Chapter 8: Twenty Years Later
After graduation, life pulled us in different directions.
Charlotte moved to the city with her widowed mother and brother to chase modeling. I left for college overseas, rebuilt my body, rebuilt my confidence, and eventually built a tech company that made me wealthier than the broken seventeen-year-old version of me could ever have imagined.
From the outside, my life looked successful.
Inside, something never quite settled.
I dated.
Some relationships lasted months.
One lasted almost two years.
But none of them stayed.
Uncle Ray once looked at me over coffee and said, “Son, I think you’re still measuring every woman against one girl in a blue dress.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Then, twenty years later, she appeared at my door in the rain, carrying my dinner and wearing the kind of exhaustion money cannot hide. Continue Reading ⬇️
