KIERAN’S POV
I knew I’d made a mistake the moment she refused the seafood.
It wasn’t what she said—it was how she said it.
Her tone wasn’t accusatory. It was calm, factual. Beneath it lay a quiet, restrained edge that cut straight through me.
I wanted to say something, anything, but nothing I could offer would change the truth embedded in her tone—that there were entire years of her life I knew nothing about. Moments I’d forfeited.
And this—this gesture, this echo of the dream she once wrote—was supposed to be my way of making things right.
Except, watching her now across the candlelit table, calmly instructing the waiter to cancel the special seafood platter I’d preordered, I realized just how far off the mark I was.
All I’d done was remind her of a version of us that had never existed.
Sera wasn’t the woman from the story.
And I wasn’t the man she imagined beside her.
Daniel chattered between us, filling the silence with his boyish enthusiasm.
