You can try to start over, slowly. Or you can stay comfortably outside this family. But you will not stand halfway in the doorway and shoot arrows at us from the threshold.”

I didn’t wait for his rebuttal. I pressed end.

The rest of the day was an exercise in enforced peace. We took Lily to Forsyth Park and watched her chase pigeons under the vast canopy of oaks. Mia walked beside me, her new wedding band catching the fractured sunlight.

“You don’t regret it?” she asked suddenly, watching Lily sprint ahead. “All of this. The viral attention. The war with your parents.”

I stopped and pulled her into my chest. “Mia, my life didn’t get ruined when I met you. It finally got honest.”

That night, as Lily slept sideways across our hotel bed, I opened my phone. The video had surged past 13.4 million views. My inbox was a graveyard of media requests.