Reborn at Eighteen The Billionaire's Second Chance novel Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Elara

Water.

I woke drowning–lungs burning, throat raw with salt and cold. My

hands clawed at nothing, grasping for Lily’s urn, for something solid

in the dark current pulling me under.

Then air. Real air. Not the ocean’s suffocating grip but the scent of

lemon polish and old wood.

I bolted upright, gasping. My chest heaved. The phantom taste of

seawater coated my tongue.

This wasn’t Rockaway Beach. This wasn’t death.

Pale October sunlight filtered through gauze curtains. A carved

mahogany bed. Silk sheets tangled around my legs–cream–colored,

expensive, untorn by years of restless sleep. My hands flew to my

throat, expecting the phantom pressure of water in my lungs.

Smooth skin. No rope burns from the hospital restraints. No bruises from the Glass House’s transparent walls where I’d beaten my fists

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bloody, screaming to be let out.

I looked down at my palms. No scars from clawing at ice and mud,

trying to gather Lily’s scattered ashes. The skin was whole. Young.

The calluses from holding paintbrushes barely formed.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

[October 20, Saturday, 6:47 AM]

[St. Valerius Academy – No classes today]

[SAT Mock Exam Results Posted: 1520/1600]

October 20th.

Three months before the pregnancy test. Eight months before Lily’s

birth. Five years before her death.

I lunged for the nightstand, hands shaking so violently I nearly

knocked over the lamp. There–the antique pocket watch Father had

left me. Intact. No cracks in the glass face. The delicate gears still

turning, marking seconds that shouldn’t exist.

I stumbled to the full–length mirror, barely recognizing the girl

staring back.

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Eighteen years old. Dark hair falling in smooth waves past my shoulders, not the brittle, medication–damaged strands I’d seen in the Glass House’s merciless reflections. My collarbones visible but not jutting–I hadn’t yet lost thirty pounds from the “recuperation diet” ‘Julian’s doctors prescribed. My eyes clear, not hollowed out by

sleepless nights in the psych ward.

No bite marks on my neck from where Julian had marked me as his

possession.

No track marks in the crook of my elbow from the sedatives they’d

forced into my veins.

No surgery scars low on my abdomen from where they’d-

The PTSD hit like a freight train.

Lily’s gray face. The social worker’s clinical voice: “The foster parents

didn’t know about the nut allergy.” The courtroom where they’d

declared me unfit. Julian’s wedding to Sloane, their son in a miniature

tuxedo while my daughter’s ashes blew across a frozen driveway. The

Atlantic swallowing me whole, pills dissolving in my stomach, Lily’s

urn clutched to my chest-

I doubled over, forehead pressed to the cool floorboards. Bile rose in

my throat. My vision swam with overlapping timelines–the girl I was

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and the woman I’d died as, occupying the same body, the same

moment.

“I came back,” I whispered to the empty room. To Lily, wherever she

was now–unborn, unformed, safe in some cosmic waiting room. “I

came back to a world where you don’t exist yet. Where I can make

sure you never have to.”

The thought should have brought relief.

Instead, it felt like a second death. Like I’d murdered my daughter all

over again by wishing away her existence.

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