Chapter 88

The wedding still lingered in my mind like a dream I wasn’t ready to wake from. The laughter, the music, the way Benjamin looked at me as though I was the only person in the world—it was all still fresh, still glowing inside me. And yet, here we were, thousands of miles away, in Mexico, where the sun stretched wide across the ocean and the air smelled like salt and coconuts.

The resort was beautiful, but it was the beach that drew us in every morning. Daisy was the first one to run ahead, her little feet sinking into the soft sand as she clutched her plastic bucket. She didn’t even wait for us, she was already kneeling by the water’s edge, digging and laughing to herself, determined to build the tallest castle in Mexico.

Benjamin and I walked slowly behind her. His hand was warm and steady in mine, his thumb brushing over my knuckles every so often as though to remind me he was there. After everything we had been through, it still surprised me sometimes how far we have c