When Eden Anderson turned twenty-seven, Lucas Powell got married. No one knew that Eden had spent fifteen long years just waiting for the rain to stop.

On the day of the wedding, Rosalie Allen posted a livestream of the ceremony. For the first time, Eden watched the way Lucas looked at the girl he’d chosen for a lifetime, the way he traded vows and pledged his future to her.

Eden finally broke. Her tears tapped against the glass of her phone screen like hail. The man in the video wore a suit—the first time she had ever seen him in one.

In her mind, he was still twelve: pale, delicate, with wide, bright eyes that held the raw, unfiltered light of freedom. That boy had been good to her. He bought her ice cream, shushed her when she cried, carried her to class on rainy days, and swallowed every bit of her temper. He told her that the real Eden—the messy, unpolished version—was worth loving. He was the only exit sign she’d ever seen in her life of suffocating expectations.

That was the twelve-year-old Lucas Powell.

Then, the boy vanished without a word. Eden spent years chasing his ghost. When he appeared again, he was sixteen, a handsome teenager in a crisp school uniform, walking beside another girl. Eden told herself to keep her distance, but her heart had a mind of its own. He was still the gravity that pulled her under, the only person who could command her every mood with a single glance.

That was the sixteen-year-old Lucas Powell.

The ghost of that teenager overlapped with the man on the screen. The years they had spent apart had carved lines into his face. He looked like a stranger, yet Eden knew every contour. She had stared at his back for fifteen years. She knew him so well that he had bled into her own nervous system, burned into her marrow.

Time ticked forward on the screen. A slideshow played, scrolling through the seven years Lucas and Rosalie had spent together.

Seven years. Eden had been left behind in the year they first met.

A year after the wedding, Bryce Anderson decided to get his marriage license with his girlfriend of three years. Eden had met her—Bella Green. She was polished, ambitious, quiet, and gentle.

Because of a business trip, Bryce was in New York just before the wedding. He hadn’t seen Eden in months, so they agreed to hit a bar after he wrapped up his meetings.

Bryce sat slumped over his drink, his mood as heavy as a storm front, drowning his sorrows in amber liquid.

"I saw an old classmate yesterday," Bryce muttered. "A girl. I've never met anyone so bizarre in my life. She confessed to me—said she’s been in love with me for years. Years and years."

"And?" Eden asked.

Bryce didn't answer. "She said she loved me. But we’ve been apart for ten years, Eden. She never reached out. Not once. My phone number hasn't changed. My social media is all linked. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to message me, but she stayed silent for a decade, and now she tells me this?"

Bryce looked up, a dry, hollow laugh escaping him. "Have you ever met someone like that?"

Eden tipped her glass back, swallowing the burn. *Haven't I?* she thought. *Am I not exactly that person?*

"Why didn't you reach out to her?" Eden asked.

"I thought she hated me. I thought she wanted nothing to do with me. Besides, I assumed she was into someone else."

"Did you ever love her?" Eden interrupted.

Bryce shook his head. "I don't know. I’ve forgotten."

*Bullshit.* Dozens of girls had confessed to him over the years, and she had never seen him drink until he passed out.

"Do I know her? What’s her name?" Eden started to ask, but Bryce cut her off.

"Lily Garcia. Her name is Lily Garcia."

The name hit Eden like a freight train. She remembered the summer after graduation, the way Lily had looked when Eden asked if she had a crush on someone. She’d nodded, shy and terrified. But when Eden had mentioned Bryce back then, Lily hadn't even blinked. Eden hadn't thought twice about it.

If Eden had only pressed harder—if she had asked, *Who is it?*—would Lily have finally gotten the answer she wanted?

It was a cruel twist of fate. Eden had failed to be the bridge between them, just as no one had ever been the bridge between her and Lucas.

Cowards pray for destiny to intervene, but destiny never knocks. People call themselves believers in fate, yet they cling to the jagged shards of their obsessions long after the light has gone out.

If you know it’s over, why not be brave? That was the tragedy of the coward.

Eden reached over, took the glass from Bryce’s hand, and set it down. "Just love Bella, Bryce. Let it go. I'm letting go, too. Let's look forward."

Dominic Harris confessed to Eden again on New Year's Eve. Finally, she let her walls down. She let him be kind to her. She let him find the cracks in her armor and showed him the ugly, real version of herself.

"It's okay," Dominic said, holding her hand. "I’ll take all of you."

They started dating for real. On holidays, Dominic would drive her home, his car packed with gifts. He got along with her father, and his gentle nature acted like a solvent, melting away her mother’s sharp edges. The tension in the house dissolved. For the first time, Eden felt the warmth of a real home.

When she turned twenty-nine, they started planning the wedding.

"Eden," everyone said, "your life is so perfect. How did you do it?"

Perfect? No one would ever know that inside her perfect life, there was a permanent, jagged hole where Lucas Powell used to be.

It still ached. It had been aching for a very, very long time.

On the day she and Dominic went to sign their marriage papers at City Hall, the sun was blinding, the sky a hollow, cloudless blue. As they stepped out, a light sun-shower began to fall. The rain hit the pavement, silent and soft.

Eden had only ever heard the sound of rain once—the year she was twelve.

That rain had poured down, day after day, until it had soaked her entire youth to the bone.