“How did you two…” I waved my hands in the air, unable to even say the words.
Ariana exhaled, slow and steady, like she was bracing herself before diving into cold water.
“We met at a nonprofit fundraiser,” she said finally. “One of the youth outreach programs I was running. He came as a representative for the financial organization he worked for at the time. He gave a speech, shook hands, made everyone laugh. You know how he is.”
Her voice tilted fondly, but there was something else underneath that seemingly affectionate sentence.
“I remember thinking he was… steady,” she continued. “Everything in my life back then felt like it was one loose thread away from unraveling. Georgie was in middle school, he was struggling with some stuff from the trial, and I had him in therapy, but it was still a rough patch, and I was working two jobs and going to school full time. I barely slept.”
She laughed quietly to herself.
“And then Nathan walked in,” she said. “He was so… confident. So sure. He listened to me in a way no one had for years.” Her eyes darted to me quickly before they were on her shoes again. “He told me I was extraordinary, that I’d done what most people couldn’t do.”
I could hear it in her voice, how much she’d needed that then.
And it killed me.
Because he gave her what I couldn’t.
I took away her safety and her comfort, her trust.
He brought it all back in.
My ribs tightened like a fist around my lungs.
“He asked me to dinner that night,” she said, smiling a little at the memory. “And we ended up in this awful little diner at midnight, eating greasy eggs and talking about books and kids and life. It was easy. Easier than anything had been in a long time. He… took care of me.” She swallowed, shrugging. “And I let him.”
The wind pushed her hair across her cheek, and she tucked it back again with trembling fingers.
“For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I was drowning,” she said. “He came over, had my apartment cleaned, cooked dinner, helped Georgie with his science fair project. He was older, settled, established. Georgie relaxed around him, finally acting like the kid he was. I relaxed, too. He made everything feel… safe.”
Safe.
That word split me open. Because that was what I’d stolen from her. The very thing she’d craved since childhood, the thing I’d sworn to give her and then robbed her of by leaving.
“You deserve all of that,” I said quietly.
She looked up at me with her brows pulled tight, like she wasn’t expecting kindness from me right then. Her eyes softened for a breath, then shuttered.
“He was good to me,” she said. “Really good. For a long time.” A pause. “Long enough for me to believe it was everything I’d ever wanted.”
And there it was, the reason my stomach never quite settled around Nathan, the reason I couldn’t stop picking at why Ariana was with him.
It was small, almost enough not to notice, but I caught it — a hint of truth slipping between the seams.
A hint she didn’t mean to share.
“And he still is?” I asked carefully. “Good to you?”
Ariana blinked at me. I swore I saw fear in her eyes before she smoothed it away with a practiced ease that made my stomach drop.
“Yes,” she said brightly. “Of course. He still is.”
But she didn’t look at me when she said it.
Lightning flashed in the distance, silent at first before a distant roll of thunder found us. Tourists and locals alike reacted with hurried movement, gathering their belongings, everyone ready to head inside a restaurant or shop or back to their cars.
But I was frozen, my breath stalled in my chest.
