-Sadie-
Ellie had taken one look at Corbyn’s still pale features and insisted they shouldn’t drive back that evening. For once, Corbyn hadn’t argued, telling Sadie he had a place where they could stay for the night. Now, as they descended into the underground garage beneath a Bloomsbury apartment building, Sadie watched Corbyn’s jaw tighten with each turn of the steering wheel. By the time he guided the car into a space and cut the engine, she half expected him to crack a tooth. In the silence, his shaky exhale seemed to fill the entire car.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
“I can’t keep running from my past forever,” he said without looking at her, his voice tight.
The lift carried them up to the third floor, neither of them speaking. Her hand found his as he led her down the corridor, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around hers. He unlocked the door, and then they stepped into a space that felt like a museum exhibit—frozen in time, waiting for its owner to return.
Dust motes danced in the light as Corbyn flicked on the switches, illuminating a sitting room that belonged to the man he’d been before the accident. Books lined every wall, and there were stacks on every table. A vintage leather sofa faced tall windows that looked out over a tree-lined square. On the mantelpiece sat framed photographs. There was a photo of Corbyn with friends, captured in profile as he laughed at some long-forgotten joke. There was also a photo of two children dressed in stiff formal clothes, which she assumed were him and Ellie, and even one with Paul and Edie standing on the porch of the manor.
“This is beautiful,” Sadie said, running her fingers along the spine of a well-worn copy ofPersuasionthat sat on a shelf. A fine layer of dust covered everything, but she could still see glimpses of him in every carefully chosen detail.
“It was beautiful,” Corbyn corrected, moving to open the windows and let in fresh air.
As he passed a side table, he quietly turned a framed photograph face down without saying a word. She had briefly caught a glimpse of a dark-haired man and a blonde woman. She assumed the man was him, but the woman’s identity was a mystery.
Dropping her bag on an accent chair, Sadie spotted a crystal decanter on the kitchen counter and reached for the matching glasses. Her fingers trembled slightly as she poured two fingers into each glass, careful not to spill. The familiar ritual steadied her, gave her hands something to do while Corbyn stood frozen by the window. She watched his shoulders rise and fall with each measured breath, knowing some ghosts couldn’t be exorcised with words.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” he said at last, turning back to her as she sat on the sofa, a glass in each hand. “Part of me thought I’d never set foot in this place again.”
He crossed to her, settling on the sofa, his knee brushing against hers. He took one of the glasses when she offered it to him, and that spark she always felt ran down her spine when their fingers brushed.
“It must feel strange, being back,” she replied.
“It does,” he told her, taking a long sip of whiskey before setting the glass on the coffee table. “I was happy here once. I wrote my first book at that desk by the window.” He paused, swallowing hard. “My ex-fiancée and I were supposed to build a life here.”
He had never mentioned an ex-fiancée before, and she realized that there was still so much she didn’t know about him. He’d lived a whole life before his accident, with successes and heartbreaks she’d never really considered. She glanced at the face-down photograph, wondering what color the blonde woman’s eyes had been, whether she’d helped choose the books that lined these shelves.
“Do you miss it? That life?” she asked finally, pushing aside that particular train of thought and taking a sip of her own whiskey.
“I used to think I did,” Corbyn said slowly. “Everything changed so quickly. I went from planning a wedding and a future to a hospital bed in the blink of an eye. And Claire, my ex, she wouldn’t even look at me most of the time because it was a reminder of everything she had lost.”
Sadie’s chest tightened as the weight of his words settled between them. She thought of Claire, this woman she’d never met, making promises she couldn’t keep when reality turned harder than expected. She had taken his pain, his tragedy, and twisted it until it became about her. Turning on the sofa so she was facing him, her hand found his, pulling it into her lap so she could intertwine their fingers.
Another piece of the Corbyn Pearce puzzle clicked into place. Before she could stop herself, Sadie said, “Claire is why you understood Nate so well, isn’t she?”
Every time they had discussed Nate, he had instantly seen through her ex’s manipulation in a way only someone with experience could. Initially, she had thought it was because he had spent so many years writing flawed and emotionally complex characters, but she had been wrong. His fingers tightened their grip on hers, confirming her theory.
“Everyone around me saw it before the accident, but I was too proud—and too in love—to listen,” he admitted, looking at their hands. “She loved the idea of the life I could give her—the money, the parties, the connections—more than she did me.”
Sadie looked down at their hands, the way her smaller one seemed to fit so perfectly in his. Neither of them could fix the hurts the other had suffered in the past, but she found herself wanting to prove to him that he was worthy of so much more than Claire had given him.
“I was so angry for a long time,” he continued, still not looking up at her. “I felt like I had truly lost everything.”
When he did look, his voice trailed off, the hand she wasn’t holding coming to rest on her cheek. She leaned into the touch, her eyes never leaving his. Turning her head, she placed a soft kiss on his palm, and she heard him take a shuddering breath.
“And now,” she prompted.
“Now, I’m starting to believe in second chances,” he replied, his thumb stroking her cheek. “I need to tell you something.”
She gave a small nod, and his hand fell away from her face, his arm coming to rest on the back of the sofa. Her stomach fluttered with nerves as his expression grew serious. The only sign of his nerves, of how vulnerable he felt, was the way his fingers tightened around hers.
“Earlier, at dinner, when you told that story about your brother not being able to pronounce Alessandra,” he began, and she noticed he was watching her expression carefully as he spoke. “I…it took me back…to New Year’s Eve, fifteen years ago.”
“Less ballroom, more doom,” she whispered, quoting the man she had met years before on the Tube. His eyes snapped up to hers, confirming her suspicions. “It was you. When I mentioned my high school trip before, you never said anything.”
Her breath caught when he looked at her with a combination of hope and fear. For a moment, he was the young man from her memories, the one she had been thinking about nearly daily since arriving in England.
