Fall crept toward them. The new school year loomed like judgment.

Ainsley finally sat across from Jeremy at the kitchen island and said the words neither of them had dared: "We're not happy. We haven't been."

He sighed. "I know."

There were no slammed doors, no dramatic ultimatums. Just the slow, sad acknowledgment of something long dead.

Calvin's conversation with Sadie wasn't quite as quiet. But it ended the same way: with resignation, with tears, with honesty.

And then, for the first time in six years, he and Ainsley walked into the library together, not as secrets, but as something new.