Part I

The car was brand new. Shiny black paint, leather seats that still carried the faint smell of a factory somewhere across the ocean, and that sense of pride that only comes when you sign paperwork for something you’re not sure you can afford but buy anyway. I had driven it off the lot three days earlier, and already I was treating it like a newborn—every turn careful, every pothole a mortal enemy.

So when the impact came, I thought for half a second the world had ended.

The crunch of metal, the jolt of momentum, the sickening lurch forward—it all happened before I even registered the red light ahead. I slammed the brakes harder out of reflex, my heart jackhammering in my chest. For a moment, the world shrank to silence, the kind of silence that only follows violence.

I sucked in air and looked into the rearview mirror. A small white sedan sat crumpled against the back of my new car. The hood was folded like an accordion, steam rising into the late-night air. Behind the wheel, a girl with wide, panicked eyes pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.

My first thought wasn’t anger. It was despair. I had just bought this damn car.

I climbed out, the cool night air smacking me in the face. She scrambled out of her car too, nearly tripping over herself. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. Brown hair pulled into a messy ponytail, oversized hoodie, ripped jeans. Her eyes darted between me and the damage like she couldn’t decide which was worse.

“I—I’m so sorry!” she blurted, bowing her head in a gesture that felt almost rehearsed. “I didn’t mean—my brakes—oh God, your car!”

I ran a hand through my hair, forcing my voice to stay calm. “It’s fine. Well, not fine. But you’re okay, right?”

She nodded quickly. “I’m fine. Totally fine.” Then, like an afterthought, she pointed at her own car. “My car’s not fine. But—your car’s worse. I’ll pay. I swear I’ll pay.”

I almost laughed. The damage to my rear bumper alone would cost more than her entire sedan. “Look,” I started, “let’s just call insurance and—”

She shook her head so violently I thought it might snap off. “No insurance. Please. My brother—he’ll cover it. Just… wait, let me call him.”

Before I could object, she fished out her phone with shaking hands and dialed a number. She turned her back slightly, but her voice carried. “Brother? Yeah, it’s me. I, um… crashed into your wifey’s car.”

My brows shot up. Wifey?

She glanced at me, catching my confusion, and smiled nervously. “Just… trust me,” she mouthed, before snapping back to her phone. “Hurry over. If you don’t come, you’ll regret it forever.”

She hung up with a flourish and grinned at me like she’d solved the whole problem. “He’ll come.”

I folded my arms. “You didn’t even give him the address.”

She tapped the silver pendant hanging around her neck. “Doesn’t matter. GPS. My parents gave me this when I was little. Tracks me everywhere.”

I blinked. “That’s… comforting?”

She beamed, entirely unbothered. “Yeah. They worry a lot. I usually wear it. Anyway, my brother’s loaded. He’ll pay for everything. You’ll see.”

We sat down on the curb while waiting, the two of us bathed in the harsh white glow of a nearby streetlight. She yawned openly, not bothering to hide it, then tipped sideways until her head rested against my shoulder. I stiffened, glancing down at her.

“Hey—uh, little sister. You can’t just fall asleep on strangers like this. What if I was some bad guy?”

She cracked one eye open, lashes wet with exhaustion. “You’re different. You’re the one my brother…” She trailed off, voice too soft to catch.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She sat up straighter, just in time for headlights to wash over us.

A sleek black car pulled up. Out stepped a man who looked like he belonged in a magazine spread—tall, broad shoulders filling out a crisp white shirt, cuffs rolled casually to his forearms. His strides were long, purposeful, commanding. And his voice, when it cut through the night, was sharp enough to make me flinch.

“Nicole Green. What nonsense are you up to now? You’ve barely had this car a month and you’ve already wrecked it.”

The girl—Nicole—sprang up and darted toward him. “Brother! You’re here!”

She blocked my view for a moment, but even through her slim frame I could see the silhouette—long legs, confident gait, the faint glimmer of a watch worth more than my car. Her boasts about his wealth weren’t exaggerated.

Then she announced, far too loudly: “Brother, I already told sis. I’m giving you to her as compensation!”

He froze mid-step. “You said what?”

Panicked, I scrambled to my feet. “No, no, no. That’s not necessary. Just the repair fee is fine. Really.” My words faltered as his gaze slid past Nicole and locked onto me.

Recognition hit like another collision.

Sharp cheekbones, dark eyes that glimmered with something between resentment and disbelief, a twisted half-smile tugging at lips I had once known. My breath caught in my throat.

He narrowed his eyes, voice curling with venom and something else I couldn’t name. “Angela Lopez. Long time no see.”

The sound of my own name from his mouth jolted me back eight years, to a classroom filled with sunlight and scrawled notes, to a boy with bleached hair and fists that solved problems words couldn’t. Austin. The school bully. The boy I had once kissed, only once, and then abandoned without explanation.

Except he wasn’t Austin anymore.

He smirked coldly. “What? You toyed with me back then and now you’ve forgotten? Figures.”

Nicole gasped, jaw dropping in theatrical shock. “Sis, you kissed my brother?”

I flushed hot, my hands curling into fists. “It was one time. And he didn’t even resist!”

Austin—no, Edward now, apparently—let out a bitter laugh. “So you do remember.”

I swallowed hard. The years hadn’t softened him. They’d sharpened him into something dangerous, something powerful. The boy from high school had become a man who could command rooms with a glance. And he was looking at me now like I owed him a lifetime.

Nicole waved dramatically. “All right then. Since it’s fate, I’ll leave you two alone!” She blew me a kiss, bolted for a passing cab, and was gone before I could protest.

