

His chest rose and fell under my cheek.

"I woke up a year ago, in my bed at my parents' house, twenty-three years old.

"Leighton remembers it too. You heard him say 'again.'"

"Reborn," Ethan said slowly.

"Yes."

"Both of you."

"Yes."

He was quiet for a long moment.

I counted his heartbeats, and they stayed steady.

"Say something," I said. "Say I'm crazy. Anything."

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"About the first thing you ever said to me." He turned his head.

"In the coffee shop on Charles Street, in September, you didn't say hello.

"You said, 'Your family owes the Prescotts money, and Cornelia will use it the day you marry a Winslow. Marry me anyway.'"

I closed my eyes.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Was Reborn to Claim Me, But I'm Already Married from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.