Chapter 44
Chloe
The bonfire on the beach casts flickering shadows across the sand, and I watch from the tree line as Skyla’s perfect family celebrates their perfect life with their perfect love story.
Gag me.
Liam wasn’t feeling up to it, and I certainly wasn’t going on my own. But here I am regardless. Like a moth to a ridiculous flame.
I should leave. I should go home and plot my next move, figure out how to insert myself into Gage’s life in a way that doesn’t end with him walking away from me like he did on that pier so many years ago.
But I can’t stop watching them—the way Gage looks at her, even when she’s wrapped around Logan, the way she manages to keep them both devoted to her like she’s some kind of gravitational force they can’t escape.
How does she do it? How does she make two men share her like it’s the most natural thing in the world? If I didn’t know firsthand she was an angel, I’d swear she was a demon and a witch.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, dear.”
The voice comes from behind me, and I spin around so fast I nearly deck her out of sheer reflex.
A woman stands tall—no, not stands, hovers—looking exactly like a slightly more refined carbon copy of Skyla.
Same frosty blue eyes, same golden hair, same annoyingly perfect bone structure.
But where Skyla radiates warmth, this woman is all ice and calculation. It must be why I like her better.
“Candace.” Of course, it’s her. I’d recognize this otherworldly menace anywhere.
She smiles, and it’s the kind of smile that makes you want to check if your wallet is still there. “Hello, Chloe. Still pining after Gage Oliver, I see. Some things never change.”
“If you’re here to warn me away from Gage—”
“Warn you away?” Candace laughs, and it sounds like crystal breaking. “Oh, my dear girl. I’m here to encourage you.”
My heart stops cold. “What?”
She moves closer, and yet she’s not quite touching the ground. Her white dress glows with its own light, and the air around her crackles with something ancient and dangerous.
“You love him,” she says simply. “Truly, deeply, obsessively love him. That kind of devotion is rare. And useful.”
I lift a brow her way. “Useful to whom?”
“To the future, of course.” She circles me like a predator evaluating her next kill. “You see, Chloe, everyone down there on that beach thinks they’ve won. They think the story is over, the happy ending secured. But stories never really end. They just pause between chapters.”
I glance back at the bonfire where Gage is now holding one of the brats—his? Logan’s? Who can even tell anymore?
“What do you want from me?”
“The question is, what do you want? Because I can give it to you.” Candace stops directly in front of me, those arctic eyes boring into mine. “Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. If you’re patient. If you’re clever. If you’re willing to play a very long game.”
“Honey, my middle name is Long Game at this point.” I take a moment to growl at her. “Whatever. I know you’re talking about Gage.” I blow out a breath, and it’s as if a thousand ghosts evacuate from my lungs in the damp Paragon night.
“I’m talking about destiny.” She reaches out and touches my forehead with one finger, and suddenly I see it—flashes of images that burn themselves into my brain.
Me in a wedding dress, different from the one I glimpsed before.
Gage’s face as he says, “I do.” Children with his eyes and my smile.
A life together that feels so real I can taste it.
Then the images shift. Skyla crying. Logan’s fury. A fractured family. Time itself seems to splinter.
My heart quickens with excitement at the sight of it all.
“What the hell was that?” I gasp as the visions fade.
“One possible future. One of many.” Candace’s smile turns sharp. “The timeline is more fluid than my daughter realizes. Her little mail theft adventure proved that. Changes can stick. Futures can certainly be reshaped.”
“But she’s not from the future. She went back to make sure—”
“She went back to preserve one timeline. But who’s to say that timeline is the right one? Who’s to say her happiness should come at the cost of yours?”
The words sink into me like hooks. “You’re her mother,” I spit my own words out as if they were poison. “Why would you help me break their little throuple apart?”
“Because, my love, chaos breeds strength. Complacency breeds weakness. My daughter has already slain her giants, won her wars. Now she’s gotten too comfortable with her perfect little arrangement.
Sometimes the greatest threat isn’t the enemy at the gates—it’s the one you’ve invited to dinner.
She needs to remember that nothing is guaranteed. No future is set in stone.”
“So, I’m what, your chaos agent?” I’ll admit, it’s a banner I’d wave proudly.
“You’re an opportunity.” Candace steps back, already beginning to fade around the edges. “I’m not telling you to do anything, Chloe. I’m simply pointing out that the game isn’t over. It never is. And a smart girl—a determined girl—might find ways to change the rules.”
“How?”
But she’s already disappearing, her form dissolving into moonlight and mist. Her voice echoes from nowhere and everywhere at once. “Be patient. Be ready. And when the moment comes—and it will come—don’t hesitate. Take what you want. Take what you deserve.”
Then she’s gone, leaving me alone in the dark with my racing heart and ambition burning a hole through the night.
I look back at the bonfire. Skyla is laughing at something Brielle said, completely unaware that her own mother just handed me a loaded weapon.
Gage is still holding a toddler, looking like every woman’s dream of the perfect father.
Logan has his arm around Skyla’s waist, secure in his place in their twisted little family.
They all look so happy. So settled. So sure that their story has reached its happy ending.
But Candace is right. Stories don’t end. They just pause between chapters.
And I’ve just been given permission to write the next one.
I think when I get home I’ll pull out my journal—the one I used to fill in with every detail about Gage Oliver—and I’ll flip to a new page. A new chapter has begun, and I think I’ll call it “The Long Game.”
Because that’s what this is now. Not a desperate teenage obsession, but a carefully orchestrated campaign. I have something Skyla doesn’t—the backing of a celestial being who apparently enjoys shaking up the hell out of her daughter’s life.
I have time, determination, and now I have a very dangerous ray of hope.
Real hope. Not just the delusional dreams of a seventeen-year-old girl, but actual cosmic confirmation that my future with Gage is possible.
Voices carry and I hear their comments about surviving Candace—about surviving me.
A bout of laughter explodes from the crowd near the bonfire, and a righteous anger blooms inside of me.
Skyla Messenger thinks she’s won. She thinks her two husbands, multiple-children, perfect-family future is secure. She thinks running through time and fixing things means they stay fixed.
She’s about to learn that when you play with time, sometimes time plays back.
And sometimes, it picks a different winner.
They think they’ve seen my dark side? That was just the warm-up.
The real Chloe Bishop villain era? Incoming.
Gage Oliver is living his life, thinking his future is set, his destiny decided.
He has no idea that destiny just recruited me to do a rewrite.
“See you soon, Gage,” I whisper to the darkness. “Sooner than you think.”
Because Candace gave me the key—patience. And I have it.
I am patient. I am determined. And I am inevitable.
The game isn’t over.
It’s just beginning.
And this time, fate is on my side.
Thank you for reading, The Symmetry of Time.