Chapter 3

After I got the boot off my ankle, I moved into a crappy apartment on the other side of town. It was a mess of pizza boxes and beer bottles, a fortress of my own making. But she found me.

Jocelyn started showing up.

First, it was with a container of my mom' s chili, her excuse being that my mother was worried I wasn't eating. I took it and shut the door in her face.

The next day, she showed up while I was at work. I came home to find my disaster of an apartment spotless. The trash was gone, the dishes were done, and there were groceries in the fridge. It felt like a violation.

She started winning over my parents, showing up at their Sunday dinners, helping my mom in the garden. My mom would call me afterward, telling me how much Jocelyn still loved me, how I was making a terrible mistake.

I knew what this was about. I'd heard the rumors around town. The Chavez family ranch was in trouble, deep in debt and facing foreclosure. Her family was old money, but old money runs out. They needed a lifeline. They needed my family's oil money.

That was the only explanation for this desperate, pathetic campaign. She wasn't fighting for me. She was fighting for a bailout.

The thought made me sick, but it also made things clear. This wasn't about love. It was about money. It always was.

The whole town was talking. Ethan Lester, the golden boy quarterback, had left the beautiful Jocelyn Chavez at the altar. I saw the whispers, the pitying looks they gave her in the grocery store. She had been the queen of our small town, and I had publicly dethroned her. A small, ugly part of me felt a grim satisfaction.

My parents, however, were not satisfied.

"You need to give us a real reason, Ethan," my dad said one night, cornering me in their kitchen. "A real reason why you would do this to her, to us."

I couldn't tell them the truth. 'Hey Mom, Dad, I lived a whole other life where my wife cheated on me and died, so I got reborn and now I'm trying to avoid it.' They'd have me committed.

So I gave them a piece of it.

"She was in love with someone else," I said, the words tasting like ash. "The whole time. Our whole life."

I didn't say who. I didn't give details. But the conviction in my voice, the raw pain I couldn't hide, was enough. For the first time, they looked at me not with anger, but with a flicker of understanding.

It was a temporary peace, but it was enough.