They Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life Chapter 41

They Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life Chapter 41

I stood frozen.

“What did you just say?”

“In my last life,” Leo said softly, his voice heavy with memory, “I wasn’t a student worker on a Texas farm. I worked maintenance and logistics at that center in Utah.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“I saw you,” he said. “In that place. They locked you in an isolation room, forced medication on you, and watched you become quieter and emptier every day. Savannah would get regular ‘treatment reports,’ like she was reading progress updates on a project.”

My hands began to shake.

“I saw you every day,” Leo continued. “I fixed the lights in the corridors, tended the grounds, repaired the broken doors. Once, I saw you standing by the window, writing on the fogged glass with your finger. You wrote the word ‘leave.’”

An image slammed into me from the deepest part of my memory.

Late at night.

The end of a long, white corridor.

A silent boy in work clothes handing me a coat that was one size too big.

“That night,” Leo said, “I picked the lock to your room. I wanted to get you out of there.”

I stared at him blankly.

“We were almost over the wall when security found us. I told you to run while I held them back. I fought them.”

His voice grew hoarse.

“They beat me to death under that wall. You saw the whole thing.”

I felt as if I had been nailed to the spot.

“After you went back to your room that night, you ended your own life with a bedsheet.”

His tears finally fell.

A hot drop landed on the back of my hand.

“I thought that was the end. But I saw that thing, too,” he said. “It told me you had traded your ability to love in exchange for one chance to start over.”