You can do this, Sebastian. It isn't a bloody proposal. She's only your sister-in-law.

The words scraped out of him like a curse, muttered low as if repetition might dull the sharp edge of truth. He knew better. Nothing about this was "only." Not for him. Never for him.

The street carried on obliviously, humming with the kind of soft chaos ordinary lives thrived on—dogs yanking their leashes, children shrieking with the wobble of bicycle wheels, neighbors exchanging pleasantries that meant nothing. And there he stood, perfectly pressed coat immaculate against the summer haze, a figure rooted to the pavement far too long to look innocent. He could feel the glances prickling at his back, curious, assessing. Let them look. He'd stare too if he weren't himself.

But he was himself. Sebastian Cabot. Not some dawdling nobody, not some tongue-tied fool strangled by adolescent longing. No, he was Sebastian bloody Cabot—rising star, darling of critics, a man who knew how to command a stage and, if needed, a room full of aristocrats with nothing but a smirk. He was used to applause, to adoration, to the peculiar intoxication of being wanted.

And yet... here, bouquet gripped too tightly in his fist, he felt none of it. The famed charm, the cultivated confidence—it had all abandoned him at the doorstep. His heart thudded like it had in the old days, too raw, too young, too desperate.

The door opened.

It was the faintest sound, but it split through him like a fault line in stone. His shoulders jerked straight, jaw set, the bouquet crushed tighter in his grip.

And then—her.

Bathed in the soft gold of morning, framed by her doorway as though the world itself conspired to spotlight her, she was the very same and impossibly different all at once. Her hair spilled loose, catching the light like spun silk; her face—familiar, devastatingly unchanged—brought the years crashing down upon him.

Five years gone in a heartbeat. Five years since he'd last seen her radiant and untouchable, veiled in white as she walked toward his brother. Five years of success, of applause, of carefully built walls—and none of it mattered now.

Because here she stood, and he was undone. He was not Sebastian Cabot, the rising actor, the darling, the man the world adored. He was once again the boy in the garden, pulse hammering, heart too full, hopelessly begging for her eyes to find his. Always her attention. Always her.

His throat tightened, but he thrust the bouquet forward with an awkward sharpness, words spilling out too brusque, too defensive.

"I—brought you these. Don't get carried away. Some old woman shoved them at me as I was passing. A charity case, that's all."

The lie rang pitiful, even to his ears. Because beneath the brittle delivery, beneath the gruffness and the theatrics, his hand trembled. And his eyes—traitorous, unguarded—betrayed the truth he had carried for years: he had never stopped wanting her.