Caleb.
For a long moment after she walked away, none of us moved.
I stood there like someone had struck me across the face, my mind struggling to catch up with what had just happened. The sound of her heels clicking against the marble floor faded slowly into the distance, yet it echoed loudly inside my head.
Melissa.
The name kept repeating itself over and over again like a curse I couldn’t escape.
Five years.
For five years, I had believed she was gone.
Dead.
Burned to ashes in that fire.
And now she had just stood in front of us—alive, stronger, more beautiful than I remembered—and reduced us to nothing with a few sharp words.
I swallowed hard.
My chest felt tight, like something heavy had been dropped right in the middle of it.
“How…” I finally muttered under my breath, thou
