Chapter 1

During a trip to Santa Barbara, I suddenly clutched my chest, unable to breathe.

I doubled over, pressing my fingers hard against my chest.

"Raina!"

My sister Zara's face went white. She dropped into a crouch and started digging through her bag for my medication.

She moved too fast. When she stood up, she didn't see the car that clipped her, and she went down hard on the pavement.

"Shit—"

The driver rolled down his window and swore at us. Once he saw she wasn't seriously hurt, he floored it and took off.

My boyfriend Bayard, though, stopped dead.

He stared at me, his brows drawn tight.

"Raina," he said, his voice tight, "haven't you gotten tired of faking these attacks yet?"

Zara's head snapped up.

She stepped in front of me. "Bayard, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Bayard didn't even look at me.

His eyes were locked on Zara's scraped, bloodied knee, and his face darkened.

"What's the matter with you?" He knelt down, his voice dropping. "If it weren't for her, you wouldn't be on the ground right now."

The pain in his eyes was impossible to miss.

"That interview at UCLA Med School - you'd been preparing for it for three months. You had it in the bag."

His Adam's apple bobbed.

"Then she called saying she couldn't breathe, and you grabbed your bag and bolted."

"When you came home, you actually smiled at me and said it was fine. You'd try again next year."

Zara lifted her chin, but her eyes were starting to waver.

"What are you even talking about?" she said softly. "Taking care of Raina is my responsibility. It always has been."

Out of their sight, I gripped my phone tightly.

The screen still showed the text that had come in just seconds earlier.

An unknown number.

Just one line.

"Do you believe me now? He never loved you."

The ocean wind numbed my fingertips.

Last night before bed, I'd figured that string of messages was somebody's idea of a cruel joke.

But now, for the first time, a chill crawled down my spine.

---

I clutched my chest, breathing shallow and fast, and slowly sank into a crouch.

Under Zara's icy stare, Bayard finally muttered, "I'm sorry. I was worried. It came out wrong."

But even as he apologized, he never once looked at me.

A second later, he turned, scooped Zara up, and rushed her toward the urgent care across the street.

Zara wasn't really hurt.

When the car clipped her, I'd been underneath her and taken most of the impact.

The skin on my knee was almost gone, raw and bleeding.

Nobody noticed.

Yesterday, Bayard—the man I'd been with for three years—had proposed.

The restaurant had been softly lit, the harbor glittering outside the windows.

He'd dropped to one knee, his eyes a little red, and asked me to marry him.

I'd cried and said yes.

At the time, I thought I'd finally found the kind of happiness that was meant for me.

But last night, right before I fell asleep, a photo had come through from an unknown number.

A woman in a wheelchair.

Her cheeks were hollow, her hair dull and brittle, and she looked ten years older than I did.

But the face was unmistakably mine.

Then another message came through.

"Remember. Don't get married."

I'd assumed it was some sick prank.

Until now.

Watching Bayard and Zara disappear around the corner, I called the number back with shaking fingers.

The call connected almost right away.

The breathing on the other end was faint.

"Follow them," the woman whispered. "You still have time to see the truth."

My first instinct was to hang up.

Instead, my feet started moving on their own.

I stumbled after them.

When I got to the side entrance of the clinic, I heard low voices from the emergency stairwell.

I stood behind the door, my fingers on the cold metal handle, frozen.

Bayard was half crouched in front of Zara, cradling her lower leg like it was made of glass.

His fingertips barely grazed her scraped knee.

His voice was rough.

"I'll tell Raina everything. She can hate me, curse me out, whatever she wants. I'll take it."

He swallowed.

"But I can't stand seeing you like this."

Zara shoved him back immediately.

"Are you out of your mind?" Her voice shook. "You proposed to her yesterday."

Bayard looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot.

"Zara."

He stared at her like he'd been holding the words in for too long.

"You know why I'm marrying her."

Zara went quiet.

The motion light in the stairwell dimmed, then flickered back on, throwing their shadows against the wall.

"You lost that interview last time, and you came home and smiled at me like it was nothing," Bayard said quietly.

"But that night, you sat out on the balcony alone until three in the morning."

"I saw you."

"Do you have any idea how much that broke my heart?"

He pulled her into his arms, his breathing uneven.

"Zara, I gave you my word. I can marry her."

His voice caught.

"But can you please, just once, live for yourself?"

Zara's lashes trembled.

A long moment passed before she whispered, "I owe Raina my life."

The stairwell went dead silent.

I was nine when I got placed with a foster family outside Boston.

My parents—well, the couple fostering me—asked if I wanted an older sister.

I wandered into the backyard alone and saw Zara, two years older than me, being shoved into a shallow pool by some other kids.

She was soaked through, her lips blue, her body curled in on itself.

I ran back inside crying and grabbed Mom's hand.

"I want her! Something bad's going to happen to her if she stays there!"

Later, after the social worker finished all the paperwork, Zara stood in the doorway, so nervous she barely moved.

She took my hand carefully.

"From now on, I'll protect you."

And after that, she really did.

The year our foster parents died, I developed severe PTSD and recurring panic attacks.

Whenever I saw a big truck, my chest would seize up as if someone had cinched a rope around it, and I couldn't breathe.

Zara would go pale from the same memories, but she'd always be the first to pull me in and hold me.

At school, when kids called me trash, she was scared too.

But she'd still plant herself in front of me and refuse to back down an inch.

Once I got to college, I took a part-time job at a restaurant to ease some of the pressure at home.

One night, a drunk customer decided to hassle me.

As soon as Zara heard what had happened, she took an overnight bus from San Francisco to L.A. and came straight to me.

"Raina, don't be scared. I'll pick up another job. You just focus on school."

She'd always protected me like that.

Like it was what she was born to do.

Tears slid silently down my face.

I leaned against the fire door and slowly slid down to the floor.

I lifted my phone, my voice hoarse.

"Who are you?"

A few seconds of silence.

Then the woman said, "I'm you."

"...You, from the future."

I closed my eyes.

I knew it sounded ridiculous, but the cold fear in my chest only felt more real.

"When did they… start?"

A soft sigh came through the phone.

"Actually, the first time you met Bayard—"

"He was on his way to tell Zara how he felt about her."