We Both Reborn And I Let Go This Time Chapter 01

We Both Reborn And I Let Go This Time Chapter 01

In my previous life, my parents had it all figured out. They’d have my sister Clara Vance marry a soldier named Raymond Cole so she wouldn’t be shipped off to work in the country.

But the day he came to ask for Clara’s hand, I slipped and fell into the river. He pulled me out, soaked and gasping, right in front of everyone.

After that, he had no choice but to marry me. Clara was the one who got sent away.

He never let me forget it.

I kept my head down and did the cooking, the cleaning, the mending. I scraped together every spare dollar and sent it back to my family in the countryside.

Somewhere along the way, the ice between us started to crack.

Then he was killed on a mission. A fellow soldier brought me his last words.

“Eleanor, next time around, please. Let me and Clara have what we were supposed to.”

When I opened my eyes, I was in the river again.

It was the same day, the same moment, the same freezing water closing over my head.

This time, Raymond stood on the bank and watched me struggle. Then he turned around and walked away.

He remembered too.

In this life, he was going straight for the woman he’d spent the last one regretting.

***

I pushed through the front door, soaked to the bone, and walked into the middle of a celebration.

Raymond was sitting in the living room with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates on the table beside him. The full formal-proposal spread.

My parents hovered around him, all smiles and small talk. Clara sat across from him, her cheeks flushed pink.

I stood there dripping, taking it all in.

Mom spotted me first. Her face tightened.

“Look at you, dripping wet in front of our guest. Have you no decency?”

I opened my mouth to say I’d fallen into the river, but Dad cut in first.

“All you ever do is cause problems. Are you trying to ruin your sister’s big day?”

Nobody asked if I was hurt.

Clara stood and pressed a dry towel into my hands. “Go get changed,” she murmured. “You’ll catch a cold.”

I took the towel. My eyes shifted toward Raymond.

He sat beside Clara with a teacup in his hand. He never once looked my way.

I ducked my head and went to my room.

Through the closed door, I could hear everything. Mom went over the wedding plans with Clara while Dad questioned Raymond about life on base, and the whole room hummed with easy laughter.

I was reaching for my buttons when the voices carried down the hall. Then I heard Raymond’s voice, pitched low.

“That sister of yours isn’t what she seems, Clara. Keep your distance.”

Clara didn’t hesitate. “Don’t talk about her like that. She’s my sister.”

She paused for a beat, then spoke again.

“Do you have any friends on base? Someone decent? Maybe you could introduce her. I can’t stand the thought of her stuck out there all alone.”

Mom jumped in before Raymond could answer.

“Introduce her to whom? If she doesn’t go, then who will? We only have two daughters. Once you’re married, somebody has to take that work placement out in the country, and your father and I are too old for that kind of work.”

Dad backed her up right away. “Your mother’s right. What’s Eleanor going to do sitting around here? One of you has to do what’s best for this family.”

Raymond’s voice came back easily, as if the answer were obvious. “A little hard work out there will be good for her. Toughen her up.”

My fingers froze on my collar, and my nails dug into my palm.

Everything from my previous life came flooding back.

After I married Raymond, I followed him to his base.

The other wives took one look at where I came from and decided I was beneath them. They said it to my face, and they said worse behind my back.

Raymond never once stood up for me.

Every time he looked at me, it felt like he was looking through me. I was furniture in that house, an obligation he couldn’t get rid of.

Then he took a hit on a mission. The doctors told me he might not wake up.

I sat beside his bed for a month. I held water to his lips, cleaned his wounds, and barely slept.

The day he opened his eyes, he looked at me for a long time.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For everything.”

Something shifted after that.

He started shutting people down when they came at me. If anyone tried to push me around, he put himself between us.

Slowly, we thawed, like a creek breaking open in early spring. It didn’t happen all at once, but it was enough.

I let myself believe we were going to be okay.

I got pregnant, and for the first time, I thought we might actually become a real family.

Then the call came from the countryside. Clara had gone into labor, and neither she nor the baby made it.

Raymond lost his mind.

He came at me with bloodshot eyes, shaking. “You killed her,” he kept saying. “This is your fault.”

I tried to explain. He shoved me hard.

I hit the ground, and my stomach caught the corner of the table on the way down.

I lost the baby.

He just stood there and watched. The rage drained out of him, but it was already too late.

After that, we lived in the same house as strangers.

He stopped saying cruel things. He also stopped looking at me at all.

Until the day he didn’t come home, and a soldier showed up at my door with his final words.

“Eleanor, next time around, please. Let me and Clara have what we were supposed to.”

I stood in my room, soaked through, my fists clenched in the fabric of my drenched clothes.

Tears splashed onto the backs of my hands before I even realized I was crying.

Fine.

This time, I’d give them what they wanted.