And just like that, it was only me and him—standing by two wrecked cars, under a streetlight that felt like a spotlight, with eight years of silence sitting heavy between us.

He didn’t move. Neither did I. The seconds stretched into something unbearable.

Finally, he spoke, low and measured. “Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?”

I took a deep breath, met his gaze, and said the only thing that mattered right now. “Can I get the repair money?”

For a moment, his composure cracked. Then he let out an incredulous scoff, a sound halfway between a laugh and a curse. “That’s all you’re going to ask? Not whether I still like you?”

I blinked. My throat felt tight. “What else should I ask?”

His eyes darkened. “Don’t misunderstand. That wallpaper on my phone you saw—it’s not because I like you. It’s to remind myself every day that you’re my sworn enemy.”

I raised an eyebrow, heart pounding, but my voice stayed steady. “Got it. You hate me. Then, President Green, would you mind settling your enemy’s repair bill first?”

His jaw clenched. For a second, he looked like he might explode. Then he exhaled, pulled out his phone, and with the calm ruthlessness of a man used to winning, added me on WeChat. “I’ll pay you after it’s fixed.”

And just like that, my sworn enemy had managed to worm his way back into my life.

Part II

A tow truck hauled Nicole’s little white sedan away like a dead bug. Edward stood with his hands in his pockets, gaze locked on the wreckage of my bumper as if disappointment were a physical thing he could punch into submission. The night deepened around us: a liquor store’s neon sign flickered, a bus sighed at the corner, the streetlamp hummed its electrical boredom. We were two variables dropped back into an old equation, the sum uncertain and probably dangerous.

“Where do you live?” he asked finally.

“I’ll call a car,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

He cut me off with a glance so sharp it felt like a paper cut. “You’re my creditor now. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t take you home.”

“Guilty.” I tasted the word. “That a new thing for you?”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “Get in.”

The interior of his car smelled faintly of cedar and something more expensive than cedar. The dash was clean, the displays quiet. I sat ramrod straight, hands folded over my purse like a child at a recital. He pulled into traffic with the practiced smoothness of someone who had long ago decided that control was the only way to survive.

We drove in silence for three blocks before my phone lit up with a call from Katie.

“Hey, babe,” she said in her habitual rasp, made worse by a lingering cold. “You almost back?”

“Almost,” I said, glancing at Edward’s profile. “What’s up?”

“I’m starving. Can you swing by the food street? I’m craving that egg-stuffed pancake and maybe some wontons. Please? I’ll clean the bathroom for a week.”

I smiled despite myself. “Bribery accepted.”

I hung up and tucked my phone away. That was when the car unexpectedly surged, the engine growling low. I grabbed the door handle to steady myself. “Uh—what’s happening?”

“Miracle,” he said, eyes fixed on the road. “Thought something might be broken from the crash. Must’ve fixed itself. Wouldn’t want to delay Miss Lopez from buying midnight snacks for her boyfriend.”

Ah. The misunderstanding. Nicole’s earlier theater about “wifey.” Katie’s husky voice. My casual “babe.” It assembled itself like a children’s puzzle. I could’ve corrected him right then. It would’ve been simple. But his tone wrapped around the word boyfriend like barbed wire and something in me—stupid, defensive, steeled—left the knot alone.

“At least the car’s obedient,” I murmured.

We stopped at a red light. He braked a little harder than necessary. “You’ve changed a lot over the years, Angela.”

“Thanks for the compliment, President Green.” My voice came out dry. “People do change.”

He reached forward and tapped the console. Music spilled into the quiet—soft, melancholy, unabashedly earnest. A male singer asked how much farther until he could reach someone’s heart. Another promised he didn’t want tears if love had already been forgotten. I stared at the radio like it had grown a second face.

“I didn’t peg you for sad songs,” I said. “Back then you listened to those ridiculous hype tracks. Bass, yelling. You once claimed lyrics were propaganda.”

“You said it yourself,” he replied. “People change.”

“Right,” I said, and let the rest of the drive be mostly the sound of the singer trying to bargain with fate.

The food street near my building was a ribbon of fluorescent light and sizzling oil. Vendors hocked skewers and dumplings and caramel apples on sticks that never looked as good as you wanted them to taste. The air carried the democratic perfume of grease and scallions. We parked and walked side by side down the narrow lane. Edward looked like a stock photo of “corporate” that had fallen into a cooking show. Eyes followed him—the shirt, the watch, the posture that belonged in rooms where people said words like synergy without flinching.

“President Green,” I said, gesturing at the stalls, “there’s nothing here that suits your palate. Go home. I’ve got it.”

He didn’t answer. He was staring at a particular griddle where batter spread thin as silk, an egg cracked and whisked into yellow confetti, scallions showered, chili paste streaked in a red comet tail. “One regular,” he told the vendor, then pointed straight at me. “And another with two eggs, pork tenderloin, and spicy strips.”

“Show-off,” I muttered, but it came out softer than I intended.

He paid before I could argue. We stood with our backs against a wall, paper-wrapped pancakes warming our palms. He took a slow, precise bite, eyes closing briefly like he was checking if a memory would answer the door. “Tell me, Angela,” he said around the second bite, “which is better—the new shop or the old one?”

I blinked. “What?”

“This one,” he lifted the pancake. “Or the stall back in our town. The one by the alley with the busted streetlight. You used to split a family-size with me and pretend the lunch lady had ‘shaky hands’ when she piled food on your tray.”

