Reborn to Ghost Him: Second Chance at Karma

When I swallowed my last breath, the only sound in the sterile hospital room was the piercing flatline of the heart monitor.

My husband was busy throwing cash at his lavish new wedding. The bride was his childhood sweetheart, the one he’d been hung up on for thirty long years.

Running errands for them like eager little lapdogs were my two sons—the boys I had bled to raise.

Even as terminal cancer devoured me alive, I couldn't get a single one of them to glance back. I blinked. The harsh blue glare of a computer monitor stabbed my eyes.

Harrison was currently flashing his Southern military academy acceptance letter, showing off for his precious first love. I let out a cold scoff.

Without a single second of hesitation, I scrawled my signature on the outofstate early admission forms for an Ivy League university.

I permanently deleted every single social media account tied to him, grabbed the cheap ring symbolizing our engagement, and flushed it straight down the toilet.

This time, I was going to toss this rotten hypocrite and his pathetic little romance directly into the incinerator. We were done. For good.

Chapter 1 Hitting 'submit' on my revised college applications, the crushing weight in my chest finally evaporated.

I was finally done playing this twisted, neverending game with Harrison. No one knew I had been given a second chance at life.

The early admission portal closed precisely at noon tomorrow. Not willing to risk a server crash ruining my escape plan, I had sneaked out in the dead of night to change my choices.

In my past life, I spent decades chasing Harrison's shadow and resenting him just as long, only to die drowning in a sea of my own bitter regrets. This time, I was cutting the cord.

I was going to put entire states between us and never look at his face again. July thirteenth was my eighteenth birthday.

I planned to look him dead in the eye in front of everyone and announce, "The engagement is off. You're free." Fifteen days left.

The moment I pushed through the cyber cafe doors, my phone buzzed with a text from Harrison. [Hanging out with some friends. Might be late. Cover for me.

Thx] I stared at the screen and sneered.

I immediately took a screenshot of the text, saving it to my private folder as hard evidence of his cheating, before ruthlessly dragging his number straight to my block list.

Harrison and I had practically grown up in the same sandbox. Our fathers served in the military together, and our mothers were inseparable best friends and coworkers.

I had even lived in his house for three years, calling his mother Patricia. Honestly, the woman treated me better than her own biological son.

But the night we celebrated finishing our finals, Harrison dragged me to a club. Drunk and stumbling toward the restroom, two guys cornered me.

If Harrison hadn't eventually come looking for me when I didn't return, I didn't even want to think about what would have happened.

The humiliation of being targeted like prey and having my dress soiled made me physically gag. But the worst part?

The man who had sworn to protect me was busy handing Kinsley a tissue while it happened.

That was the sickening detail that gnawed at my stomach—so sickening that I wanted to make him pay a brutal price.

Patricia blamed Harrison for failing to protect me, forcing his hand and backing him into a corner until he agreed to marry me.

Crushed by guilt, Harrison had promised to throw an engagement party the second our acceptance letters arrived. Kinsley, of course, lost her absolute mind over the engagement.

She threw massive tantrums, giving Harrison every excuse in the book to run to her side and comfort her. In my past life, Harrison had been head over heels for that girl.

He would have burned the world down for her—sacrificing his principles, his future, his very conscience.

In my past life, I acted like an absolute psycho, screaming and crying between them as I tried to win back a bastard who couldn't utter a single truth. And my reward?

I tanked my own career and permanently cemented myself as the toxic, jealous villain in their pathetic little "poignant love story." By the end, Patricia—the woman I had considered a second mother—cut me out of her life entirely.

And the two sons I had bled to raise looked at me with nothing but utter disgust.

I vividly remembered hearing them whisper outside my hospital door: "Mom's living in so much pain, she'd be better off just dying already.

It would finally let Dad and Aunt Kinsley be happy.

It's been thirty years, they've really had a rough time of it." This life, not only was I going to lock the trashy cheating scumbag and his little bitch together, but I was going to personally weld the car doors shut so they could never escape each other.

As for those two ungrateful brats carrying his garbage DNA? Anyone who wanted them could take them.

I was going to sit front row in the VIP section, casually eating my popcorn while I watched them turn their lives into a spectacular mud pit.

Changing my early admission choices was step one in scrubbing Harrison from my timeline. It was step one to finally living for myself.

