“One kiss,” Leah said. “Then we tell the truth.”

Marcus looked at her as if she had offered him a match in a room full of gas. “That is a terrible plan.”

“You always did prefer a terrible plan if it meant you got to be right.”

He laughed, and the sound pulled six years of longing straight through her chest. They stood in the doorway of the apartment where they had once argued about paint colours and kissed in the middle of making dinner. The new tenant had left the walls white. Leah thought that was somehow worse.

Marcus touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Are you sure?”

She should have said no. Instead, she caught his wrist and turned her face into his palm. His breath faltered. For one second, they were not the people who had ruined each other. They were the people who knew exactly where to put their hands.

The kiss began carefully, almost polite. Then Leah rose onto her toes, and Marcus made a quiet sound against her mouth that she felt more than heard. His hand settled at her waist. Her fingers curled into his shirt. The old ease was there, but so was the ache of everything that had come after.

She pulled away first.

“Your turn,” she whispered. “Tell me why you left.”

Marcus’s forehead rested against hers. “I didn’t leave you.”

“You disappeared.”

“Because your father came to me the night before our wedding and told me what you’d asked him to do.”

Leah stepped back. “What did I ask him?”

Marcus reached into his pocket and took out a ring she had not seen since the night she thought he had abandoned her.

“You asked him to make sure I never found out you were sick.”