The details hit like wind after a sprint: the greasy chalkboard menu, the vendor’s radio stuck on a station that only played ballads, the way we’d balance our plates on a crate and call it a table. I forced my expression into something cool. “The new one,” I said, deadpan.

He huffed a bitter little laugh. “Then why does the old one taste more addictive?”

Out with the old, in with the new, I almost said, but the words curdled in my throat. I folded the paper around the pancake until grease kissed my fingertips. “Because memory seasons everything,” I said instead.

When we finished, we walked back to his car in a silence that didn’t feel hostile so much as overloaded. He unlocked my door, then hesitated, one hand braced on the roof like he had to steady himself for the rest of the evening.

“Angela,” he said, not looking at me, “how much farther until I can reach your heart?”

It was delivered matter-of-factly, like he was placing an order in a language he hadn’t spoken in years. The song earlier had used the same line. Maybe he thought he could float it casually and watch me flail. Maybe he was flailing himself.

I went for a dodge. “Depends on traffic.”

He snorted, almost smiled, and the almost did stupid things to my chest.

When we reached my building, the clock on his dash blinked 12:07 a.m. The street was quieter this far from the market, a hollow kind of quiet that made our footsteps too loud. I unbuckled and tugged the handle. The door didn’t open.

“President Green?” I rattled it gently. “Would you mind…?”

He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I’m hungry.”

I stared at his profile. “What?”

“I’m hungry,” he repeated, eyes forward, voice even. “Buy me dinner.”

The lock clicked. I rolled my eyes so hard my skull creaked. “Fine. But if you die of grease poisoning, I’m sending the invoice to your board.”

“Send it to my enemy,” he said. “She has WeChat.”

We ate under a buzzing bulb at a tin table that leaned just enough to make soup a hazard. He ordered more than he could possibly eat, then ate all of it, chopsticks flashing with the quick, rough elegance of someone who had trained hunger into manners. He watched me over the rim of a plastic bowl like he was gathering data.

“Tell me something true,” he said when we were done, tossing napkins into a mound. “What’s real about your life now that wasn’t before?”

I thought about rent and project deadlines and the way I’d learned to hoard small joys like a survivalist. “I buy cheap flowers on Fridays,” I said. “They live until Wednesday if I change the water twice. I go running even when I don’t want to, because my body likes the apology. I call my mother once a week even though we mostly talk around things. I own a new car I can’t afford, and I make coffee at home to pretend that evens it out.”

He nodded like I’d handed him a map. “And your boyfriend,” he said carefully, “likes egg-stuffed pancakes.”

“My roommate,” I corrected softly. “Her name is Katie. She lost her voice cheering at a concert and now everything she says sounds like a bear who vapes.”

He absorbed this with only the slightest tightening along his jaw. “So why the lie?”

“It wasn’t a lie. Not a good one, anyway. Nicole misheard. You misunderstood. I didn’t correct either of you.” I tucked hair behind my ear. “Sometimes not correcting is easier.”

“Sometimes easier is worse,” he said, and the way he said it made me think of a thousand choices since we were eighteen that carried that exact regret.

He walked me to my building’s door. The lobby smelled like over-bleached tile. We stood in that everyday light designed to make everyone look slightly less attractive than they are. He shoved his hands into his pockets and swayed on his heels, suddenly and strangely young.

“You’re going to text me about the car,” he said.

“I’m going to text you about the car.”

“And other things,” he added, reckless.

“We’ll see.”

He nodded, then leaned forward with the smallest inclination, a motion that could have become a hug in a universe with different gravity. Instead, he pulled back and cleared his throat, defaulting to formal. “Good night, Manager Lopez.”

“Good night, President Green.”

Upstairs, Katie was already on the couch, wrapped in a blanket burrito, a true-crime documentary muttering in the background. She craned her neck to look at me, eyes shining. “Pancake?”

I set the bag on the coffee table and collapsed beside her. She unwrapped hers like a present, took a reverent bite, then pointed at my mouth. “You’re smiling,” she rasped, delighted.

“I’m not,” I said. I was.

“Is he cute?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows. “Be honest.”

“He’s an arrogant, infuriating, corporate rebrand of a boy I used to know,” I said.

“So yes.”

I threw a napkin at her face.

The next morning, my phone buzzed with a WeChat message before my alarm had a chance to redeem itself.

EDWARD GREEN: Car’s in the shop. Will advise.

I stared at the two clipped sentences and felt something ridiculous—relief? irritation? both? I typed back: Any ETA?

There was a long pause, then: No.

I set the phone down and got ready for work, the world returning to its dull, practical momentum. Toothpaste. Blazer. Laptop. Keys. Another ping:

EDWARD GREEN: How are you getting to work?

I thumbed back: Roommate’s car.

Another pause. How long have you two been together?

I blinked. It would have been easy to swat that down. Instead, I typed: Two years. And then, because the truth can be weaponized by silence: As roommates.

He didn’t reply.

By evening, I had sent another: Is the car fixed yet? The reply came quickly: No.

Day two, same exchange. Day three, I opened the chat and hadn’t typed a thing when his reply landed like a preemptive strike: No.

I smiled despite myself and typed “1” just to be annoying.

EDWARD GREEN: Angela, stop sending stupid numbers.

I deleted it and typed “2.”

EDWARD GREEN: Don’t send any other numbers either.

I stared at the screen, then deleted the message, letting him sit in the silence he clearly feared. A minute crawled by, then two. At five minutes, his composure cracked.

EDWARD GREEN: Do we seriously have nothing else to talk about?

I took a breath I didn’t need to take. You can give me the shop’s number. I’ll call myself.