In my previous life, I had thrown away my dream of going to the top criminal justice academy just to cling to him.

I had followed him to the prestigious military academy he was so obsessed with. The brutal, fullymilitarized management was a hundred times worse than the police academy.

The grueling physical drills and endless training hours tore my body apart, leaving me utterly exhausted and miserable.

But what really made me sick was watching Harrison and Kinsley shamelessly flirting right in front of my face.

My nails would dig into my palms until they bled from jealousy, but I never dared to call them out. Because in their twisted reality, I was the homewrecker.

Later, when Kinsley abruptly got expelled, Harrison immediately pinned the blame on me. From that day forward, he never looked at me without pure hatred in his eyes.

Chapter 2 After college, Harrison dragged his feet, refusing to fulfill his promise to marry me. That is, until Kinsley's wedding invitation arrived in the mail.

To force Harrison to give up on her, Kinsley had rushed into a marriage with some useless, spoiled trustfund kid. Harrison's soul seemed to leave his body.

He walked through our wedding ceremony like a hollowedout zombie. After tying the knot, Harrison treated me like a plague. He stayed away from the house for years on end.

When I drove up to his military base to see him, he practically volunteered to take his squadmates' overnight shifts just to avoid sharing a dorm room with me.

Meanwhile, Patricia called me every single day, probing to see if I was pregnant yet. She even went as far as mailing me a set of tacky lingerie.

In my past life, brainwashed and desperate, I actually acted like a mindless little doll and put on that cheap, trashy lingerie just to please him.

And that absolute hypocrite Harrison?

Even as his eyes were glued to my body, he still had the nerve to put on this holierthanthou mask, pointing his finger right in my face and calling me a shameless slut.

Something in me snapped. I packed my bags in the dead of night, sped all the way back home, and demanded a divorce. That brought Harrison running.

He crawled back, feeding me sweet, softspoken lies, and finally gave me the wedding night I'd waited three agonizing years for. It only took that one single night. Boom.

Pregnant with twins. Like a fool, I thought having kids would magically flip a switch and make Harrison step up to be a real husband and father.

I learned the hard way that those babies only trapped me. The only thing that could ever trap Harrison was Kinsley.

Even when he knew full well that Kinsley's vicious little provocations had triggered my traumatic, premature labor—nearly killing me and both babies on the delivery table—he still rushed to defend her without a second thought.

To force me into forgiving Kinsley, he actually dropped to his knees right in front of me and plunged a knife into his own leg twice, acting like some twisted martyr "atoning" for her sins.

At that exact moment, my body was still hooked up to hospital IVs, and my newborn twins were fighting for their lives in incubators. He didn't ask about them once.

He didn't even bother to glance through the nursery glass. My thoughts snapped back to the present timeline.

The second I stepped through the front door of the house, my phone chimed with a video message from Kinsley. I tapped the screen.

There they were—Kinsley and Harrison, bodies plastered together, grinding to a heavy, pulsepounding beat on a crowded club dance floor.

Patricia, who had just walked in from her late shift at the school, noticed my fixed stare and leaned over my shoulder.

The moment her eyes locked onto the screen, the air in the room turned toxic. "That stupid boy!" Patricia hissed. "Ditching his own fiancée to entertain an outsider?

I'll rip the skin right off his back." She pointed a shaking finger at the phone. "And that little homewrecking tramp Kinsley has zero shame.

Harrison is about to be an engaged man, and she's still throwing herself at him like that?

I’m going straight to her parents tomorrow to set the record straight!" Kinsley's dad worked out in the security booth at our high school, and her mom pushed a janitor's cart down the hallways.

As the school's strict administrative director, Patricia had never given them a hard time. That is, until she caught Harrison sneaking around with Kinsley.

Patricia, with her selfproclaimed uppermiddleclass elitism, carried this deeply ingrained arrogance in her very bones.

She absolutely could not tolerate the thought of her precious golden boy getting mixed up with some trashy girl from a bottomtier trailer park.

She wanted Harrison securely chained to me. Why?

Because my dad was a military major, my uncle ran the most prestigious prep school in the state, and my other uncle sat on the governor's cabinet.

My family's vast network of connections was the ultimate golden ticket to guaranteeing Harrison's bright future.

To smash their little romance to pieces, Patricia took every possible opportunity to make Kinsley's parents' lives a living hell at work, nitpicking every move they made.

