After Five Lives Of Trying I Finally Let Go

In my fifth rebirth, I returned to the day before Grayson and I were meant to register our marriage at City Hall.

I signed the contract with the indie music label I had once rejected for the sake of a so-called "family."

Then, I drove to a clinic alone and ended the pregnancy that resulted from one of Grayson's drunken mistakes.

Under my pillow, there was no longer a letter to my future child, but a one-way bus ticket to a music festival in Chicago, dated nineteen days away.

In my third rebirth, I tried playing the part of the perfect wife and mother. I tried showing weakness, even threatened to kill myself, but none of it earned me an ounce of Grayson's affection.

While I was crippled by morning sickness, he was out celebrating with the woman he’d always wanted, their champagne glasses clinking in a toast.

The fourth time, I held on until the very end, just to see how it would all play out.

In my hospice room, I watched as Grayson held Claire, slow-dancing before my deathbed. My daughter, Lily, happily filmed them on her phone, as if they were the real family and I was just an intruder.

I finally surrendered.

So in this fifth rebirth, my goal wasn't to win his love. It was to erase myself from his world completely.

————————

1

The moment the email from the indie label landed in my inbox, I drove over and signed the contract on the spot.

The agent who met with me, David Chen, watched in surprise as I signed without a flicker of hesitation.

"Paige, two months ago, you were adamant. You said you were getting married, starting a family, that Chicago was completely off the table. What changed? Why the sudden rush to sign today?"

He didn't know I had been reborn. This was the fifth time.

In the original timeline, I was just an orphan who grew up in foster care, waiting tables at a small-town diner. Grayson's mother, Eleanor, was a regular. After I lost my job, she took me in.

I fell in love with Grayson at first sight. He was the star of our local theater troupe—handsome, talented, and utterly magnetic on stage. Everyone said he was destined for greatness, that he’d become a real star and spend his life in the spotlight.

I knew he was in love with the troupe's leading lady, Claire. For a high school dropout like me, he was an impossible dream.

But one night, after a cast party, he got drunk, mistook me for Claire, and we slept together.

From that one night, I got pregnant.

Overcome with guilt, Grayson took my hand, insisting the honorable thing to do was to take responsibility and marry me.

For him, I rejected David's contract offer, eagerly planning a life with him: marrying in our small town, raising our daughter, and caring for his ailing mother, Eleanor.

But after we married, Grayson and Claire toured the country together, officially as "stage partners."

He was away more often than he was home, but he’d send a postcard each time, telling me to hold down the fort and not to worry.

I would clutch those cards to my chest and tell myself it was normal for the theater troupe to be this busy.

I had to be a dutiful wife. Wait patiently. Never push, never disturb him.

He would come back to his family. Eventually.

But by the time I reached middle age, I had buried the frail Eleanor alone and raised a daughter who despised me.

I had been worn down to a haggard shadow of my former self.

I never saw my husband return. Instead, I saw a post on social media hailing him and Claire as the "golden couple of the stage."

The post said they had bought two adjacent downtown apartments, knocked through the wall between them, and filled the new space with production stills from their decades of collaboration.

The post called it the "artistic sanctuary of the golden couple."

My daughter shoved the tablet in my face, her features twisted with resentment.

"Just divorce him already, I'm begging you! You trapped Dad with that pregnancy and made him miss out on the love of his life. Why are you still clinging to him? Just let him go so I can finally live in a nice house!"