Catty stared at the doctor’s chart, her heart sinking as the words repeated in her mind. A brain tumor. Stage four. Three months left. The world outside the hospital was quiet, but inside her chest everything screamed. “Why can’t my life be normal?” she whispered. “Why can’t I go to college? Have a job? A boyfriend? Why me?” Midnight wind brushed her face as she stepped into the empty street. She wanted silence, peace—anything to drown the fear. “Fine!” she shouted into the darkness. “I’d rather die now than wait three months!” Her vision spun. Her knees gave out. The ground rushed up and her head struck it hard— Blackness. Then voices. “Are you alright, Katty?” Her eyes snapped open. A man and woman hovered over her, relief flooding their faces. “Call the doctor,” the man said excitedly. The woman hurried out. Katty tried to push herself up, but a strange reflection caught her attention. A mirror on the wall. She froze. That wasn’t her face. The girl staring back was younger—eighteen, maybe. Smooth skin. Different hair. A different body. But Catty was twenty-nine. Parentless. Alone. So who were these people calling her their daughter? The doctor entered with a warm smile. “Katty, can you hear me?” He checked her heartbeat and turned to the couple. “She’s out of the coma. She might have lost some memory.” They hugged him, crying with joy. Catty just stared, cold shock washing through her. Everything was wrong—her name, her face, her life. And then the memory hit her like lightning. The last words she wrote before the world went dark: I wanna be born again.

Kyle Washington stared at her packed bag, her heart sinking. Three months. Three months stuck in a mansion with her cousin—someone she barely knew—while her parents insisted it was for her own “good.” She was twenty, perfectly capable of living her own life, but her parents still treated her like a child. They wanted her supervised, checked, and—most infuriatingly—they wanted her cousin, James, to be her “guardian.” James Washington wasn’t exactly her idea of fun. From what she had heard, he was strict, sarcastic, and annoyingly overprotective. The thought of living under the same roof with him for three whole months made her want to run far away—anywhere but this mansion. And yet… she couldn’t say no. Her parents’ rules were absolute. Their warnings about strangers, relationships, and responsibilities had followed her her entire life. Kyle knew they meant well, but the suffocating thought of someone watching her every move… it was enough to make her groan in frustration. A knock on her door startled her. “Come in,” she muttered, adjusting the straps on her backpack. Sandra, the family maid, entered gracefully. “Young mistress, your uncle has arrived.” Kyle rolled her eyes. “Tell him to give me a minute.” Sandra bowed politely and left, and Kyle took a deep breath. This was it. The beginning of three months she couldn’t escape, a house she didn’t want to live in, and a cousin who was probably going to drive her insane. Little did she know, James Washington had his own reservations. The man who would “babysit” a twenty-year-old woman had already decided this was the last thing he wanted. Three months. A mansion. Two stubborn hearts under one roof. Chaos, laughter, tension… and maybe something neither of them expected, was about to begin.