The church bells tolled like a cruel joke, echoing through the city plaza with thunderous joy.
Elena Reed stood motionless in the middle of the crowd, her breath lodged in her throat, her fingers clenched around her phone as the screen lit up with a live broadcast. Her heels dug into the pavement, but she couldn't move.
Not when the man on that screen, her fiancé, Nathan Hale, was smiling at someone else.
And not just anyone.
Ava Lin.Her best friend.
Ava wore a long white gown that fluttered in the breeze like wings of betrayal. She stood beneath a rose archway in front of the grand cathedral, tears glistening in her eyes as Nathan dropped to one knee and held up a diamond ring the size of Elena's heartbreak.
"Ava Lin," Nathan said, his voice trembling with rehearsed emotion, "will you marry me?"
The crowd roared.
Cameras flashed.
Ava gasped theatrically, then flung her arms around him with a sob. "Yes! Yes, I will!"
Elena's knees wobbled. Her vision blurred. But not from tears. Not yet.The world around her erupted into applause, but all she could hear was the sickening thud of her own heart as it cracked into pieces.
She couldn't breathe.She couldn't blink.She couldn't understand.
This wasn't supposed to happen.Nathan was hers. He had proposed to her, hadn't he?
They'd been together for four years. She had stood by him when he was nothing. She had sacrificed, supported, suffered.
And Ava... Ava had been her maid of honor. Her shoulder to cry on.
How long had they been lying to her?
Someone bumped into her, jarring her back into her body.
"Isn't that Elena Reed?""Oh God, didn't she used to date him?""I heard they were engaged...""Well, I guess the better woman won."
The whispers stabbed like knives.
Elena turned, stumbling away from the crowd before they could see her fall apart. She made it halfway across the street before her legs gave out.
Her body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
The last thing she saw was the cathedral's towering spire blurring into the sky.
Then darkness.
Silence.
Elena gasped, eyes flying open, her body drenched in sweat. Her heart pounded like a war drum.
She sat up,
on a familiar mattress.
In a familiar room.
Her old apartment. Tiny, cluttered, full of hand-me-down furniture.
The posters on the wall. The chipped mirror. The faint smell of her vanilla shampoo. It was all exactly the same.
She scrambled for her phone. It was right there on the bedside table. Same model. Same floral case.
Her hand trembled as she hit the power button.
August 19, 2020.The screen glowed.
Elena's pulse went silent. Her breath caught in her lungs.
That date… it was five years ago.
This was before Nathan's betrayal. Before Ava's lies. Before she lost everything.
She looked down at her hands, no ring. No bruises. No scar on her wrist from the night she,
Her head spun.
Was this a dream? A hallucination?
Or a miracle?
She pressed her hand to her chest, felt the frantic beat of her heart.
No.
This was real.
Somehow… impossibly… she had come back.
Back to the beginning.