My hand was trembling as I reached for the card. It couldn’t be from Rhys. It *couldn’t*.
But the card wasn’t from him. It was from Marcus.
*Ava,* the familiar, neat script read, *Heard from Chloe you’re swamped. Don’t forget to come up for air. Thinking of you. M. *
I dropped the card on my desk as if it had burned me.
A fresh wave of guilt—hotter and more sickening than the first—crashed over me. Of course, Marcus. Kind, thoughtful, completely clueless Marcus.
He thought my distance was about work, about the stress of the flood.
He was trying to be the good guy, the supportive *groom*, while I was hiding a secret that would detonate his entire world.
The lilies seemed to mock me with their pristine, white innocence. They were the flowers of weddings, of polite society, of the life I was supposed to want. They were everything Rhys wasn’t.
My phone buzzed on the desk. A text message.
**Marcus:** *Did you get the flowers. I know lilies are your favorite. *
I squeezed my eyes shut. He remembered.
After all this time, he still remembered a silly preference I’d mentioned years ago. The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like another turn of the screw.
**Marcus:** *Seriously, Ava. Talk to me. You’ve been a ghost. Let me take you to dinner tonight. Just us. We need to talk. *
I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Outside my window, the city lights began to glitter against the deepening twilight, a million perfect, orderly pinpricks. My life had been just like that—a carefully arranged pattern.
Now, one night with Rhys had smashed it to pieces, and I was left standing in the dark, trying to decide if I should try to glue the old life back together, or if I had the courage to see what new shape the fragments might make.