This Time, I Choose Her to Live

Chapter 4

"You wanted to leave, right? There's a boat waiting at the dock."

I knew better than to trust her, but this was the first time that door had been unlocked in 3 days.

When we reached the private dock, I stopped before stepping onto the boat.

"Enough with the games. Why did you let me out?"

The smile in Jenna's eyes slowly faded.

"Summer, why aren't you fighting for him this time? In my last life, you screamed, cried, and knelt on the floor, begging Ethan to believe you. The more desperate and hysterical you became, the more he hated you. But this time? Why are you just giving him up?"

I asked Jenna, "You're reborn too?"

Jenna didn't deny it.

"You think handing him over to me means you've won?" she snapped. "The harder you try to walk away, the more he refuses to let you go. Even when he's drunk and holding me, the name he moans is yours! As long as you're alive, everything I get feels like something you've handed down to me."

The truth finally spilled out of her.

If Ethan chose her, she'd marry him. If he chose me, she'd fake her own death and haunt our marriage like a ghost for the rest of our lives.

The one thing she hadn't expected was for me to walk away entirely.

I'd spent 10 years paying for a crime she'd committed, while she'd hidden in the shadows and watched me suffer until I was barely recognizable.

When I'd knelt and begged Ethan to believe me, when he'd held me beneath the seawater and interrogated me, she'd been alive and safe, watching it all unfold.

My chest felt like it was being torn open.

I couldn't even tell whether I hated her more than the man who'd never believed a word I'd said.

"If you won't live the way you did in your last life," she snarled, "then you can die the way you did back then."

She reached up and switched off the dock's security cameras. Then she ripped open the bandages on her shoulder, reopening the half-healed wound.

"A dangerous lunatic who attacked someone, escaped confinement, then drowned herself out of guilt? Sounds believable enough, doesn't it?"

I spun around to run, but she lunged from behind, wrapped her arms around my waist, and dragged me toward the guardrail with all her strength.

I grabbed fistfuls of her sleeve, fighting to stay on my feet, but the momentum sent us both tumbling over the edge.

Freezing seawater flooded my mouth and nose, searing my lungs.

My right leg was still injured from the k********g, and I couldn't get any strength into it.

Jenna's head broke the surface first, and she immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Ethan! Summer's trying to kill me!"

Right on cue, Ethan came sprinting onto the dock.

All he saw was me clinging desperately to Jenna's bloodstained white dress.

He dove into the water without a second thought, swam straight toward me.

But Jenna sobbed, her voice cracking with desperation.

"Ethan, I don't want to die again."

Ethan froze for a split second.