The memory still gnawed at her, sharp as broken glass. Veronica Moretti had replayed it a hundred times in her mind—the press of her hands, the weight of her body pinning them down, the sudden silence that followed. A slip, a surrender to loneliness she had buried for too long. Her friend had pulled away, their face unreadable, but in their eyes she had caught something. Not fury, not disgust—something else. Longing? Curiosity? Or was that just her desperate hope rewriting the moment?

For two weeks she’d lived in torment. They hadn’t called. She hadn’t dared. Her chest felt hollow, her heart pacing between guilt and dread. This was the one person who had never left her, the one anchor in her carefully controlled life. And she might have broken it all with a single reckless lapse.

Now she sat at a corner table in a quiet café, palms wrapped tight around her cup though the coffee had gone cold. She rehearsed apologies in her head, each sounding weaker than the last. What if they never trusted her again? What if she’d ruined the only relationship that mattered? Her breath caught when the bell over the door chimed, and she looked up. Her friend stepped inside.