(Michelle POV)
I woke up before my alarm.
Not the groggy, half-awake kind where you roll over and contemplate your existence — no. This was full consciousness. Immediate awareness. The kind of awareness that comes when your heart already knows something good is about to happen.
For a moment, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft hush of morning settling outside the windows of the Lui residence.
Then it hit me.
First day back.
New semester.
And Steven Sy was coming to pick me up.
My lips curved slowly into a smile.
A ridiculous one.
The kind that would have made my old self scoff and say, get a grip, Michelle. You're not sixteen.
Except… I'm not sixteen.
I'm nineteen. Physically.
And thirty-one in soul and scars and memories I don't quite talk about.
But this?
This flutter in my chest, this silly buoyant anticipation?
I don't remember ever feeling it like this before.
Even in my previous life.
Even when I was married.
