Chapter 4Thirty Days In Your Skin

The vertigo hit fast and hard.

It felt like two invisible hands had shoved the back of my skull. The ambient lighting of the hotel room shattered into blinding fragments.

When I opened my eyes again, the first thing that hit me was the scent of perfume.

It was the signature Chanel scent I had worn for years.

I looked down at my hands.

The skin was flawless and pale. My nails were manicured, dusted with crushed diamonds—the exact style Samantha had gotten done that afternoon for the gala.

I stared at my hands for a long time before slowly lifting my head.

In the mirror of the bridal suite, I saw my own face.

We had swapped back.

Thirty days. Not a day more, not a day less.

I stood rooted to the spot. A heavy, suffocating weight seemed to lodge in my throat, and it took a long time before I could finally exhale a shaky breath.

Right at that moment, the door to the bridal suite was pushed open.

Bradley walked in, his face dark with fury.

"Why are you hiding in here?"

He slammed the door shut, the sheer irritation of the ruined gala bleeding through his voice. "It's an absolute madhouse out there. Your dad has security trying to handle it. What the hell was with those screenshots? Didn't I tell you to wipe all your old backups clean?"

I just looked at him.

So this was how he spoke to Samantha behind closed doors.

Gone was the gentle, doting fiancé from the gala stage. Gone was the protective man who shielded her from champagne toasts.

There was only cold, impatient resentment that her mess might drag him down.

When I didn't answer, his brow furrowed.

"Samantha?"

I smiled.

"'Nine o'clock. The usual spot.'"

Bradley's face instantly froze.

I kept speaking. "You called me that day. You said there was an emergency at the firm. You told me not to wait up for dinner."

"Turns out, your 'corporate emergency' was fucking her."

He stared at me, the impatience in his eyes slowly morphing into shock, then sheer panic.

"What are you talking about?"

I didn't answer his question. Instead, I asked, "Bradley, was I really that stupid?"

"What the hell are you—"

"When you said you were working late, I believed you. When you said you were networking, I believed you. When you left your phone face-down on the table, it never even crossed my mind to check it. When you came home at 3 AM claiming you drank too much with clients, I woke up and made you hangover soup."

Watching the color drain completely from his face, I suddenly found the whole thing hilarious.

"It wasn't that you were some master manipulator."

"It’s just that I never, ever suspected you."

He took a step back, as if finally realizing who was standing in front of him.

"Eleanor...?"

Hearing my name come out of his mouth suddenly made me feel nauseous.

Footsteps hurried down the hall.

My mother rushed into the room. Seeing me standing there unharmed, she let out an instinctive sigh of relief.

"Ellie, why did you run off in here all alone?"

She stepped forward, reaching out to grab my hand.

I instinctively flinched, taking a sharp step backward.

Her hand hovered awkwardly in the empty air.

I looked at her. My left cheek felt like it was still burning from the slap.

Even though the face I was wearing now was flawless and untouched, my soul remembered the pain.

My mother looked bewildered. "What's wrong?"

My father walked in right behind her.

"Let's deal with tonight's mess when we get home. As for Samantha, don't ever let that girl near you again."

I didn't move.

"Dad."

He stopped.

It must have been the tone of my voice. I hadn't called him that in exactly thirty days.

"Out there, in the ballroom," I said quietly, "you said that as of today, the Beaumont family was cutting all ties with Samantha."

My father frowned. "Why are you bringing that up now?"

"And Mom... Mom slapped her."

The expression on my mother's face tightened.

"Ellie, I know you have a soft heart. But she crossed every line tonight. She stole from you, she ruined your engagement, and—"

"It hurt."

Her voice cut off instantly.

I looked directly into her eyes.

"That slap. It hurt. A lot."

The room fell into a dead, terrifying silence.

My mother stared at me, uncomprehending.

I raised a trembling hand and gently touched my own left cheek.

"Mom. For the last thirty days, the person who just took that slap from you... was me."

The last remnants of color vanished from her face.

My father’s head snapped up.

Bradley was the first to speak. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means exactly what I said." I looked at all three of them.

"Samantha swapped bodies with me."

"For the past thirty days, the person living in the estate, using Samantha's name, paying her debts... has been me."

"The person you’re looking at right now, the one who was in this body before midnight... was Samantha."

No one breathed.

After several long seconds, my father spoke, his voice dangerously low. "Eleanor. Do not make jokes like this."

I knew they wouldn't believe me right away.

In my last life, I had screamed and cried this truth until my throat bled, and they hadn't believed a word.

So this time, I wasn't in a rush to panic.

"When I was eight, I had a severe fever. Mom, you stayed with me in the hospital all night. At three in the morning, I was crying because the fluorescent lights in the hallway were too bright, and I couldn't sleep. You took off your own silk scarf and tied it over my eyes like a blindfold."

I locked eyes with my mother.

"That scarf was powder blue. It had a tiny 'M' embroidered in the corner. Grandma gave it to you."

My mother's lips parted, trembling.

"When I was twelve, I got lost in the city. Dad, you didn't find me until past midnight. I cried the entire drive home. You turned to me in the backseat and said—"

I paused.

My father's breathing had gone shallow and ragged.

"'As long as you come back to us, nothing else matters. No matter how big of a mistake you make in the future, just come home first.'"

No one else in the world knew about that conversation.

I kept going. "When I got my first period at sixteen, I was terrified to tell anyone. Mom, you woke up at 2 AM to show me how to use a pad. On my eighteenth birthday, when Dad bought me that pink diamond at the auction, I told you it was too expensive and begged you to return it. You told me a daughter only turns eighteen once in her life."

Tears suddenly spilled over my mother’s eyelashes.

She reached out, wanting to touch me, but she was too terrified to close the distance.

"Ellie..."

"And then there were the last thirty days," I cut her off, my voice terrifyingly calm.

"When the diamond was found in my suitcase, you asked Samantha how the Beaumont family had ever wronged her."

"Dad, you tried to save her fellowship. You offered to pay off her $250,000 debt."

"In Dr. Wallace’s office, the thesis draft sitting on the top of his desk was from her sophomore year. The third page was covered in red ink."

"The Samantha who was living inside this wealthy body didn't know any of those things."

"Because during that time, she was trapped in my body."

My father stood frozen in silence. His face looked ashen, aged ten years in a matter of seconds.

Bradley, grasping at straws, suddenly stammered, "Wait. Out there... in the hallway..."

"That was me, too."

I looked at him with utter disgust.

"When you announced to the room that Samantha had been stalking you... you were saying it right to my face."

The blood completely drained from his lips.

My mother’s knees buckled. She stumbled backward, catching herself on the arm of the velvet sofa to keep from collapsing.

"So... so the girl I just hit..."

"Was me."

A violent sob ripped from her throat as she broke down weeping.

I looked away.

Just a few hours ago, seeing her cry would have broken my heart.

But now? It didn't hurt as much.

Some things make a lot of noise when they shatter.

But once they are completely broken into dust, there is only silence.

At that exact moment, across town in a mid-range hotel.

Samantha woke up on the carpet.