Chapter 1

The preacher cleared his throat, his voice echoing in the big wooden barn we' d rented for the wedding. "Do you, Ethan Lester, take this woman..."

My eyes locked on Jocelyn Chavez, my high school sweetheart, the woman I' d been married to for twenty-five years in another life. She looked perfect, just like she always did, a vision in white walking toward me.

But all I could see was the twisted metal of a Ford Explorer and the flashing red and blue lights of a highway patrol car.

It was our twenty-fifth anniversary in that other life. I was at home, waiting with a dinner I' d cooked myself, when the call came.

"Mr. Lester? There's been an accident. Your wife... she didn't make it."

I remember the cold that seized me, the disbelief. Then the officer's next words shattered what was left of my world.

"She wasn't alone, sir. A man was with her. Ryan Scott."

Ryan. The musician. Her "friend" from high school. The one she was always making excuses to see, missing our dinners, our anniversaries.

The grief was a physical thing, but the betrayal was worse. It was a poison that seeped into every memory, turning two and a half decades of my life into a lie.

Now, I was back. Reborn on this very day, our wedding day. A second chance. Not to fix it, but to end it before it began.

"No."

The word came out quiet, but it cut through the preacher' s speech like a gunshot.

He stopped, confused. "Son?"

Jocelyn' s perfect smile faltered. Her eyes, the same ones that had looked so distant for so many years, widened in confusion.

I looked straight at her, letting everyone in that packed barn see the coldness on my face.

"I said no. I don't."

I turned away from her, from the altar, from the life of quiet misery I refused to live again. I walked to the edge of the loft, where the barn doors were open to the Texas sky.

Without a second thought, I jumped.

The fall was about twelve feet. I landed hard on the dirt below, a sharp, searing pain shooting up my ankle. It was nothing. Nothing compared to the pain of burying a wife you thought you knew.

I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the shouts from above, and limped toward my old Ford F-150. I ripped the "Just Married" sign off the back, threw it on the ground, and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a cloud of dust and chaos behind me.