EDWARD GREEN: No good. You’ll get scammed. You don’t understand cars.

Fair point. I typed Okay, because picking fights over expertise was not the hobby I planned to take up in my thirties.

Five minutes later: Dinner. Tomorrow. Then, before I could decide whether to refuse: For the project. I have questions.

Ah. The project. The one I’d been babysitting for six months, a careful stack of budgets and timelines built to survive the scrutiny of men like him. I typed Sure.

He replied with an address, then a second message that landed like an afterthought and read like a test: Don’t be late.

The restaurant was the kind of place where water arrived with lemon without being asked and the lighting made everyone look like a better version of themselves. He was already at the table when I walked in, suit darker than the night outside, hair tamed into a sleek argument. He stood to greet me, eyes raking me with professional efficiency and something warmer.

“Manager Lopez,” he said, extending a hand. “Thank you for meeting.”

“President Green,” I said, taking it. “Thank you for paying.”

We sat. The waiter approached with a menu that had no prices I cared to read. Edward ordered too much of everything without looking. When the waiter left, Katie’s words echoed in my head—Is he cute?—and I shoved them away like a temptation I couldn’t afford.

“I have questions,” he said, and then spent exactly three minutes and forty seconds asking none. Instead, his gaze kept landing on my hands, my face, the way I tucked hair behind my ear when a thought required both sides of my brain.

“You’re not listening,” I said finally.

“I am,” he lied.

The food arrived—plated perfection and steam. We ate. Halfway through, he set down his chopsticks and asked, casual as a guillotine, “If your boyfriend is nearby, he’s welcome to join us. I may have overordered.”

“My—” I choked, then caught myself. Katie, who I’d invited last-minute to prevent any unscheduled heart surgery, chose that exact moment to push through the door, cheeks pink from the wind.

She slid into the third seat. “Hi. I’m the roommate.” Her voice was all sandpaper and sunshine. “Not the boyfriend.”

Edward blinked once. Twice. Something unclenched in his shoulders so minutely you’d need lab instruments to measure it. He smiled at Katie with perfect politeness and then proceeded to order three more dishes, as if celebration required one of everything.

We ate. We made small talk about safe topics: traffic patterns, municipal incompetence, how the city’s best coffee was inexplicably in the back of a laundromat. After, I excused myself to the restroom to breathe and remind my face how to do neutral.

When I stepped out, he was waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall in a pose that probably had a chapter devoted to it in a magazine.

“Angela,” he said, voice quiet but wired. “Aren’t you going to explain yourself?”

“About what?”

“About the boyfriend that isn’t. About calling me President Green like we’ve never shared a desk, a textbook, a—” He cut himself off, jaw tight. “You know how I feel. Stop pretending you don’t.”

There it was. Not a proposal. Not an apology. A declaration both wounded and defiant.

I looked at him and felt the past, the present, the thousand moments between, all stacking like plates I couldn’t carry. “Austin,” I said softly, trying out the old name like an old song, “I know.”

He flinched, then steadied. “Then why did you leave?”

The question landed where he wanted it to: directly on the tender bruise I kept covered. My mouth opened. Nothing came out. The truth pressed against my ribs like a fist. I wasn’t ready to set it loose. Not in a hallway that smelled like bleach and basil. Not when the edges could slice both of us.

He saw it—the way my eyes skittered away, the way my shoulders tightened against invisible weather. Disappointment flickered across his face and vanished like a fish.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to say it,” he said, softer now. “I won’t force it. I just—” He swallowed. “I just want you to like me.”

Something inside me cracked the way ice cracks on a lake in deep winter—not catastrophic, but decisive.

“I never stopped,” I almost said.

What I said was: “Dinner was good. Thank you.”

“Of course,” he replied, formal snapping back in place like a collar. “Text me when you’re home.”

I nodded and turned, feeling his gaze follow me back to the table, to Katie’s wide eyes and the future crouched under the chair like a cat—half-wild, patient, waiting to be called.

Part III

The next morning started like any other: stale coffee, inbox already screaming, the weight of deadlines pressing down before I even put on shoes. But the edges of yesterday lingered like bruises—his words in the hallway, the way his eyes burned when he asked why I left, and the silence I shoved between us because I couldn’t let the truth slip out yet.

I buried myself in work, double-checking spreadsheets, nitpicking slides, pretending the mundane could outmuscle the storm in my chest. It almost worked. Until lunchtime.

“Manager Lopez,” my supervisor called, poking his head into my cubicle, “our investors have arrived early. Conference room B in ten.”

I smoothed my blazer, grabbed the presentation folder, and rehearsed my pitch in my head as I walked. Confidence was armor. I pushed open the heavy glass door—

—and froze.

Edward Green sat at the head of the table, a dark suit tailored sharp enough to slice. His hair was slicked back, every strand in military formation, his cufflinks catching the fluorescent light. He leaned back like he owned the room. Hell, maybe he did.

Our eyes met. The smallest smile curved his mouth, equal parts challenge and recognition.

“This is the project lead, Miss Lopez,” my supervisor announced.

Edward’s gaze swept over me, deliberate. “I didn’t expect Manager Lopez to be so… young.”

“President Green,” I said evenly, extending my hand, “nice to meet you again.”

His grip was warm, firm, and entirely too steady. “Likewise.”

I moved to sit across the table, but his voice stopped me.

“I think Manager Lopez should sit here,” he said smoothly, gesturing to the chair directly in front of him. “Better view.”

A beat of silence passed. My supervisor blinked. “Better… view?”

Edward cleared his throat. “I mean, it’s easier to discuss face-to-face.”

