Med school. Volunteer clinic work. Family from Pasadena. Mother a pediatrician. Father in hospital administration. Sister in law school. Pictures of him at fundraisers, beach cleanups, a medical mission trip, some white-coat ceremony where hesmiled like the kind of man old ladies trusted with their blood pressure.
He had dark hair, clean hands, expensive teeth, and the kind of future that opened doors before he reached them.
A doctor.
Destiny was going to be a nurse.
They made sense.
I hated that most of all.
They made so much sense I could see the whole thing without wanting to.
Destiny and Daniel studying together in coffee shops.
Daniel bringing her soup when she was sick.
Daniel meeting Regan and surviving because he wore a clean shirt and had no blood on his hands.
Daniel shaking Edge’s hand and not understanding he was being weighed for disposal.
Daniel proposing somewhere pretty, probably with a photographer hidden in the bushes because men like that knew how to make moments look good.
Destiny in white.
Destiny with babies maybe, if she wanted them.
Destiny laughing in a kitchen full of sunlight, wearing her mother’s diamond earrings and turquoise ring while a good man came up behind her and kissed her shoulder.
I mapped her whole life out like a movie I was watching from the wrong side of the screen.
And in that movie, I was not the guy.
That was the part I had to accept.
I was not the hero. Not the husband. Not the man in the framed photos. I was the chapter before she got well. The scar. The dangerous first almost-love girls outgrew when they found men who could offer tax returns, clean histories, and family brunches without armed security.
So I doubled down.
On Georgia.
On school.
On work.
On being noble.
I told myself I was giving Destiny the thing no one had ever given her.
Freedom.
I told myself I was letting the bird fly.
I told myself I was self-sacrificing, honorable, disciplined, a man who loved with open hands.
I told myself a lot of pretty things.
Then I bought Georgia a ring.
