Chapter 1: A Christmas Reset

Pain. So much pain.

It felt like my whole body was made of broken glass, every nerve screaming. I jolted awake in bed, gasping for air, drenched in a cold sweat. My hands shot to my neck, half-expecting to find blood. The scratchy comforter twisted around my legs, the scent of laundry detergent and old pine floors grounding me. Was this real? Or just another nightmare?

The digital clock on my nightstand glowed in the darkness. Still shaking, I fumbled under my pillow for my phone, my fingers numb and trembling as I checked the time.

5 a.m., December 25th. I’d been reborn!

Back to the day my fate changed. The string of Christmas lights outside my window blinked red and green, their glow cutting through the predawn shadows. Somewhere down the street, the faint jingle of a Salvation Army bell carried through the cold. My heartbeat thudded in my ears, every sense raw with memory.

Today, Emily and I would be stopped by Jason and his buddies on our way to school.

Emily would be dragged by Jason into the woods, where he’d try to assault her. I could already feel the chill in the air, see the frost crusting the bare branches lining the shortcut path. The memory played in my mind like a horror movie I couldn’t pause.

In my previous life, I protected her—fighting one against ten—only to be stabbed in the side by Jason, who fought dirty.

While I was bleeding on the ground, he broke both my legs with a baseball bat. The sound of bones snapping echoed in my memory, helplessness flooding back, thick and suffocating.

Emily hid in the corner, trembling, too scared to call the cops. She hugged her knees, her face buried, not daring to look up.

It was a kind classmate passing by who eventually called 911 and an ambulance for me. I remember the sirens approaching, the relief and humiliation mingling as I lay there, powerless.

I was rushed to the ICU with severe injuries.

At eighteen, I became crippled, unable to have children. Doctors whispered outside my hospital room, words like “sterility” and “irreversible” haunting me through the walls.

After the incident, Jason, already an adult at eighteen, was held criminally responsible and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Emily, unharmed, sobbed in her parents’ arms. I wanted to think she cried for me. Maybe I needed to. Anything else would have shattered me.

Who could have known she was crying for Jason, the one sent to jail? I watched her face twist with grief, and I thought she was mourning our friendship. I didn’t understand the truth until it was far too late.

I never blamed her, because I also thought she was a victim.

Later, Emily entered show business, and I became her manager. We drove to auditions together, ate greasy burgers backstage, spent sleepless nights rehearsing lines. I thought we were in it together.

I supported her all the way to the top, but when she became famous, she publicly accused me online.

I was labeled with false charges of sexual harassment and controlling her. The tabloids ran my face in the headlines, and strangers spat my name on Twitter.

In the end, I was stabbed hundreds of times by one of her deranged fans and died with my throat slit. I saw my own blood pooling on a cracked sidewalk, the world spinning out as sirens wailed too late.

I never imagined my short thirty years as Ryan Carter would end with me being stabbed twice because of a woman.

I hate! I resent! The bitterness stuck in my gut like bile.

But fate gave me another chance.

In this life, I won’t meddle in your affairs again.

Emily, you can face the consequences of your actions yourself.