At Twenty-Eight, He Married My Enemy. At Eighteen, He Gave Me a Second Life. Chapter 06

At Twenty-Eight, He Married My Enemy. At Eighteen, He Gave Me a Second Life. Chapter 06

We had only taken a few steps when eighteen-year-old Ethan’s face grew even paler.

He clutched his chest, his forehead covered in cold sweat.

I spun around.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ethan was staring at me from the floor.

I immediately pulled my hand free from the boy’s and rushed to the first-aid kit mounted on the ballroom wall.

I grabbed gauze and bandages, then knelt beside the injured Ethan.

I pressed the gauze firmly against the wound and wrapped bandages tightly around his torso.

The bleeding gradually slowed.

I let out a breath of relief.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ethan looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine regret on his face.

“When I was bleeding out, all those people who always called themselves my friends ran away. Blair left too. You were the only one willing to save me.”

He coughed violently a few times.

“Eileen, I’m sorry. I was wrong. You still love me, don’t you? Once I recover, we can start over. I’ll treat you right. I won’t make you cry again.”

Eighteen-year-old Ethan stared at me in disbelief.

“Eileen, wake up!”

He pointed at the man on the floor, his voice trembling.

“Did you forget what he did to you? He got together with Blair and gave her everything he’d promised you! He even played the video of you being hurt in front of everyone at the wedding! He used the worst thing that ever happened to you to humiliate you! You shouldn’t have saved him. You should’ve let him die right here!”

The boy started crying.

“Eileen, I’m begging you. Stop loving him.”

I wrapped my arms around eighteen-year-old Ethan from behind.

His scent was exactly as I remembered it.

“Ethan. I wasn’t saving him. I was saving you.”

They were the same person.

When twenty-eight-year-old Ethan was hurt, eighteen-year-old Ethan felt the pain too.

If twenty-eight-year-old Ethan died, the boy standing in front of me would disappear as well.

I no longer cared whether the man from the future lived or died.

But I couldn’t bear to lose eighteen-year-old Ethan.

I couldn’t bear to watch the boy who had once loved me more than anyone else disappear too.

The boy turned around and held me tightly.

“Eileen, I’m still him. The boy I am now and the man I become are the same person. I’m the one who hurt you too. You should let him die and let me disappear with him. That’s the only way this can truly end for you.”

Then he tightened his grip on the knife again.

I couldn’t stop him.

The boy walked over to twenty-eight-year-old Ethan and bent down.

The flat of the cold blade pressed against the man’s cheek.

“Ethan Grant. Do you know who I am now?”

The man on the floor gave a bitter laugh and closed his eyes.

When he first saw the boy, he had been a little afraid.

How could someone look so much like him?

The only difference was that the face before him was much younger.

The boy still had the raw impulsiveness and headlong courage Ethan had lost long ago.

He looked like he was afraid of nothing.

He was nothing like the man Ethan had become, with his expensive suits, his company, his investors, and his endless banquets and social obligations.

His career had been a success, while Eileen had slowly gone from the woman he loved to a toy in his eyes.

It wasn’t until he heard the conversation between the boy and Eileen that he finally understood. As impossible as it seemed, this young man really was his eighteen-year-old self.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ethan opened his eyes.

“I’d almost forgotten how crazy I used to be. Back then, if anyone hurt Eileen, I really would rush in without caring what happened to me.”

He smiled wearily.

“Do it. You have every right to kill me.”

Just as the tip of the knife was about to fall, police and ambulance sirens wailed outside.

The boy froze.

Crying, I told him to run.

He immediately rushed back to me.

“Eileen, will you come with me?”

I nodded.

The next second, a blinding white light swallowed the entire ballroom.

A violent wave of dizziness hit me.

But the hand holding mine never let go.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ethan remained on his knees.

All he could do was watch me slowly disappear before his eyes.

“Eileen! Don’t go! Please!”