“No expensive imported roses?”

“I’m learning,” Damian said, grinning.

“An absolute miracle,” she said, and they both laughed softly.

He reached across the small table and gently took her hand.

“When I was eighteen,” he said, and his voice dropped into something quieter and more honest than she had heard from him in twenty-six years, “I thought leaving this town was the bravest thing a man could do.

And for the whole rest of my life, I told myself that never looking back was simply the price of success — that a serious man kept his eyes forward, that home was a thing you outgrew.