LOGINALISTAIR'S POV:Her voice is low enough that the rest of the table does not hear her over my father's story about the wine. Her green eyes are fixed on mine, full of quiet curiosity.I shake my head once. "No. Nothing is wrong. I am fine.""You barely touched your food," she points out, looking down at my plate before looking back up at my face. "You seem really far away.""I am just tired," I lie, keeping my voice as flat as possible. "It was a very long flight from New York, and I did not sleep much last night."She gives a slow nod, but she does not look convinced. She stays quiet, her eyes scanning my face, staring at my jaw and my forehead like she is trying to read a hard message written under my skin.I cannot take the intensity of her look. I turn my head away, pick up my glass, and take another long drink of wine."Tell me about your life in New York," Elara says a few minutes later, turning her body slightly toward me. "I read all the news articles about your company.
ALISTAIR'S POV: Hope leans way forward over the table, resting her elbows right on the wood. "Can I see it? Do you have the blue prototypes on your laptop? Can you show me how the arm sensors read muscle movements?" I manage to pull my mouth into a small smile. "Maybe later this weekend, Hope. It is pretty complicated stuff." She rolls her eyes and pouts. "I am thirteen now, Alistair. I am not a little kid anymore. I can understand hard math." Elara breaks into another quiet laugh from across the table. "Hope, you are still thirteen. You are definitely still a kid." "I am not," Hope says, crossing her arms over her chest and slouching back into her seat. "I am basically a teenager, which means I am practically an adult." I look right back at Elara. She is still smiling, her eyes warm and crinkled at the corners, her lips turned up into a soft, genuine grin. She looks totally relaxed. She looks like she completely belongs in this house, surrounded by the people who care abo
ALISTAIR'S POV:Dinner is pure torture.That is the only word for it. Total, unending torture. I am sitting at the long dining table in the main hall of Ashcroft Manor, surrounded by my family. I am surrounded by the exact same warmth, loud laughter, and mild mess that I spent seven long years running away from.My mother sits at the far head of the table, her face completely bright with happiness. My father sits right beside her, his gray eyes warm with a pride he barely bothers to hide anymore. On my left, my little sister Hope is chattering away nonstop about her school, her friends, her art classes, and whatever new random interest has caught her attention this week.And right across from me, Elara is sitting in her chair.She is wearing a thin, light dress that shows off her collarbones, the curve of her neck, and her pale shoulders. The soft fabric is a very light shade of blue, the kind of color that makes her skin look like it is practically glowing under the dining room
ALISTAIR'S POV:The second my eyes hit her, everything else around us disappears.The drive from the airport was long and quiet. I spent the entire ride in the back of the car trying to prepare myself for this exact moment. I have been preparing for it for seven years. I rehearsed every word I would say. I planned out what I would do with my hands, how I would walk, and how I would keep my face calm and controlled so she would never know the truth.But nothing I planned could have ever prepared me for the actual reality of her standing there.She is standing in the middle of the garden, right near the rose bushes. She is wearing a simple white dress that flows around her knees, making her look like she belongs in an old painting. Her long dark hair falls in soft waves over her shoulders. Her dark green eyes are wide and bright, staring right back at me, full of emotions that I cannot read.She is even more beautiful than I remember. She is more beautiful than any old photo I kep
ELARA'S POV:He still has those same intense gray eyes as his father. The same sharp cheekbones. The same strong, square jaw. But there is something totally different about him now. Something harder in the way he stands. Something colder in his face. Something that makes him look like he has seen too much and felt too much over the last seven years, and that he has learned to hide all of it behind a blank wall.He is handsome. So handsome it almost hurts to look at him. I think I forgot just how handsome he really was.He turns his head and sees me standing by the rose bushes. He freezes in his tracks. His hand stays resting on the open car door.We just stand there, staring at each other. Neither one of us moves a muscle.The rest of the world around us completely fades away. The rest of the garden disappears. The birds stop singing in the trees. The fountain stops splashing behind me. There is no sound left at all. There is only him and me, and the seven years of total silence
ELARA'S POV: The garden is quiet this afternoon. I have been standing here on the grass for at least an hour, my shoes slowly sinking into the damp dirt. My eyes stay fixed on the front gate, barely blinking. My heart has been pounding against my ribs for so long that my whole chest aches, around me, the roses are blooming. Pink and deep red petals soft and fragrant in the warm afternoon air. Over by the stone wall, the fountain is splashing softly, dripping water into the small pool below. Somewhere up in the oak trees, the birds are singing their usual songs. I do not notice any of it. I cannot focus on the flowers or the water or the birds. I cannot focus on anything except that iron gate at the end of the driveway. He is coming. After seven whole years, he is finally coming home. I smoothed down the front of my dress for the hundredth time. It is a simple white cotton dress, light and thin. I spent almost an hour in front of my bedroom mirror choosing it earlier. I trie
She watched from the window as her father walked out to greet him.August Valancourt shook Lysander's hand with both of his, the way he did with people he truly respected, and he said something that made Lysander nod solemnly. Then her mother appeared, and Isabelle kissed Lysander on both cheeks, t
Her phone buzzed.She pulled it out of her pocket. A message from Harold Wentworth, her father's lawyer."Divorce papers are ready. I've emailed them to you. Print, sign, and leave them for him. I'll handle the rest."She opened the email. Scrolled through the document. Page after page of legal lan
At seven thirty she put the pasta water on to boil, figuring she'd wait until he was actually here to cook it so it would be fresh. She sat on the couch with a book she couldn't focus on, her phone in her hand, checking it every thirty seconds like a teenager waiting for some boy to notice her. At
Celestine started cooking at three in the afternoon, flour on her hands, music playing low from her phone and the smell of tomatoes and garlic filling the whole penthouse.She made the sauce from scratch, the way her grandmother taught her when she was maybe ten years old. She rolled out the pasta







