When I finally forced the words out—asked if he’d ever pictured my life without him—the question landed heavier than I expected. His shoulders slumped, the certainty drained from his face, and for the first time since she arrived, he actually looked at me, not through me. It wasn’t anger that surfaced, but shame. He admitted he’d been chasing a second chance at happiness and hadn’t realized it looked, from my side, like he was erasing his first family to get it.

Liv’s guard dropped too. She confessed she’d assumed I didn’t want him, that my distance meant I’d already moved on. Hearing that hurt, but it also cracked something open between us. No shouting, no dramatic ultimatums—just three people finally saying the quiet parts out loud. The will can be rewritten; what mattered more was that, for the first time in a long time, so could we.