The name opens a door in your mind you nailed shut decades ago.
Your mother’s sister. Cruel, polished, always smiling like she knew the price of everyone in the room. After your parents died, she took you in because she wanted the monthly survivor benefits, not because she wanted you. She hated Adrian. Said he was street trash. Said a girl with no parents could not afford stupid romance.
“She lied,” you whisper.
Adrian’s eyes close briefly.
“I came back,” he says. “A year later. I had saved enough for a ticket. I went to the house. It was gone. I found your aunt. She told me you died.”
Your chest aches.
“I never got your letters.”
“I figured that out too late.”
“What happened to you?”
He looks at the empty ballroom.
“I became very good at not needing anyone.”
That hurts because you understand it too well.
You lean back, fingers cold in your lap. “She told me you left and never looked back.”
Adrian’s jaw tightens.
“She gave me one letter,” you continue. “One. It said you couldn’t be tied down. That you had found better opportunities. That I should stop embarrassing myself.”
His face turns pale.
“I never wrote that.”
“I know that now.”
Thirty years.
Thirty years stolen by a woman who thought love was a liability.
Thirty years of you learning not to wait.
Thirty years of Adrian building an empire around a grief that was never true.
He looks at you with pain so naked it almost frightens you.
“I searched for Vivian Cole. Not Vivian Rowan. Not enough, apparently.”
You shake your head. “After my aunt died, I used my mother’s maiden name for a while. Then I married Caleb. Life moved.”
“Did it?”
The question is gentle.
Too gentle.
You look away.
