Chapter 1

I woke up gasping, sunlight stabbing my eyes.

My room. My old room.

Posters of bands I hadn't thought about in twenty years were on the wall.

My hands, they were smooth, young.

I was seventeen again, a senior in high school.

The scholarship. The one for State University. Today was the day.

In my first life, this was where it all went wrong.

My mother, Brenda, she'd had one of her "episodes."

"Ethan, honey, you can't leave me," she'd wailed, clutching her chest. "My heart, it's not strong. Community college here, that's good enough. You need to stay close, take care of your mother."

I'd believed her. I'd given up the scholarship.

That was the first nail in my coffin.

Brenda's "love" was a boa constrictor.

"A good son listens to his mother," she'd say, her voice dripping with saccharine poison.

It was her mantra, the justification for every dream she crushed.

I wanted to join the Army, see the world, be someone.

She threatened to stop eating, to waste away, if I even filled out the application.

"You'll kill me, Ethan. Is that what you want? To kill your own mother?"

Olivia. My Olivia.

When I brought her home, a shy, sweet girl from the next town over, Brenda saw a threat.

"You're disrespectful, Ethan," she'd hissed later that night, after Olivia left, shaken by Brenda's coldness. "Paying more attention to that girl than your own mother. After all I've done for you."

She manufactured fights, accused Olivia of trying to "steal" me.

Olivia couldn't take it. We broke up. Another piece of me died.

Then came the job offer, a good one, a real career, but it was three states away.

"If you leave," Brenda had whispered, her eyes wide and disturbingly blank, "I'll walk into traffic. I swear I will. You'll have my death on your conscience."

So I stayed.

I worked dead-end jobs in our dying Rust Belt town.

I watched my youth curdle into a bitter, joyless middle age.

By my early thirties, I was a ghost, haunted by what-ifs.

And Brenda? She wasn't grateful.

"Look at you, Ethan," she'd sneer, her earlier frailty conveniently forgotten. "Such a disappointment. A failure. I sacrificed so much for you, and this is how you repay me?"

The irony was a blade twisting in my gut.

I died at thirty-five. The doctors called it a heart attack. I knew it was despair.

But now.

Now I was seventeen again.

The scholarship announcement was probably already in the mail.

This time, things would be different.

I would not let her break me.

I would protect my younger sister, Chloe, too.

Chloe, who in my first life, had become a miniature Brenda, or worse, married some sleazy older guy Brenda approved of, chasing an empty dream of "easy" money.

This second chance, this painful, burning knowledge of what she was, what she would do – this was my weapon.

I got out of bed. My body felt light, full of energy I hadn't felt in decades.

I was alive. And I was going to fight.