“Not by pretending this conversation solved anything.”
“Okay.”
“And when something is uncomfortable, trust me enough to hear it anyway.”
“I can do that.”
A few weeks later, Alice and Aaron came over for lunch.
They were still engaged, but they weren’t rushing to set a wedding date.
Their choice.
Patrick and I were still talking too—not endlessly and not every night, but honestly.
Halfway through lunch, Aaron took off his jacket.
Lana’s portrait appeared on his arm again.
Patrick looked at it.
This time, he didn’t go pale.
“She hated tattoos,” he said.
Aaron smiled.
“Especially this one. I got it while she was still alive.”
Patrick gave a surprised laugh.
“Because it was a portrait?”
“Because she said it made her look older than the photograph.”
Patrick laughed properly then.
“So that definitely sounds like her.”
Alice caught my eye.
I smiled.
Nobody hurried to change the subject.
Nobody needed to.
And sitting there, I finally understood what had bothered me most about Patrick’s secret.
The past wasn’t a threat to a marriage.
A hidden past could be.
I didn’t need the man I loved to have lived a perfect life before me.
I needed him to trust that I could love the whole truth.
And this time, when the truth sat down at our table, nobody asked it to leave.
