“Ask difficult questions. Find out what life looks like when everything isn’t new. But do it because you choose to.”

Alice nodded.

“I can do that.”

Then I turned toward Patrick.

Now it was my turn.

“You were allowed to have a past.”

His face tightened.

“Jess…”

“You were allowed to love Lana. You were allowed to be 22 and scared. Even to make a terrible decision.”

Patrick looked down.

“What hurts is that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me any of it.”

“I was ashamed.”

He looked up.

“But being ashamed isn’t the same as giving me the truth.”

Patrick swallowed.

“I thought you’d see me differently.”

“I do.”

That landed.

I didn’t take it back.

“Not because you loved somebody before me. Not even because you failed her.”

“Then because of what?”

“Because you decided which version of yourself I was allowed to know.”

The room fell silent.

“I married the man you became, Patrick. I never asked you to arrive without a past.”

His eyes were wet now.

“I should’ve told you.”

“Yes.”

“Can we fix this?”

I thought about it.

“I think we can. But I don’t know what that looks like yet.”

“Then we’ll figure it out.”

“Not by pretending this conversation solved anything.”

“Okay.”

“And when something is uncomfortable, trust me enough to hear it anyway.”

“I can do that.”

A few weeks later, Alice and Aaron came over for lunch.

They were still engaged, but they weren’t rushing to set a wedding date.

Their choice.

Patrick and I were still talking too—not endlessly and not every night, but honestly.

Halfway through lunch, Aaron took off his jacket.

Lana’s portrait appeared on his arm again.

Patrick looked at it.

This time, he didn’t go pale.

“She hated tattoos,” he said.

Aaron smiled.

“Especially this one. I got it while she was still alive.”

Patrick gave a surprised laugh.

“Because it was a portrait?”

“Because she said it made her look older than the photograph.”

Patrick laughed properly then.

“So that definitely sounds like her.”

Alice caught my eye.

I smiled.

Nobody hurried to change the subject.

Nobody needed to.

And sitting there, I finally understood what had bothered me most about Patrick’s secret.

The past wasn’t a threat to a marriage.

A hidden past could be.

I didn’t need the man I loved to have lived a perfect life before me.

I needed him to trust that I could love the whole truth.

And this time, when the truth sat down at our table, nobody asked it to leave.