They Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life Chapter 42

They Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life Chapter 42

My own eyes welled up.

“It asked me if I was willing to trade my soul for a chance for you to truly change the ending.”

“I said yes.”

He took a ragged breath, as if trying to hold down the pain in his chest.

“But there were conditions. I would keep all my memories, and you wouldn’t. I could only watch things begin again. I couldn’t tell you the truth too early, and I couldn’t interfere and rewrite your path.”

He paused for several seconds.

“Not unless, in this life, you first learned to love yourself.”

At that moment, the place in my chest that had been hollow for so long felt as if it had been slammed open.

It wasn’t emptiness anymore.

It was pain.

The searing pain of a heart starting to beat again.

And it was love.

“Leo…”

Memories flooded back like a tidal wave.

That cold, pale corridor.

The numbness of the medication.

Savannah’s falsely concerned face on the video calls.

And the boy who secretly slipped me chocolate.

The boy who had whispered, *I’ll get you out of here,* that night.

The boy who died beneath the wall so I could run.

My tears fell all at once.

“I remember,” I choked out. “I remember everything.”

Leo jerked his head up. “What?”

“The deal is broken.” I threw myself into his arms and held him tight. “Because I finally learned how to love myself.”

I looked up at him through blurred tears.

“And I love you. So much it hurts.”

Leo looked as if he had been struck by lightning.

The next second, he lowered his head and kissed me.

Under the climbing gym’s overly bright lights, amid the smell of chalk and sweat, we held each other and cried until we could barely stand.

For all the words we hadn’t gotten to say in our last life.

And for the future in this life, where we could finally live.