Chapter 1

The white light of the hospital room was blinding, a constant, sterile hum filling my ears.

Every breath was a struggle, a shallow pull against a crushing weight on my chest.

I was Alex Miller, a game developer who had poured his soul into pixels and code, but never seemed to break through.

A failure.

That's what Sarah, my wife, thought of me.

For three years, she had been a stranger in our own home, her words turning from love to ice.

Divorce papers were a constant presence on the kitchen counter, a monument to my inadequacy.

She faked affairs, flaunted imaginary financial ruin, anything to push me away, to humiliate me until I had no choice but to let her go.

I believed her.

I believed every cruel word, every staged betrayal.

So when the car hit me, a blur of speed and shattered glass on a rain-slicked street, I didn't call her.

Why would I?

She hated me.

My existence was a burden she was desperate to shed.

A nurse, a kind woman with tired eyes, was checking my vitals.

The beeping of the machines was slowing down, a final, fading rhythm.

I knew I didn't have much time left.

I motioned for her to come closer, my voice a dry whisper.

"Can you do something for me?"

She leaned in, her expression full of pity. "Of course."

"Tell my wife... tell Sarah Jenkins I'm gone."

A tear I didn't know I had left escaped the corner of my eye and traced a cold path down my temple.

"Tell her she won't have to deal with my failures anymore."

The nurse's eyes welled up. She nodded, a silent promise.

I closed my eyes, letting the darkness take me.

It was a relief.

The pain, the heartbreak, the constant feeling of not being good enough, it would all be over.

Sarah would be free.

But death was not an empty void.

It was a strange, detached state of watching.

I saw my own funeral, a somber affair under a gray sky.

I saw Sarah, standing apart from the small crowd.

Her face was a mask of cold indifference, just as I expected.

But her eyes... her eyes were red, raw, and swollen, a stark contrast to her composed posture.

She didn't cry. She just stood there, staring at my casket as it was lowered into the earth.

After everyone left, she remained.

She walked to the edge of the fresh grave, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles were white.

Then, I watched in ghostly disbelief as her cold facade shattered.

For the next month, she hunted down the hit-and-run driver with a terrifying, relentless focus.

She used her connections, her money, her brilliance as a tech executive, a side of her I hadn't seen in years.

She cornered the man in a dark alley.

I couldn't hear what she said, but I saw the pure, undiluted rage in her eyes.

I saw her break his arm, then his leg, leaving him whimpering on the wet pavement before making an anonymous call to the police.

She secured justice for me.

A man she supposedly despised.

The final scene of my ghostly existence played out at my grave a week later.

It was late at night, the only light coming from a full moon.

Sarah was there, dressed in a simple black dress.

She held a piece of paper in her hand.

Even from my ethereal vantage point, I could see the words.

It was a medical diagnosis.

Terminal.

Glioblastoma.

The same word that haunted my nightmares after her mother passed from it.

Her hands trembled as she pulled a small bottle from her purse.

Pills.

Dozens of them.

She opened my casket, the hinges groaning in the silent night.

She climbed in, lying down next to the empty space where my body should have been.

She swallowed the pills, one after another, washing them down with a small bottle of water.

Then she lay back, her head resting on the satin pillow.

She whispered into the cold, empty air, her voice breaking with a love so profound it tore through the veil of death and reached me.

"Alex, I'm here to stay. I'm so sorry. I just wanted you to live, to be happy, without me."

Her breath hitched, a final, ragged sigh.

"I love you."

The world fractured.

The graveyard, the casket, Sarah's lifeless form-it all dissolved into a blinding white light.

A gut-wrenching, tearing sensation pulled me apart and slammed me back together.

I gasped, sucking in air like a drowning man.

The sterile smell of a hospital was gone.

I smelled coffee, and the faint, familiar scent of Sarah's perfume.

I was sitting at our kitchen table.

Sunlight streamed through the window.

Across from me sat Sarah.

She looked healthy, vibrant, her eyes clear and sharp, but filled with a cold resolve I knew all too well.

She slid a stack of papers across the table.

Divorce papers.

"I've found someone else, Alex," she said, her voice flat, rehearsed. "He's successful. He can give me what you can't."

This was it. The day it all started. The first time she asked for a divorce in my previous life.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild drumbeat of terror and rage and a love so fierce it hurt.

Knowing what I knew now, seeing her play this cruel part, it was unbearable.

"Sign it," she demanded, her gaze unwavering.

I looked at her, truly looked at her for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

I saw the faint, almost invisible lines of pain around her eyes.

I saw the slight tremor in her hand as she pushed the papers closer.

She was a brilliant actress, but I now had the script.

I reached for the papers.

Her jaw tensed, expecting me to sign, to finally give up.

Instead, my fingers closed around the thick stack, and I ripped them in half, then in half again, the sound tearing through the quiet kitchen.

Her eyes widened in shock.

I stood up, stalked around the table, and pulled her into my arms.

She was stiff, resistant, but I held on, burying my face in her hair, breathing in the scent of her, the reality of her.

She was alive. She was here.

"Are you crazy?" I whispered, my voice thick with unshed tears.

"Hiding a terminal illness? Do you think that's cool?"