At first, it didn’t make sense—like a memory stitched into the wrong place. A familiar face half-hidden by messy hair, cheek pressed against the wood of a park bench as if that bench was the only safe thing left in her world. She looked thinner than he remembered. Paler. And beside her, lined up like fragile secrets, were three bundled infants.

Adrian stopped so abruptly Margaret nearly stumbled.

“Adrian?” she asked, confused.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Nora Blake.

The woman he’d once loved and then left behind five years ago because his life was “too complicated.” The woman his mother had called “sweet, but not suitable.” The woman who vanished after their last fight—after Nora begged him to choose her, just once.

He hadn’t.