Reborn and He Still Picked the Wrong Girl

I came to the old equipment room to find Easton.

He'd left his AP Physics textbook in his locker, and next period was a pop quiz. Two years as his invisible girlfriend had made carrying his things for him a reflex.

Then I heard his voice through the gap in the door.

"Last life, Sloane clung to me like she'd lost her mind. Begged me to marry her. This life, I'm not making that mistake again."

He didn't bother to hide the disgust.

I stopped walking. My blood went cold.

Last life?

Then my best friend Delphine answered, soft and sweet. "But Easton, Sloane's so good to you. She gave up her MIT interview for you. Doing this to her—aren't we being unfair?"

"And what has being good to me ever gotten her?" Easton laughed, low and mean. "A girl that dull just suffocates me. Del, fate handed us a second life with our memories. I'm not choosing wrong twice. This life, I'm with you."

The wind pushed the door open a crack.

They were kissing.

My head went blank, then cleared all at once, cold as ice water down my back.

They'd both been reborn.

They'd come back carrying every memory from before, and they'd stepped on everything I gave them without a flicker of guilt. They'd even rewritten me into the desperate girl who couldn't let go.

Last life, I gave up my Ivy League offer to help Easton get his company off the ground. I stayed at the state school. Worked three jobs to cover his tuition. Took a beating from street thugs that was meant for him.

And after he made it, he pulled Delphine into his arms and told me, "Sloane, you're too much for me. Only with Del do I feel like a man."

I watched them through the gap and felt nothing but cold.

No rage. No screaming. Just the absurd, creeping urge to laugh.

I didn't shove the door open. I didn't throw down his book and make a scene.

I turned around and dropped his AP Physics textbook in the trash can at the end of the hall.

Back in the classroom, I unzipped my bag and pulled out the MIT early-acceptance letter I'd buried at the very bottom.

I'd planned to drive over this afternoon and turn it down in person.

Instead I uncapped my pen and signed my name on the line.

Easton, I'll let you have her.

Easton and Delphine walked into calculus one after the other. He pulled her chair out, then brushed the eraser shavings off her desk for her.

A few people whistled under their breath.

I sat in the back row without looking up, scrolling through a scholarship application.

"Sloane." Easton stopped at my desk and looked down at me.

I put my pen down and let my eyes settle flat on his face.

He pulled a black pen out of his pocket. A limited-edition Montblanc.

I'd washed dishes three weeks straight at the restaurant where I worked to save up for that pen. His birthday present. It had reached him two days ago.

"This is too expensive. It's not really my style." He said it evenly, like he was doing me a kindness. "Del's got the state exams coming up. She needs it more than I do. I gave it to her. Just so you know."

The room went quiet.

Everyone knew how much I liked Easton. Everyone knew what that pen had cost me.

Delphine stood behind him, biting her lip, all wounded eyes. "Sloane, I'm sorry. If it bothers you, I can give it back—"

"It's been given away. That makes it trash now." I kept my voice flat. "What you do with trash is up to you. You don't owe me an explanation."

Easton frowned. He hadn't expected that.

In his head, I was supposed to confront him with red eyes, or beg him to take it back.

"Sloane, you don't need to be like this." His face hardened. "I've told you. We're friends. Stop holding onto fantasies that were never real."

I looked at him for a moment.

"You're reading into things." I closed the application and pulled my bag onto my shoulder. "Move."

I knocked past his shoulder and walked out.

"Sloane!" His voice cracked behind me, furious.