Chapter 2

That day, Ms. Laura made me stand in the corner facing the wall for three hours as punishment.

I figured that after shoving Claire like that, there was no way the Andres family would ever adopt me.

But three days later, I was sitting in the back of their car.

Ms. Laura told me the Andres family had chosen me. The paperwork was already done.

It hit me like a shock of electricity.

But it was done, and I had no choice but to accept it.

At least Claire was easy to be around.

And Mr. and Mrs. Andres were just as warm and caring as they had been in those first ten years of my past life.

The only one in the house who was cold toward me was Cooper.

He almost never spoke to me.

But sometimes I'd catch him watching me in silence.

A few days later, at dinner, I heard Cooper make a suggestion to Mr. and Mrs. Andres.

"Dad, can we get the orphanage set up with proper heating?"

I went still and looked down at my plate.

Honestly, I'd been trying to figure out the same thing for days.

In my past life, the orphanage caught fire because of a faulty electric blanket. The place was always short on funding, so they'd been using the same blanket for years.

"Of course. That was an oversight on our part," Mr. Andres said.

"They took care of Claire for years. The least we can do is give something back."

In the end, the Andres family not only had proper heating installed, they also donated ten million dollars to the orphanage.

I had been racking my brain trying to figure out how to prevent what happened, and come up with nothing.

Cooper solved it with a single sentence.

I still kept my distance from him.

But honestly, I was grateful.

Setting aside everything that happened between us in my past life — Cooper's second chance at life had genuinely changed things for the better for a lot of people.

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Years passed in a blink, and Claire and I were in high school.

Life with the Andres family during those years was quiet and comfortable.

With Claire back where she belonged, the family's business had grown even bigger than it had in my past life.

Cooper was still in college, but he had already started interning at the company.

Over those years, I barely had any real contact with Cooper.

Partly because I went out of my way to avoid him.

But Cooper had always kept his distance from me too.

The contrast between how he treated me and how he doted on Claire was impossible to miss.

Mr. and Mrs. Andres noticed, and so did Claire. They both seemed to feel a little bad about it from time to time.

Claire especially, since she'd always been a crybaby from the time she was small.

And I understood why I'd been brought into the Andres household in the first place. I was there to take care of Claire.

So for all those years, outside of school, my life basically revolved around her.

No matter the situation, Claire always came first for me.

And Claire depended on me just as much.

So when everyone found out that I didn't want to go to the private school where Claire was enrolled, and instead had applied to a public high school, Mr. and Mrs. Andres were stunned.

Even Cooper looked at me differently.

"Daisy, why do you suddenly want to go to a public school?"

"Right — I mean, your grades are great, but our family really doesn't need you to push yourself that hard."

Claire nodded along, eyes already glistening.

I tightened my grip on my hands under the table.

She was right about one thing. A family like the Andres family didn't need their kids to take the hard road.

They'd already mapped out their children's futures long before any decisions needed to be made. Private school, then studying abroad.

Especially with Cooper being as accomplished as he was.

As long as Claire and I played by the rules, we'd be comfortable for the rest of our lives.

But I didn't want that.

This life, I wanted to live on my own terms.

So for the first time, the girl who had always done what she was told dug in her heels.

The whole family took turns trying to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't budge.

In the end, it was Cooper who came through for me.

He said, "Let her do what she wants."

Just those few words.

And with that, I got into the top public high school in the city.

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