Free To Choose: A Personal Statement

Right after the SAT results dropped, the admissions representatives from Blackridge University practically fought over me so fiercely it felt like they'd set the whole room on fire. They made an outrageous offer just to win me over, claiming that I could bring one friend along with full admission. As the clock reset, I chose no one this time around because I'd already lived through it once. In my last life, I didn't hesitate to pick my childhood best friend, Shawn Hooper. I gave him a ticket into a world he could never hope to reach without my help. And what did I get for it? A look of pure disgust. "You're pathetic," he sneered. "It's laughable that you'd dare use something like this to drive a wedge between Madison and me." Madison Cole was our class president. She was the golden girl and everyone's favorite girl. She couldn't handle losing both the guy she loved and the future she thought was hers. So, she jumped from the roof of a building. Shawn found her final message and lost his mind. He told me the class was having one last bonfire party just outside town. It was a lie. He took me there to torture me before leaving me to die. Our entire class covered for him. Every last one of them told the police I'd slipped near the ravine and fallen by accident. … A week after my death, my parents died in a supposed highway pileup. My soul never moved on, and that was how I discovered the truth—Shawn had orchestrated everything. When I reopened my eyes, I quickly realized I was back on the day when Blackridge University fought to recruit me. I wouldn't choose anyone this time. No, the only one I would choose was myself.

I was given a second chance on the day my mate chose another she-wolf over me. In my last life, I fought to keep him. I begged, argued, and stood in his way, only to watch him blame me for everything he lost. On the day of our bonding ceremony, he made me pay for loving him. This time, I didn’t cry. I didn’t beg. When he wanted to take her to the Frost Territory, I packed his bag myself. When she smiled behind his back and called me replaceable, I let her. If he loved her so much, I would step aside. But the day he finally realized I was no longer waiting at the altar, I had already walked into another ceremony, in another pack, beside a man who had never once made me feel second best. My old mate thought I was teaching him a lesson. He was wrong. I was setting myself free.

On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, all three of my fiancés showed up with the worst reports from their family-run businesses. My father had declared that I would marry the one who could bring the greatest benefit to our family. However, all three of them had already fallen for a penniless scholarship girl named Amelia Jones, and none of them wanted me. In my previous life, I kept them close, mentored them, and poured my resources into helping them rise. By the time they had each become powerful men in my family, they repaid me by framing my father, getting him arrested, and making him age more than 10 years overnight. He was dragged to prison. Me? They hired a crew of street thugs to brutalize me, leaving me to die while my private photos spread across the internet. As life slipped away, I heard their sneering voices: "Did you really think we ever liked you? Everything we did was for Amelia." "If you hadn't chained us to your side, we'd have married her long ago, we'd have a house full of kids by now!" "You and your father ruined her future. She couldn't afford college because of you. She had no choice but to jump!" Then I opened my eyes: reborn on the very day of my coming-of-age ceremony. I pulled my father aside, looked him in the eye, and said, "I'm an adult now. Throw them out. Strip them of every business and every asset we gave them." "I'm not choosing any of them. I chose Bruce Sullivan, the Don of the Sullivan family."

On the day I was supposed to try on wedding dresses with Charles Jaspier, the mafia leader I had loved for seven years, I walked into the boutique carrying a pregnancy test report—my heart full of hope. Instead, I overheard a conversation that shattered everything. "Registering the marriage with Ellis Olsen was a temporary measure," he said calmly to his closest confidant. "My brother died in a shootout. She's carrying the Jaspier family's only heir. Without a legal status, neither she nor the child would survive in this family." "Everyone would bully them." A cigar rested between his fingers. His voice was cold, edged with resignation. "Zoey Qandor can't have a title—but I can give her everything else. My love. My money. This must never reach her ears." I clenched the pregnancy report, my heart turning to ash. With my best friend's help, I created a new identity—one that ensured Charles would never find me again—and disappeared from his world. If he could not give me and my child a complete family, then this love—built on responsibility and lies—was better cut cleanly, once and for all.

As a Catholic girl I was just trying to make it through college. I wasn't looking for a lot in life. Just good grades, getting married before twenty two, having a few kids and God's blessings. People say that in life, you don't always get what you want and life has a way of roaming from the trail you planned to follow. I never realised how true the saying was. Religion was my everything, so what happens when I end up falling for the same gender? It couldn't get worse, right? But as life always feels the need to show you, it could... And it would.

My fiancé presented two engagement rings—one for me, one for my sister to choose first. The first was a three-carat fancy pink diamond, flown in from Antwerp, the kind that made dealers go quiet. The second was a plain platinum band, standard issue, the sort you buy off the tray as a backup. For the first time in my life, I pointed at the pink diamond. "I'll choose first this time." Dante Moretti ran his hand through my hair, the way you soothe a restless dog. "Eleanor, you know Grace has always been particular. If she can't have the best, she'd rather have nothing. You've never cared about any of this. The other one is fine." I didn't answer. My chest felt hollow. We'd grown up together—his father ran the West Coast territory, mine the East. But in Dante's eyes, I'd always been the second daughter, the one who got what Grace didn't want. Every summer, he'd cut watermelon and bring the first plate to Grace. She'd take the center slice—sweetest, seedless, deepest red. He'd push the rest toward me—the pale pink near the rind. "This part's still good. Just not as sweet." When he bought his first Maserati, Grace picked the front seat—less motion sickness. He gestured at the back. "A little tight, but you can pick either side." Even our love was secondhand. He'd loved Grace first. She chose her academic career over him. So Dante, wounded and restless, came to me. In his world, Grace was always the first choice. I looked at the platinum band and pushed it across the table. "Give them both to Grace. I don't want either."