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Lily stiffened, pressing her spine rigidly against the upholstered back of her chair. The name still carried a bitter sting. "Do not use your medical diagnosis as an excuse for cheating on me."

"I am not," he pleaded, reaching across the white linen, his fingers trembling just short of touching her hand. "But you need to understand the headspace I was in. I was drowning. I confessed the infertility issues to Gemma one night after work. She listened. She was 'helping' me cope. We had far too much to drink, and we crossed a line."

Lily swallowed the lump forming in her throat. The private suite felt infinitely smaller. "Was that before the day I walked into your office?"

Ethan looked down at his silver signet ring, the shame radiating from every line of his posture. "Yes."

"How many times, Ethan?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if the truth physically pained him. "Four times in total."

Lily waited for the agonizing strike of betrayal to rip through her chest. She braced herself for the tears, the fury, the crippling heartbreak that had consumed her a year ago when she thought her world was ending on the floor of that London office.

It never came.

She absorbed the number—four times—and realized with profound, crystalline clarity that the detail did not hurt her anymore. Hearing the truth of how and why everything fell apart did not reopen the wound; it finally stitched it shut. An immense, suffocating burden lifted off her shoulders, one she hadn't even realized she had been carrying for the past twelve months. It wasn't lingering feelings that had made his arrival in Chicago so incredibly destabilizing; it was the agonizing lack of answers. It was the unresolved ghost of their past, the jagged edge of a story abruptly severed without an explanation. She had not realized that living without the truth was what made the memory so unbearable. Now, armed with the answers, that haunting sense of unfinished business evaporated entirely.

"You could have told me," Lily said, her voice remarkably even and clear. "We could have faced it together. We could have pursued IVF treatments, or we could have adopted. There were a hundred different paths we could have taken. You chose to betray us instead."

"I know that now," Ethan said, a single tear escaping his lash line and tracking down his cheek. The remorse in his voice was undeniable, stripping away the ruthless corporate shark to reveal the broken man underneath. "Through talking to a therapist, I finally realized the affair was pure self-sabotage. I was so convinced you would leave me for being half a man, for being unable to do the bare minimum and give my wife the children she wanted. I blew it up before you could walk away."

"I never would have left you for that," Lily told him, maintaining firm, compassionate eye contact. "Yes, I wanted children. But we did not need them to be happy. I loved you enough to stay by your side through anything. I loved you for you, Ethan. Not for what you could give me."

Ethan’s breath hitched. He looked up, his blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears, searching her face for any trace of a lie. "You really would not have left me?"

"Of course not."

A broken sob tore from Ethan’s throat, a visceral sound of pure defeat. He buried his face in his hands, weeping openly in the dim restaurant. His broad shoulders shook as the formidable, arrogant executive crumbled into a devastated, grieving man mourning a beautiful future he had destroyed with his own hands.

"When you left London, I felt like I was dying," Ethan choked out, his voice muffled by his palms before he dragged them down his wet face, revealing bloodshot eyes. "I was hollow. I wanted to come after you the second your plane took off, but I couldn't. I couldn't look you in the eye because I wasn't ready to have this conversation. I wasn't ready to admit how entirely defective I felt."

Moved by a tragic sense of closure, Lily stood from her chair and walked around the table. She wrapped her arms around his shaking shoulders, offering him a genuine, forgiving embrace.

"I understand, Ethan," she murmured, her voice laced with empathy. "And I am so sorry you carried that shame for so long, but you shouldn't have. You are not broken."

He leaned into her touch, wrapping his arms around her waist as he cried into the fabric of her black dress, mourning the children they would never have and the life he had burned to the ground.

"You are going to make someone incredibly happy one day," Lily continued gently, resting her chin near his crown. "And when you meet her, you need to be honest. Because if she is the right person, she will not care about a medical test. She will just want you."

They held onto each other for a long time, sharing an emotional, sincere farewell to the ghosts that had haunted them both. The resentment and the anger dissolved into the candlelit room, leaving only peace in its wake.

Finally, Ethan pulled back, wiping his wet cheeks with his linen napkin. He took a deep, shuddering breath, looking at her with a heartbreaking clarity.

"Come on," Ethan murmured, his voice thick with emotion, finally accepting the end of their story. "I will take you home.”

Chapter Fifteen

Jason

Jason dragged the coarse bristle brush along the pine floorboards of the backyard deck, working the clear polyurethane deep into the wood grain. His shoulder muscles burned, screaming in protest after hours of relentless exertion, but he welcomed the physical ache. He had been in Galena for an entire week, fixing loose cabinet hinges, replacing worn roof shingles, and throwing himself into grueling manual labor just to keep his brain from spiraling.

Footsteps thudded against the wooden stairs.

"You are going to wear a hole straight through that timber, Jase," Arthur stated.

Jason stopped, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm. His father stood at the edge of the deck, holding two sweating glass bottles of beer. Arthur offered a knowing, sympathetic smile, gesturing toward the stone firepit sitting unlit in the center of the grassy yard.

Jason set his brush aside, accepting the icy drink, and followed his father to the circle of Adirondack chairs.