Reborn To The Day I Chose My Nemesis novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Speech I Didn't Give
At the foundation gala Diana sits in a wheelchair while Marcy gives her speech, drinks Marcy's tea, hears Bryson say her father's signature was easy, and dies. She wakes at 7:00 AM on 11 November 2022 with working legs.
Marcy stood at the podium at the Pellam Foundation gala and began to read my speech.
"Diana couldn't be with us tonight," she told four hundred donors, "so she asked me to say it for her."
I had asked her no such thing.
I was at the front table in my wheelchair, with a blanket over my knees that Marcy had tucked in herself.
My legs hadn't held me since September.
Marcy had a doctor for that, and a bottle of vitamins, and a thermos of ginger tea she carried everywhere.
"Drink up, sweetheart," she'd said in the car. "You're running on empty."
Now she read my jokes in my voice, and the room laughed in the right places.
Then she read the part I had cut, where the foundation thanked its new executive director.
The new executive director was her.
The ballroom clapped.
Bryson stood up beside me, took off his jacket, and settled it around my shoulders against the draft from the doors.
"Diana needs her rest," he told the people at our table. "We're so proud of how Marcy's stepped in."
I opened my mouth to say that I was the chair of this foundation and my father, Arthur Pellam, had built it.
My voice came out thin and slow, and Bryson squeezed my shoulder.
"Don't tire yourself, honey."
Nobody at the table looked at me.
They looked at Marcy, glowing at the podium, and they looked at him, the husband who was so patient with his sick wife.
A man crossed the ballroom toward me.
He was tall, in a dark suit and no tie, with a scar through his left eyebrow.
Elias Rooke.
Ashville called him the Devil, and all night the donors had stepped out of his way.
He stopped in front of my chair and spoke to me, not to Bryson.
"Mrs. Lasker. Would you like some water, or would you like to go home?"
It was the first question anyone had asked me in months.
"She's fine, Mr. Rooke," Marcy said from the podium microphone, laughing, and the whole room laughed with her. "We have everything handled."
He kept his eyes on me a moment longer.
Then he walked to the terrace door and stood beside it with his hands in his pockets.
When the speeches ended Marcy came to my table with the thermos and poured a cup.
"You're pale," she said. "Come on. All of it."
I was thirsty and too tired to argue, so I drank it.
It tasted of ginger, and underneath it was the same bitter taste I'd had for a year.
Bryson wheeled me out onto the terrace for air.
The cold hit my face, and Elias Rooke was gone from the door.
Bryson set my brakes and walked back inside, and the glass door swung almost shut behind him.
I heard them through the gap.
"Her father's signature was easy," Bryson said. "Hers took a year. But tonight she signs the shares over and we're done."
"She can't even hold the pen," Marcy said.
"Then you hold her hand."
Marcy laughed, the same warm laugh she had used at my wedding.
I tried to turn the chair.
My hands wouldn't close on the wheels.
The cup was still on my lap, and my fingers had gone numb around it.
I tried to say Dad's name, and nothing came out.
Through the glass I saw Marcy slide her arm through Bryson's and lean her head on his shoulder, and I saw them both smile.
Then the terrace went dark.
I woke up looking at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom.
Someone had stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on it when I was nine, and my father had never let me take them down.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
It said 7:00 AM, Friday, November 11, 2022.
I was twenty-eight.
I threw back the covers and put both feet on the floor, and my legs held me.
I stood in my bare feet in the middle of the room and shook.
On that Friday, in my first life, I had said yes to Bryson Lasker.
Tonight at seven he was going to propose over dinner at my father's house, and this time I knew what the year after it held.
I wasn't going to say yes.
The phone buzzed again, and a text came in from Bryson.
"Tonight. Wear the blue dress. You'll make me the happiest man in Ashville."
Under it, a second text from Marcy.
"Morning, sweetheart! I'm coming over at nine with something for your nerves."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend