This Time, I Let Her Forget Me
During a thunderstorm on the border, my fiancee, Eleanor Ashby, covers my retreat and falls down a cliff.
The search and rescue team spends three months searching through flash floods without finding a trace of her.
Everyone concludes she's dead.
I refuse to give up and spend another two years looking for her.
Eventually, I find her at a small clinic in a remote mountain village. But she's become the wife of the clinic's caregiver, Dylan Foster.
That's when I learn she's lost her memory and fallen in love with someone else.
In my previous life, I ignore her wishes and force a renowned neurosurgeon to use a high-risk treatment to restore her memories.
The day her memories return, the man who has cared for and protected her for the past two years throws himself into the river in despair.
Later, during an earthquake rescue mission, Eleanor and I are trapped beneath a collapsed mountainside. There's only one narrow escape route wide enough for one person.
She forcibly pushes me out.
Moments later, a second collapse buries her beneath a massive boulder.
With her dying breath, she reaches through a crack in the rocks and grips my hand.
She says in a hoarse voice, "Callum Pierce, these ten years we've spent together is repayment for the debt I owed you from the ten years before. We're even now. Neither of us owes the other anything anymore.
"If there's a next life, don't let me remember the past. Please... let me be with him."
Tears blur my vision.
When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day I find Eleanor.
This time, I choose to respect her decision and let go of the life she's forgotten.