“I never stopped loving her in a way that could turn into something else.”

Blair nodded.

She also admitted that she had accepted the future marriage because uniting the Whitmores and the Ashfords looked perfect on paper.

“We were going to marry last names, not people.”

She left without a scene.

In time she started her own investment firm, far from her father’s decisions, and we kept a cordial relationship.

Lauren, on the other hand, did not come back to me.

Not at first.