My supervisor nodded, none the wiser. “Of course. Angela, sit there.”

So I did—squarely across from the man who knew too much about my past and wanted more of my present.

The presentation began. Katie clicked through slides, I walked through timelines, deliverables, risk assessments. Normally, Edward’s kind were all business, firing rapid questions, probing for weaknesses. But he barely glanced at the screen. His eyes kept sliding back to me, heavy and unrelenting. I hated how my pulse responded like it remembered a different lifetime.

When we wrapped, my supervisor smiled nervously. “Any questions, President Green?”

Edward glanced at his watch. “It’s lunchtime. Why don’t we continue the discussion over a meal?”

“Well, I have another meeting at noon,” my boss hesitated.

“No worries,” Edward cut in smoothly. “I’ll speak with Manager Lopez directly.”

Relief softened my supervisor’s face. “Angela, Katie, take good care of President Green.”

And just like that, I was trapped.

The restaurant was one of those glossy establishments with hushed lighting and waiters who glided more than walked. We were seated in a private room with sliding doors. Too private.

Katie sat beside me, fiddling with her water glass. “Why do I feel like President Green is mad at me?” she whispered. “His eyes are terrifying.”

Edward’s gaze flicked her way. “No problem at all,” he said smoothly. “I may have over-ordered. If either of your boyfriends are nearby, they’re welcome to join.”

My hand froze midair. Boyfriends. He was testing me again.

“Thank you, President Green,” Katie said brightly before I could stop her. “But unfortunately, neither of us has a boyfriend.”

His lips twitched, a crack in the mask. “What about Manager Lopez’s… roommate?”

Katie blinked, confused. “Her roommate? You mean me?”

Edward gave a slow, deliberate nod. “Yes. You.”

Then he smiled and flagged down the waiter, ordering even more food. Dishes I couldn’t pronounce began to arrive in waves, steam curling around us like a trap.

Katie shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think I should—”

“Eat,” Edward said lightly. “As much as you like. If it’s not enough, order more.”

My soul left my body.

I excused myself halfway through, muttering something about the restroom. The moment I stepped out, Edward was already waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

“Angela,” he said, voice low, taut with something dangerous, “aren’t you going to explain yourself?”

I stiffened. “Explain what?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why you let me believe you had a boyfriend. Why you keep calling me ‘President Green’ like we’re strangers. Why you keep running.”

My throat went dry. “I never said—”

He cut me off, voice raw now. “Angela, I don’t believe you can’t tell. I like you. I’ve always liked you.”

The air between us thickened. My heart thudded so hard it hurt.

“I know,” I whispered.

His expression flickered—hope, relief, then a shadow of something heavier. “Then why are you afraid to face it? Why did you leave all those years ago? You said your grandma was sick. I wanted to visit, but you wouldn’t tell me where she was. Then you disappeared.”

The mention of Grandma was a knife twisting in my chest. My lips parted, but the truth lodged like a stone in my throat.

He saw my silence. Disappointment etched itself across his face. His voice softened, pained. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say it. I won’t force you. I just want you to like me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

I couldn’t breathe. His sincerity was scorching, and I wasn’t ready to hold it. Not with the truth shackled inside me.

I looked away. “Dinner’s getting cold,” I said, my voice barely steady.

For a long moment, he just stared at me. Then he stepped back, hands sliding into his pockets like he needed somewhere to hide his desperation.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “But one day, Angela, you’re going to have to stop running.”

And he walked back into the dining room, leaving me alone in a hallway that suddenly felt far too small.

Part IV

Edward wasn’t bluffing. He messaged me almost every day after that dinner, sometimes about the car, sometimes about the project, and sometimes about nothing at all. His texts arrived clipped, formal, but with undercurrents I couldn’t ignore:

EDWARD: Don’t skip lunch.
EDWARD: Meeting at 3. You’ll do fine.
EDWARD: Send me your address. The shop finished the car.

When I met him in the parking lot the next evening, I almost didn’t recognize my own car. The exterior gleamed, not just repaired but upgraded—new rims, re-polished paint, even the faint scent of new leather clinging to the cabin.

“This isn’t a repair,” I muttered, circling it. “It’s a resurrection.”

Edward crossed his arms. “I said I’d pay ten times. I don’t go back on my word.”

I stared at him. “Ten times? My car wasn’t worth even a tenth of this.”

His expression stayed unreadable. “Consider it interest. Or punishment. Take your pick.”

I wanted to argue, but the gleam of my own reflection in the paint silenced me. No more dents. No more reminders of that night. But the car wasn’t the only thing resurrected. My past, carefully buried, was clawing its way back too.

Three days later, I found myself standing in front of a guarded hospital room. Edward walked beside me, his presence steady, unyielding. Two uniformed officers stood outside the door, nodding curtly as we entered.

Inside, the man in the bed looked like a ghost. Gaunt, hollow-cheeked, skin the color of ash. His chest rose and fell beneath the ventilator’s hiss. But when his eyes cracked open, dull brown lit with recognition, bile rose in my throat.

“Sweetie,” he rasped. “You came.”

The word cut deeper than any knife.

I stayed rooted by the door. My voice was quiet, almost flat. “Mm.”

His lips twisted. “Come closer. I need to talk to you.”

“No need,” I said coldly. “I can hear you from here.”

His expression hardened, then contorted into something uglier. “I’m your father. You can’t ignore me. You owe me. Pay for my treatment.”

I bit back a bitter laugh. “One word at a time, old man. Cancer. You’re not getting better.”

