The last thing I saw before the bus crashed was a love triangle.
Literally. I was on the final page of Golden Bonds , a trashy romance novel with glowing reviews and questionable content, where the golden-haired heroine lay in a hospital bed while two billionaires—both her lovers—stood at her bedside, each holding a newborn daughter. Twin girls. Different fathers. DNA-tested proof. No one was mad. Everyone was radiant and full of love and forgiveness.
I muttered, "You've got to be kidding me," as I turned the final page. And then the bus collided with a truck.
A flash of metal. A scream. And, somehow, a small child appeared beside me. I moved without thinking, shielding them with my body.
Then, darkness.
Let me back up.
I wasn't always the kind of person who read romance novels on the way to work. In fact, I used to scoff at them—too idealistic, too forgiving, too willing to glorify toxic men with sharp cheekbones and emotional constipation. But I'd been told to try. By my therapist. She thought it might help soften my... edges.
Spoiler alert: It didn't.
I was thirty, a chronically single virgin with a breakup rate that could rival Hollywood divorces. I'd dumped a guy for breathing too loudly during a movie. I had zero tolerance for flaws, red flags, or even minor inconveniences. Love seemed like a trap—a pit women threw themselves into, calling it romance while losing their sense of self.
I knew this intimately.
My mother was obsessed with my father. Not in a cute, sitcom way. In a pathetic, soul-crushing way. He treated her like a backup plan—floating between her and his "first love," who, for the record, was someone else's wife until she died of cancer. When I was eight, I told my mom to divorce him. She laughed and said, "You don't understand love."
No, Mom. I understood it perfectly. That's why I wanted no part in it.
My father was indecisive and spineless. My mother, devoted and delusional. My younger brother, the worst of both worlds—a selfish playboy who somehow inspired women to fight over him in public like it was The Bachelor finale. Every family barbecue turned into an emotional war zone.
The last time I saw them, I lost it. I gave what I now refer to as The Monologue —an epic verbal purge where I called out my parents for being terrible role models, my brother for being a manipulative coward, and the women chasing him for lacking self-respect.
My mother slapped me. Not because I was wrong, but because I'd dared insult her boy .
That was the day I walked away.
I started therapy. I wanted to become better—not because I believed in love, but because some pathetic, persistent part of me still wanted it. I didn't want to end up like my mother. I didn't want to end up alone either.
So I read romance novels.
I just didn't expect one to kill me.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't on a bus or in a hospital.
I was in someone's arms. A man's arms. He had cold blue eyes and black hair—and he was holding me like I was made of glass.
And I was crying.
Not from grief. From being a baby .
A baby with all my memories, reborn into a world I recognized .
I'd become one of the twins. The one born of the second male lead—Dorian Ashford, the calculating cousin of the golden-eyed playboy, Caelum Ashford. The daughter of Aurora Drayke , the heroine of the book I'd just finished reading and cursed with my last coherent thought.
"Fine," I remembered muttering to the cosmos moments before death. "At least if I were her kid, I wouldn't have to ride the bus to a dead-end job where nepotism is currency and sleeping with your boss is the only raise, you'll ever get."
Apparently, someone was listening.
And so begins my second life—as Selene Ashford Drayke, daughter of a genius, child of a scandal, sister of a golden girl, and reincarnated reader of one of the dumbest love stories ever written.
God help me.