Louis’s kitchen still smelled like toast and kid’s shampoo, the kind of soft chaos that came with a nine year-old barreling through the house. Freddie’s laughter ricocheted down the hall as he chased a toy car, her long hair twisted into a loose braid over one shoulder as she leaned against the counter, watching him with a fond, tired smile.

“You’re still stupidly good with kids,” Louis said, handing her a mug. “It’s unfair.”

She laughed. “Says the man who made me a godmother.”

“Fair point.” He took a breath, then, quieter, “You hear about Harry?”

She didn’t flinch. “The engagement?” Her eyes lifted, steady. “Yeah. I heard.”

Louis studied her like he was trying to read weather in the clouds. “And?”

“And I’m happy if he is,” she said, and meant it. Mostly. “Truly.”

The truth lived in the pauses.

They sat at the table while Freddie colored, Louis’s knee bouncing. “He hasn’t been around,” Louis said. “Not like before. You know how it is. Career’s massive, but… he’s drifted.”

She nodded. She knew drift. She’d learned it at sixteen, standing in a fluorescent hallway with a boy from two towns over who sang like a prayer and smiled like he didn’t yet know what was coming. Fate had been rude like that—lining them up at the same audition desk, braiding their lives together before either of them had the language for it.

She remembered the hush of 2013, loving him in borrowed apartments and back seats, contracts folded like origami between them. The way he’d watch her sing, breath held, as if she was something holy. The night in late 2015 when they finally said it out loud to the world, finally having a piece of freedom from an excruciating management. And the quiet after—the hiatus, the solo years, the breaking that came in 2018 not with a bang but with exhaustion.

“He was always… intense,” Louis said, half-smiling. “Loved like it was oxygen.”

“He still does,” she said softly. “He just learned how to hide it.”

Freddie looked up. “Uncle Harry’s coming to my birthday, right?”

Louis’s smile wobbled. Hers didn’t. “He wouldn’t miss it,” she said. And she believed that too.

——

By the time Freddie’s birthday rolled around, summer had softened London into something forgiving.

The garden was strung with fairy lights and badly tied balloons, Louis pacing like it was a stadium show instead of a nine-year-old’s party. She arrived early, as always, arms full of gifts, long hair loose down her back, sunglasses hiding eyes that had seen too much and still chose kindness anyway.

And then—like the universe enjoyed its timing far too much—the gate creaked open.

Harry looked different. Still unmistakably Harry, still that quiet gravity that pulled rooms toward him, but leaner somehow, like he’d shed more than just time. He wore something soft and neutral, his curls she’d been so used to no longer there. When Freddie spotted him, he screamed.

“Uncle Harry!”

Harry dropped to his knees just in time to be tackled, laughing into the grass as Freddie wrapped himself around his neck. “Missed you, mate,” Harry said, voice thick, and she felt it in her ribs.

The party unfolded in bursts of noise and sugar. Harry stayed close to Freddie, building Lego towers, accepting a paper crown with mock solemnity. He didn’t announce himself. He never did anymore. But people noticed—how he lingered on the edges, how his laughter came late, how his eyes kept finding one person without quite landing.

Eventually, the kids scattered inside for cake, and the garden went quiet in that way that only happens after joy.

She stood by the fence, watching the sky turn pink. She didn’t hear him approach—only felt it, the familiar shift in air.

“Hey,” Harry said.

“Hey,” she answered, turning.

Up close, time collapsed. Sixteen bled into twenty-five, into thirty-two. The boy who’d fallen in love with her in a hallway. The man who’d let her go because love had stopped being enough to save them.

“You look… good,” he said, careful.

“So do you,” she replied. “Freddie missed you.”

“I missed him.” A beat. “I missed a lot.”