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“No,” Luna says quietly. “He really isn’t.”

“So tonight…” I breathe deeply. “I told him everything.” Their eyes widen, and I let myself smile, so they know everything is ok. “We’re okay. More than okay, I think—we’ve both finally put something down we’ve been carrying for far too long.” I swallow down a sob. “I’m just sorry I lied to you all.”

“You didn’t lie,” Bri says gently. “You were grieving. They’re different things.”

“You were surviving, the only way you knew how,” Luna agrees softly. “You weren’t trying to manipulate us.”

“I understand, the grief,” Enzo says quietly. “When my wife died, I could not accept either, not for long time.”

Ember reaches across the table and takes my hand. "I'm just sad you felt you had to carry all of that alone."

The last thing holding me together finally gives way. “I was,” I whisper. “But then I met all of you.” I laugh wetly. “And you lot, you bullied me back into living.” That finally earns a smile. “You’ve made me laugh. You’ve made me remember who I was before everything happened.” I look at each of them. “You’ve made me want a future again. And I can't build one while pretending the past didn't happened.”

Nobody says anything. They just quietly stand, one after another, until I’m wrapped in the kind of hug that says ‘we see you, the good and the bad, and we love you no matter what.’

I don’t know who starts crying first. I suspect it’s all of us.

Chapter 38

Luna

Lennie will be back soon, and he won’t be himself when he walks through the door. He might be quiet. He might need to sit somewhere alone for a while. And I don’t want him to have to carry one more thing tonight—especially not the weight of having to explain why. If I tell them now, he can just be however he needs to be when he gets back. No performing. No reassuring anyone he’s fine. Just him, allowed to feel whatever he feels, exactly as it comes.

I swirl the last of my wine around the glass. “I suppose,” I say quietly, “it’s my turn to confess.” Lennie’s name hangs between us. “I wasn’t honest either.”

I tell them about the cancer. About how Lennie stood by me through every appointment, every bad scan, every version of me that wasn’t really me at all. How much he gave up to do it, and how many times he pulled me out of my own head when I didn’t have the strength to climb out myself.

“So when James came to me…” I huff a bitter laugh. “I thought I’d finally found a way to repay him. I genuinely believed I was helping.” My shoulders sag. “But then it all disappeared—he disappeared, with our savings—and I thought I’d ruined us.”

“You didn’t,” Bri says softly.

“I thought I’d sunk us financially.” I wipe away a tear. “But really, I sank us emotionally. It’s the betrayal. The secret. I should’ve trusted my husband. I should have told him immediately.”

“You should have,” Saint says gently. “But you didn’t betray your marriage because you stopped loving Lennie. You made a terrible decision because you loved him so much you wanted to give him the world. Your heart wasn’t in the wrong place. Just your trust.”

Tears fall silently down my cheeks, and Bri’s hand finds mine, her fingers tightening, like she’s holding me together by the seams. “You’re a victim too. I know that’s hard to hear, hard to accept. But you were manipulated,” she says softly. “He knew exactly what he was doing. He was supposed to be your friend, Lennie’s friend. He took advantage of you when you were vulnerable.”

The word reverberates in my head—victim—I’ve never once thought of myself as one. But turning it over now, I can’t find the part of it that doesn’t fit. I nod slowly, feeling the knot I’ve been holding untangle slightly. “I kept thinking if I could earn the money back before he found out…”

“You could undo it?” Ember finishes.

I laugh weakly. “Yeah. Something like that. How do you tell your husband his wife and best friend sunk his dreams, his business, his life?”

“You’re his life, Luna,” Bri says quietly. “It’s a horrible thing to have to tell him, but you trust him with the truth. It’s up to him what he does with it.”

I smile sadly. “I have, now.”

“And?”

A tear rolls down my cheek. “He still loves me.”

“Of course he does,” Saint says. “Love doesn’t survive because nothing bad ever happens. It survives because two people choose each other even after the bad things happen.”

Enzo smiles warmly into his wine. “My wife,” he says softly, “she used to tell me love is not about finding the perfect person. It is finding someone worth fighting beside.”

“Your wife was right,” I reply. Because isn’t that what we all want? What I have with Lennie. Someone who stands beside you no matter the odds.

Chapter 39