He wheezed, turned his gaze to Edward. “You—boyfriend, right? You’ve got money. Cancer can be cured if you throw enough cash at it. Help me out, and I’ll even let you marry my daughter.”

Edward’s face darkened, jaw tightening like a loaded spring. “Yeah, I’ve got money,” he said softly, dangerously. “But I’m not giving you a cent. In fact…” He stepped closer to the bed, voice dropping low. “My hands are kind of itchy. I’m tempted to unplug that ventilator myself.”

Fear flickered across the old man’s face. “You wouldn’t. That’s murder.”

Edward leaned in. “So was what you did.”

The man stammered, but I’d had enough. My voice shook as I spat the words I’d buried for years. “You killed her. I saw it. You killed my grandmother.”

Edward stiffened beside me.

The man in the bed laughed weakly, hollow. “That was an accident. She wouldn’t give me the money. She was stubborn. Too stubborn. But what does it matter? She’s gone. And you—” His eyes gleamed with malice. “You think his parents will ever accept a murderer’s daughter? Don’t kid yourself. He’s just playing with you.”

My throat closed. For a second, I was seventeen again, kneeling in blood, hands trembling as I dialed emergency numbers.

Edward didn’t flinch. He stepped in front of me, shielding me with his body. Then he clapped his hands gently over my ears like I was a child. His voice was ice. “Stay in that bed, old man. Use what little time you’ve got left to watch how happy your daughter becomes.”

Later, outside the hospital, I told Edward everything.

About how my mother had died giving birth to me, and my maternal grandparents had never forgiven me for it. How my father abandoned me when I was ten, only to reappear eight years later with lies about wealth and promises of a new life.

I told him about Grandma, how she packed our things in secret and took me to the city, how she clung to hope like it was a raft even while cancer hollowed her out. How she whispered that if anything happened to her, I should live with my father.

And how, on the day my exam results came out, I came home to find her collapsed in blood, a knife buried in her stomach.

I told him how I avoided everyone after that—friends, teachers, even him. How I couldn’t bear to drag him into my hell. He had a future. He deserved it. So I disappeared.

By the time I finished, tears blurred everything. My voice was hoarse. I braced for disgust.

But Edward’s arms closed around me, pulling me against his chest. His voice was thick, ragged. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me.”

“Aren’t you disgusted?” I whispered into his shirt.

“Why would I be?” he shot back, firm. “The person I’ve always liked is you. What he did has nothing to do with you. Losing your grandma—” His voice broke. “That must’ve been hell. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

I wept harder then, not because of the past, but because someone finally wanted to share its weight.

A week later, Edward insisted on bringing me to his family’s home. I resisted at first, fear gnawing that his parents would look at me the way neighbors had back then—like I carried blood on my hands.

But when the door opened, his mother’s face softened with instant warmth. “So you’re Angela,” she breathed, eyes watering as she clasped my hands. “Finally, I get to meet you. You’re even lovelier than in the pictures.”

Before I could process that, she pressed a red envelope into my palm, heavy with tradition. His father arrived a moment later, gruff but trying to hide his nerves, pressing another envelope into my other hand. “Hi, daughter-in-law,” he said, like it was already decided.

At dinner, they piled food into my bowl, arguing over who had cooked better. Under the table, Edward squeezed my hand, his thumb brushing small circles on my palm. He leaned in, whispering, “See? Didn’t I tell you?”

After the meal, his mother led me into the study. From a carved wooden box, she pulled out a jade bracelet, smooth and cool against my wrist as she slipped it on. “This belonged to Edward’s grandmother,” she said softly. “Now it’s yours.”

My throat tightened. Outside, I could hear Edward bickering good-naturedly with his father. For the first time in years, something fragile and long-lost began to stitch itself together inside me.

That night, lying in my apartment, I turned the bracelet on my wrist and thought about Grandma’s voice. Sweetie, if Grandma ever leaves, live happily.

I hadn’t, not for a long time. But maybe—just maybe—that was about to change.

Part V

The jade bracelet clicked lightly against the edge of my laptop as I typed, a quiet metronome that kept time with a life I wasn’t sure I recognized yet. Work settled back into its grind—deadlines, meetings, feedback that sounded like compliments until you read it twice. But everything else had shifted. The city seemed less hostile. The morning light felt less accusing. When you stop bracing for impact, even sidewalks look kinder.

Edward didn’t try to press fast-forward. He texted like a man who had learned restraint the hard way.

EDWARD: Eat lunch.
EDWARD: Umbrella. It’ll rain at 4.
EDWARD: Proud of you. (Don’t argue.)

I didn’t argue.

On a Friday, the kind of Friday that wants to be a holiday but doesn’t commit, I drove the “resurrected” car past the old food street out of habit. The doubled glass on the storefronts mirrored the afternoon. A new sign caught my eye—JianBing House—neon swept into a friendly loop. Inside, the smell was memory itself: beaten eggs, scallion, hot iron.

I ordered on reflex. “One with double egg,” I told the cashier. “Extra crispy.”

From the back, a man in a flour-dusted apron squinted, then broke into a grin. “Angela? That you?”

I blinked. “Uncle Wei?”

He laughed, slapping his thigh. “The girl who always ordered the family-size! Thought I recognized you.” He handed me the pancake and leaned on the counter. “You know, this is all thanks to President Green.”

I froze halfway to a bite. “Excuse me?”

“He found me ages ago,” Uncle Wei said, like he was talking about a weather pattern. “Said he wanted to invest. One shop became two, two became ten. I told him it didn’t make business sense. He said business sense isn’t the point. ‘I just want someone to be able to eat this whenever she wants,’ he said.”