She fully expected Kinsley to finally realize her place at the bottom of the food chain and stay away from Harrison.

But Kinsley and her parents were like leeches—they latched onto Harrison's privileged coattails and absolutely refused to let go.

In my past life, even with Patricia and me teaming up, we couldn't pry Kinsley away from him.

We fought a losing war until I was entirely drained of life and Patricia was too old and weak to care.

Kinsley ultimately won the prize, marrying Harrison and effortlessly reaping the loyalty of my two perfect sons. In this life, I wasn't going to lift a single finger to stop them.

But I wasn't going to hold Patricia back, either. If Kinsley was so desperate to become the daughterinlaw of this family, she was going to have to survive Patricia first.

Chapter 3 Patricia’s method of punishing Harrison was brutally simple—she immediately froze every single credit card under his name, took a golf club, and smashed the windshield of his prized sports car to pieces.

She even swung the club right into his calf, leaving behind a horrifying, dark purple bruise. I figured he'd blame me for snitching and give me the silent treatment.

Instead, he limped over to my room to offer up an apology. "I'm sorry you got the wrong idea," he said, his voice dripping with practiced sincerity. "Kinsley and I just danced.

That's it." "Don't worry, I know my place.

I wouldn't cross the line." I might have actually bought his garbage if my eyes hadn't instantly locked onto the fresh, reddishpurple hickey blooming on the side of his neck.

He had always been a pathological liar. When we were kids, he manipulated my emotions with cheap little tricks, making me cry, laugh, and throw tantrums for him.

But back then, I just thought he was my doting older brother. After I gave birth in my past life, he looked me dead in the eye and swore he had cut all ties with Kinsley.

Yet, when I hauled our two young sons all the way to his military base to surprise him for his birthday, I opened his dorm door only to find Kinsley, her mother, and a room overflowing with women's toiletries.

And at the very end, as I lay rotting in a hospital bed, begging him for one last visit, he claimed his leg was too injured to make the trip.

In reality, he was busy running around organizing his extravagant wedding with Kinsley. He had played me for a fool my entire past life. This time, my chest was completely hollow.

As long as I didn't buy a single word he sold, he could never con me again. I casually waved my hand, keeping my face perfectly blank. "You don't need to explain yourself to me.

I have zero right to dictate your freedom. Your mom just happened to be standing right over my shoulder when Kinsley sent me that little video. I didn't snitch.

She just has terrible luck." Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

If Kinsley hadn't been so desperate to provoke me and mark her territory, she wouldn't have gotten humiliated by Patricia.

The corner of Harrison's mouth twitched into a selfdeprecating smirk. "How could you not have the right? The second those acceptance letters arrive, we're getting engaged.

After that, I'm yours. At your beck and call, ready to serve. Till death do us part, right?" I let out a cold scoff in my head. Save it.

Keep your cheap loyalty for your precious childhood sweetheart. In my future blueprint, I kicked your lying, garbage ass out a long time ago.

You don't need to stand here playing the devoted leading man. "Just fourteen more days," I said, my voice deadpan. "Hold on until then." Harrison furrowed his brow. "Fourteen days until what?" Of course.

He had completely forgotten my birthday. I stepped forward, shoved my hands against his chest, and physically pushed him out of my bedroom. "Until the day you get your freedom back.

I'm going to give you exactly what you want." Now that my applications were submitted, it was time to grind for the physical fitness exams.

Under Patricia's relentless, hawkish surveillance, Harrison didn't dare sneak out to meet Kinsley again. But his mind was miles away.

He spent his days practically glued to his phone screen, constantly on marathon calls or video chatting. Every time Patricia caught him, she unleashed hell.

Once, she even shoved the golf club into my hands, urging me to take a swing to vent my anger. I didn't even blink.

I wasn't going to waste a single ounce of my energy on him. "Forget it," I muttered, dropping the club onto the floor.

Harrison’s eyes softened, entirely misinterpreting my apathy as affection.

He actually thought I couldn't bear to hurt him. "I swear, we’re just talking about normal friend stuff," he promised softly. "Nothing else. I know I’m an engaged man.

I won't mess around." An engaged man? Even a legally binding marriage certificate in our past life couldn't stop him from crawling into Kinsley's bed.

I gave a noncommittal grunt and turned my back on him.

Between the grueling daily sprints, the broad jumps, and the endless crunches tearing my core apart, my body was already functioning on fumes.

