Back to 1987: The Valentine I Didn’t Choose by Cynthia Luhrs

What if you could go back—not to fix your life, but to fight for the love you walked away from?

On Valentine’s Day, Maggie Shaw is fifty years old, successful, and alone. Twenty-seven years ago, she made the safe choice. She left a man who loved her. And spent a lifetime wondering what might have been.

Then she wakes up in 1987.
The music is loud. The coffee is terrible. Phones have cords, and when they ring, you answer without knowing who’s on the other end.
Maggie is twenty-three again, living in a world of mixtapes, newspaper deadlines, shoulder pads, and waiting by the phone.
And Jack Cavanaugh is still there. Brilliant, stubborn, heartbreakingly real.
She has thirteen days until Valentine’s Day. Thirteen days before the dinner where she once walked away and broke his heart.

But this time, Jack is done chasing. He’s learning to let go.
To change the past, she’ll have to do what she never could before:

Stay when it’s easier to run
Speak without hiding behind sarcasm
Love without a backup plan
Because going back comes with a price.

Stay, and lose the future she already lived.
Leave, and lose the one man she never stopped loving.
Thirteen days. One Valentine’s deadline. One chance to choose differently—before the song ends and the moment is gone.

A closed-door 80s time travel romance about regret, courage, mixtapes, missed calls, and discovering that the life you were meant for was always one brave choice away.