Second Life, New Rules

Second Life, New Rules

Gavin

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My first life ended with the smell of cheap whiskey, a throbbing leg, and the bitter irony of my ex-wife' s golden boy getting the scholarship that should have been mine. I died alone, broke, and knowing I was a failure in the eyes of my kids and the woman I' d sacrificed everything for. Then, I woke up. The sun was hot on my face, the air thick with popcorn, and I was nineteen again, in my football uniform, standing on the side of the road. It was the homecoming parade, the exact moment my life had been destroyed. I saw Sabrina Johns, the town' s golden girl, laughing on the wobbly float. In my past life, I' d heroically saved her from that collapsing monstrosity, letting it crush my leg and shatter my future. That act of self-sacrifice led to a lifetime of misery, a marriage fueled by her guilt and my ruined dreams. She' d always despised me, painting me as a cripple who trapped her. To my dying breath, I thought saving her was the beginning of our tragic story. I never knew my future was already stolen, my dreams already dead, long before the float ever fell. Did my sacrifice even matter? What twisted game was this? This time, as the float lurched and the giant hornet head tilted, I didn't move forward. I stepped back. I was back, and this time, things would be different.

Introduction

My first life ended with the smell of cheap whiskey, a throbbing leg, and the bitter irony of my ex-wife' s golden boy getting the scholarship that should have been mine. I died alone, broke, and knowing I was a failure in the eyes of my kids and the woman I' d sacrificed everything for.

Then, I woke up. The sun was hot on my face, the air thick with popcorn, and I was nineteen again, in my football uniform, standing on the side of the road. It was the homecoming parade, the exact moment my life had been destroyed.

I saw Sabrina Johns, the town' s golden girl, laughing on the wobbly float. In my past life, I' d heroically saved her from that collapsing monstrosity, letting it crush my leg and shatter my future. That act of self-sacrifice led to a lifetime of misery, a marriage fueled by her guilt and my ruined dreams. She' d always despised me, painting me as a cripple who trapped her.

To my dying breath, I thought saving her was the beginning of our tragic story. I never knew my future was already stolen, my dreams already dead, long before the float ever fell. Did my sacrifice even matter? What twisted game was this?

This time, as the float lurched and the giant hornet head tilted, I didn't move forward. I stepped back. I was back, and this time, things would be different.

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On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

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