Not to mention the stacks of practice tests I had to burn through for the academy's psychological evaluations.

I simply didn't have the bandwidth to give a damn who he was flirting with. Chapter 4 Harrison was practically sweating bullets over Kinsley failing the academy interview.

He actually had the nerve to ask me if I could pull some strings with my family's connections to get her in. Sure, I could make a few calls and get it done.

But why the hell would I burn my family's political capital on a girl I despised? "No," I said, my voice completely deadpan. "Aren't you the poster boy for fairness and justice?

Or do the rules suddenly not apply when it comes to Kinsley?" His jaw clenched, clearly pissed off by my answer, but he kept his mouth shut.

From that second on, he gave me the silent treatment. Having lived through an entire lifetime of his cold shoulder and absolute indifference, my heart didn't even skip a beat.

Patricia just assumed we were suffocating under the preexam pressure and brushed off the dead silence at the dinner table.

She simply overcompensated by cooking massive, lavish meals every single night.

The morning of the physical fitness exams, Harrison walked in from the garden clutching a single, freshly cut red rose. Patricia beamed. "This boy finally got a clue.

He actually picked a flower for you." I didn't bother bursting her bubble. I didn't tell her that Kinsley was the one obsessed with roses. That flower was never meant for me.

The second we arrived at the testing center, Kinsley charged at me like an absolute psycho, screaming, "You vicious bitch!" as she swung her hand at my face.

I smoothly sidestepped her sloppy, uncoordinated attack.

I whipped my hand back to deliver a cracking backhand directly across her poorly contoured cheek, but Harrison finally snapped out of his daze.

He threw himself between us, shielding her with his body as he grabbed my wrist. "You stole Harrison, and now you made Patricia fire my parents!" Kinsley sobbed behind him.

Wait, Patricia actually fired the janitor and the security guard? Looks like she wasn't playing around this time. But what did that have to do with me?

Kinsley didn't have the guts to go toetotoe with her wealthy future motherinlaw, so she was trying to use me as her personal punching bag? "Her parents just lost their jobs, Genevieve.

Her family is struggling right now," Harrison pleaded, tightening his grip on me. "Just let it go." "If you're really that mad, hit me instead.

Hit me as many times as you want." A sharp, cynical laugh ripped from my throat.

Just because her trailerpark family was broke, she got a free pass to physically assault me? "Who exactly are you to her?" I asked, staring at Harrison with icy precision. "Her boyfriend?

Her white knight?

What gives you the right to take a hit for her?" A flicker of panic crossed his eyes as he suddenly remembered our engagement—the fact that, as my fiancé, he was supposed to be defending me.

But his fingers remained locked around my wrist. "If that incident at the club hadn't happened, we wouldn't even be engaged right now. My mom wouldn't be targeting her parents.

Genevieve, Kinsley is already suffering enough.

Can't you just show a little empathy?" In my past life, every single time Kinsley and I clashed at the academy, Harrison used those exact same words to force me to back down.

He knew exactly how much trauma that night at the club had caused me, yet he weaponized it over and over again.

To protect Kinsley, he never hesitated to twist the knife into my deepest scars, acting like I couldn't feel the pain. Now, he was pulling the exact same stunt.

But my days of backing down were over. I kept my face deadpan as I peeled his fingers off my wrist, one by one.

I stared at him like he was an unrecyclable piece of garbage. "Take your dirty hands off me.

You touch me one more time, and I guarantee by tomorrow morning, the entire elite circle will know exactly how you physically threatened your fiancée to protect a bottomtier scam artist." Harrison’s face paled.

Terrified that I would blow this up and ruin Kinsley's chances today, he lowered his voice, begging me. "Genevieve, she really didn't mean to attack you.

She's just running on high emotions…" I took a slow breath and cut him off. "How about I just dial 911 right now?" Harrison froze.

He knew damn well that if the cops showed up and I pressed assault charges, Kinsley wouldn't even make it through the academy gates. His jaw muscle twitched.

After a few agonizing seconds, he physically stepped aside. I raised my hand and swung hard at Kinsley.

But at the very last microsecond, Harrison’s pathetic devotion overrode his brain. He shoved Kinsley out of the way and took the hit himself. Crack.

I had put my entire shoulder into that swing, and a blazing red handprint instantly raised on Harrison's cheek