I didn’t send letters. I didn’t answer theirs.
And eventually, they stopped writing.
It was cleaner that way. Safer. Because I’d decided that girl—the girl with hand-me-down dreams and too many secrets—wasn’t going to make it.
But Portia Lane might.
Portia Lane had ambition. Poise. Taste. She had a name that looked good on letterhead and made people pause when she said it aloud. She didn’t flinch when powerful men looked her up and down. She didn’t choke on her own tongue when the socialites of Buckhead smiled too tightly. She smiled back tighter.
Portia Lane built a business from nothing. She curated magic for other people’s most perfect days. She walked into rooms full of million-dollar budgets and made them bend.
She never looked back.
Except now … I was.
Silas Dane had cracked something open in me. Not just my heart. But something older. Something more dangerous. A part of me I’d sealed away with the letters I never sent.
Because being with him—loving him—meant reconciling with shadow. With blood. With family you couldn’t control, and pain you couldn’t outrun.
And it made me think of them.
My sisters. My brothers. My mother, who used to hum Patsy Cline under her breath while frying bacon on a dented stove. My father, whose anger wasn’t the whole story, even if it had swallowed up all the good parts by the end.
I wondered what they’d think of me now. If they’d recognize me. If they’d hate me for leaving. Or if they’d understand.
I’d been so sure I had to become someone else to survive.
But now I wasn’t sure, anymore. Because I was starting to think the old me—the forgotten me—might be the only version brave enough to make it through what was coming next.
I pressed my hands to my stomach, to the soft, quiet space just beneath my ribs, and whispered into the dark, “You’re changing.”
And I was.
The planner. The professional. The woman who never cracked in front of clients.
She was still here. But underneath her, something older was stirring. A girl who’d grown up hiding bruises and dreaming of luxury. A woman who’d remade herself out of spite and hunger and rage and hope. A woman who now loved a man soaked inshadow and was willing to risk everything to walk beside him into the fire.
Portia Lane was real.
But so was Deborah Koltnow.
And maybe it was time I stopped pretending they couldn’t coexist.
The wind picked up. A curl of sea air swept across the patio, bringing with it the faintest sound of someone’s laughter from the rooftop terrace. Maybe Claire’s. Maybe Isabel’s.
And then the softer sound of the ocean again, calling me back.
I didn’t know what the next week would bring. I didn’t know if I’d make it through the weddings without a flaw, or if we’d all be swept into some invisible war none of the brides knew was already encroaching on their aisle.
I didn’t know if I’d survive whatever Silas and Caroline Dane had planned.
But I knew this: I wasn’t going to do it pretending.
If this world was going to come for me, it wasn’t going to find just a polished name and a perfect smile.
It was going to find the whole damn woman.
Even the girl from the trailer park.