My throat tightened so fast it felt like choking. “He said that?”

“Word for word.” He chuckled. “He’s a good kid. Grew up right, even with… you know, the past.”

I took a bite to buy a second. The crisp shattered into warmth. It tasted exactly like seventeen and hope you didn’t know how to name yet. “Uncle,” I said quietly, “do you remember a boy with dyed hair who used to come here with me?”

“The one who pretended to hate chili oil but always asked for extra?” He grinned. “Sure do. Looked hungry even when he’d just eaten. Disappeared after graduation. I heard later—he was the rich family’s lost son. Good for him.”

Good for him. The phrase landed different now. He had invested in a chain of breakfast stores so I could wander into any city and eat a memory. I swallowed and the food felt like forgiveness.

I texted Edward a picture of the pancake in my palm. Found your conspiracy.

His reply arrived a minute later. Conspiracy? Then another: You like it?

Yes. I typed, then paused, thumb hovering. The truth wanted out. It had gotten a taste for daylight. I like you.

I hit send before I could talk myself into safety.

Three dots. Disappeared. Three dots again, like he’d walked away and come back. I’m outside your building.

I looked at the timestamp. Ten minutes later he was under my awning, hair damp from the drizzle he’d predicted, suit jacket slung over one shoulder like a dare. For a second we just stood there, the rain stitching the air between us into something visible.

“You invested in pancakes,” I said, because if I started with anything else I might start with forever.

He shrugged, trying to make it casual and failing. “Seemed like the best way to bribe the universe.”

“It worked.”

Silence fell, but it wasn’t empty. It was loaded with everything we hadn’t had the courage to say when we were kids trying to outrun our own lives.

“I like you,” I repeated, because once is a risk and twice is a choice.

He stepped in. Not a surge. A certainty. He took my face in both hands like it was a thing he’d been careful with for a decade. The kiss wasn’t hungry the way I thought it might be. It was relieved. It tasted like finally. And when he pulled back, his forehead resting on mine, his voice came out rough around the edges.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said. “I don’t plan to do that again.”

“Then don’t,” I answered.

Life has a talent for staging counterprogramming. The morning after I told Edward the words he’d waited eight years to hear, my phone rang with a number I recognized from the worst chapter of my life—B City Hospital.

“Ms. Lopez?” a nurse said, professional, neutral. “Your father’s condition has deteriorated. You listed yourself as a contact.”

I stood at my window and watched a couple argue on the sidewalk, their gestures choreography I’d seen a hundred times. “Is he—”

“He may not survive the week,” she said gently. “If you need to make decisions about his care—”

“Keep him comfortable,” I said. The words had no poetry. They didn’t need any. “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

I didn’t tell Edward. Not right away. He had learned patience with me, and now I had to learn it with myself. That night, I lay awake and stared at the ceiling fan like it might hypnotize the ache out of me. Forgiveness is not amnesia. It is a scar you stop scratching.

The next afternoon, I walked into the hospital and found Edward already there, leaning against the wall outside the room with the same stillness he wore in boardrooms when he decided no one could move him.

“I told the nurse I’m your fiancé,” he said as if reporting the weather. “Seemed expedient.”

A sound that might have been a laugh escaped me. “You practicing?”

His gaze flicked to the bracelet on my wrist and back to my face. “Always.”

Inside, the machines made the same sterile noises they’d made the first day. My father looked smaller, a man whose cruelty had outlived his usefulness. His eyes tracked me, then slid toward Edward. He sneered, a curdling of features that made him look briefly like the father I remembered trying to impress when I was five. My chest did not respond.

“Come to gloat?” he rasped. “Watch me die?”

“I came to make something clear,” I said, setting my palms on the cool rail of the bed. “You don’t own my life. You never did. I won’t carry you anymore.”

His lips moved around a curse. “You think money will save you? Think his fancy parents will keep you once they know?”

“They know,” Edward said, and his voice was the quietest kind of thunder. “They know everything. And they set two places at dinner anyway.”

My father’s expression curdled into something like bewilderment. The axis had shifted and it hadn’t asked his permission. He scrabbled for a last wound to inflict. “You think she won’t ruin you?” he said to Edward. “She’s broken. Her blood is a stain—”

Edward reached over and pressed the call button for the nurse. Then he took my hand and placed it on his heart like he needed me to know where it was. “If he says one more word to hurt you,” he told the air, the machines, the universe, “I will walk out of this room and never think about him again. He doesn’t get another rent-free second in our heads.”

I looked at our hands, my grandmother’s bracelet cool against his heat, and felt a door close. Not slammed. Locked, calmly, from the inside.

The nurse came. Adjusted morphine. The old man slipped into a wash of half-sleep. We left.

In the parking lot, the early spring light made long shadows of us. He turned to me with a deliberateness that felt formal, almost ceremonial.

“Marry me,” he said.

It wasn’t a performance. No ring, no kneel, no witnesses. Just the question, plain and full.

“Today?” I asked, because sarcasm is a defense mechanism I keep like a spare tire.

“Soon,” he said, mouth tilting. “Soon is our word. But I need to say this now: I can build a life fast. I can also build it slow. I won’t rush you. I will, however, keep asking.”

I took a breath. There was a girl inside me who used to count coins with her grandmother under a lemon-yellow kitchen light, promising herself she would someday buy a place with a door no one could break. There was a woman who had learned how to hold a job, an apartment, a secret. Both of them answered.

“Yes,” I said. “But I want to buy our first place. With my name on the mortgage too. With my money too. I don’t want to be rescued. I want to choose.”

