Callahan offered to sleep in the guest room. I could barely hear it. I grabbed my coat and left with tears running down my face, a bride walking alone through the cold night with her wedding hair still pinned and her whole life unraveling under lace.

I ended up outside my childhood home. It was still standing, but empty. I called Lorie from the curb because some nights only the person who was there before the scar can hold what comes after.

He was the same man who had called me beautiful five minutes earlier.

She arrived in 10 minutes. One look at me and she knew something was wrong.

“Part of me wants to hate him,” I admitted after explaining everything. “But another part can’t forget the way he made me feel seen.”

Lorie pulled me into her arms and said nothing, because nothing was enough. She drove me to her apartment.

I spent the night on her couch without sleeping much. By morning, I knew one thing: running from the truth had already stolen too much from my life. I wasn’t going to let it steal this decision too.

I got dressed in old jeans and a sweater from Lorie’s closet.

She watched me pull on my shoes. “Are you sure?”

Running from the truth had already stolen too much from my life.

“No,” I said. “But I’m going, anyway.”

She smiled through wet eyes. “I’m proud of you.”

I walked to Callahan’s apartment because I needed the cold air and the time to think. Buddy heard me first, paws skittering across the floor before I even reached the top of the stairs. When I opened the door, he nearly knocked me over with relief.

My husband was in the kitchen. He turned his head the moment I stepped in.

“Merry, you’re back!”

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

A sad smile touched his mouth. “Buddy told me first. My heart told me second.”

“How did you know it was me?”

He took one careful step forward, then another, reaching slightly with one hand. He almost caught the rug wrong. I moved before thinking and caught his wrist. Callahan stilled under my hand. Then, very gently, he found my face again.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, Merry.”

The honesty of that hit harder than any apology could have.

Then I smelled something faintly scorched past his shoulder and looked toward the stove.

“Callie! Are you burning something?”

He frowned. “No.”

The omelet was blackening in the pan. I laughed so hard I had to lean against the counter, and Buddy started barking like joy had a sound he recognized. Callahan laughed too, then, the first real one since the night before.

The honesty of that hit harder than any apology could have.

“The kitchen,” I said, still laughing through tears, “is mine now.”

That was my first official decision as a married woman.

Buddy lay under the table like a witness to peace talks and wagged every time one of us laughed.

For the first time in years, I no longer feel ashamed of my scars.

I finally understand that what happened to me was never my fault. And the one person who knew the ugliest truth attached to it still looked at me, through nothing but darkness, and found something worth loving.

PART1

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