“Deal,” he said, eyes bright. “We’ll argue about paint colors and trash pickup days and—”

“Basil that refuses to grow,” I added.

He grinned. “I’ll threaten it personally.”

We did not rush. We built. On Sundays we toured apartments until the neighborhoods blurred and then unblurred. We disagreed about things that will sound trivial when we’re old and arguing about the best way to cut toast: gas vs. induction, south-facing vs. east, whether a balcony is an indulgence or therapy. We agreed on the one thing that mattered: a kitchen big enough to feed whoever showed up hungry.

In May, my father died. The hospital called while I was at my desk, typing an email that did not survive the minute. I stood in a stairwell and let the news pass through me like a weather front: wind, rain, quiet. I didn’t go to the funeral. I sent a simple note to the precinct that had kept me informed, a donation to the victims’ aid fund under my grandmother’s name, and a message to the nurse who had been kind. That night I lit a candle by my window and thanked the air for the lesson that endings do not require ceremonies to be real.

When the deed for our apartment arrived in June, the paper felt heavier than it looked. My name and his name, side by side, neat lines on a document that meant we had bought a tiny piece of a city that did not care either way. We took a picture holding the keys and Nicole demanded to be in it, crowding between us with her silliest face.

“I did this,” she announced, pointing at my car in the background. “If I hadn’t rear-ended you, none of this would have happened.”

“You also caused $7,300 worth of damage,” I said.

She beamed. “Best investment ever.”

We moved in a weekend that left everyone smelling like cardboard and sweat. His parents brought food enough for a platoon. Katie labeled spice jars with a calligraphy pen because she said grown-ups have labeled spice jars and I privately suspected she wanted an excuse to use the pen. At sunset, the four of us—me, Edward, his mother, his father—stood on the balcony that had won me the argument and watched light break apart into glitter over the river.

“Welcome home,” his mother said, and her voice made the word sound like a place you could step into.

We married in September in a small ceremony that would have made the Wentworth faint with offense. A backyard, paper lanterns, an officiant who quoted a line from a poem about choosing each other daily, as if it were an honest job. Nicole cried like a faucet, unabashed. Katie heckled the officiant and then cried herself. We ate pancakes at midnight because the world is not subtle and you might as well enjoy it. Uncle Wei sent a tower of them with a card that said May your life be extra crispy.

At the reception, Edward pulled me aside and showed me something small: a gold ring, plain, warm, that had belonged to his grandmother. “I was going to give it to you earlier,” he said. “But the jade looked right. This is for today.”

I slid it on under the bracelet. The weight was not heavy. It was anchoring.

Later, when the music thinned and the night settled its shawl around the yard, he and I slipped through the side gate and walked to the curb where our cars had first kissed their way into our life. The street was quiet. The same model liquor store flickered. The city smelled like someone else’s dinner and our future.

“Do you ever think about how absurd this is?” I asked. “That this started because your sister has a heavy foot and I wanted new-car smell in my lungs.”

He laughed softly. “I think about how absurd it is that I spent eight years learning how to be a person worth deserving you. And it took a crash to prove I had.”

We stood in the hush and let the absurdity be holy.

“Do you still have the GPS necklace?” I asked, because I like circling back to origins when I’m happy. “The one Nicole swore would track her anywhere.”

“She ignores it,” he said. “But I leave it on. In case she tries to pay with me again.”

We started back toward the noise and lights and people who would not leave without hugging us one more time. He took my hand. His palm was warm, his grip loose, the way you hold something when you trust it won’t run.

“Angela,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for the new car.”

I bumped his shoulder. “Thanks for the rear-end collision.”

He grinned. “Best investment ever.”

It would be easy to end here, to tint the scene gold and roll credits. But the truth is less cinematic and more durable. There are mornings when the basil dies no matter what you whisper at it and afternoons when the dishwasher floods and evenings when work follows you home like a stray dog that can read calendars. There are days when grief taps your shoulder in a grocery aisle beside the canned tomatoes and you have to step away and breathe until it passes.

There are also Tuesdays where you watch him in your cheap kitchen making eggs in the pan you both swore you wouldn’t ruin, and he looks up with a spatula like a scepter and says, “Long live the queen of this apartment,” and you see seventeen and thirty and every age you’ll be stitched together into one moment that contains so much ordinary joy it feels immodest.

On one of those Tuesdays, Nicole barreled in without knocking, dropped a set of keys in our palm, and announced, “I bought a car with better brakes.” Then she hugged me and whispered, “Wifey,” like a nickname and a blessing.

“Stop calling her that,” Edward groaned.

“Never,” she said,, grinning.

We ate pancakes on the counter because chairs felt formal again, and formality had never been our style. When the plates were empty and the day had emptied out into night, we stood on the balcony, the city telling its thousand stories below. He fit himself behind me, chin against my shoulder, the way you do when you’ve learned how to take up space together.

“Happy?” he asked.

I thought of the girl who used to count coins at the table while her grandmother pretended not to watch with pride too loud for her thin walls. I thought of the boy who ate in the trees so no one would see him be hungry. I thought of a crash, a streetlight, a ridiculous declaration of “wifey,” a chain of pancake shops sprinkled across a map like breadcrumbs back to ourselves.

“Yeah,” I said, and felt the word settle all the way down. “I am.”

He kissed my temple. Below us, a distant siren wailed on its way to someone else’s turning point. Above us, the night stretched wide and unafraid. Inside, our place smelled like batter and soap and basil fighting for its life.

We went in. We shut the door. And for once, it stayed shut because it was ours.