LOGINSERENAThe number 247 haunted me every single day, and every single night. I saw it everywhere. I saw it on license plates, on street signs, and even on the receipts that printed out at the bakery. My brain was looking for patterns, connections, meaning where there might be none. Aiden watched me spiral with that quiet patience of his, the one that said he would let me figure it out on my own but he would be there when I needed him.It was Lily who finally broke the obsession."You're doing it again," she said, finding me in the back office of the bakery with the key in one hand and a notebook full of scribbled theories in the other."Doing what?""That thing where you disappear into your head and forget the rest of the world exists. You've been at this for hours. Arya needs help with the lunch rush."I looked at the clock. It was 1pm. I had come in at 6am. Somewhere in between, I had lost seven hours. And all I’d really done was just sit there, stare at the wall blankly and try to fi
SERENAComing home felt different this time.Not because the house had changed, or because Miami had changed, or because anything about my life was different than it had been when I left. I was the one who had changed. The boxes in the living room, the photographs and letters and pieces of a life I had never known, had shifted something inside me. I felt heavier and lighter at the same time. More burdened and more free.Hope ran to me at the airport, her small arms wrapping around my legs, her face pressed into my thighs. She had grown while I was gone. Of course she had. Children grew whether you were watching or not. I had missed it, those few days away, the subtle changes that happened in the spaces between moments."Mama," she said. "Mama home.""I'm home, baby. Mama's home."Carmen smiled from behind her. "She's been asking for you every hour. I told her you'd be back soon. She didn't believe me until now."I picked Hope up, held her close, breathed her in. She smelled like sunsh
SERENAThe boxes stayed in the living room for three weeks.Every night after Hope was asleep, I sat on the floor and went through another one. Photographs, letters, documents, mementos. The story of my mother's life unfolded slowly, piece by piece, the way a flower opens when you stop trying to force it. Aiden sat with me most nights, not talking, just being there. Hope played among the boxes during the day, treating them like furniture, like they had always been there.I learned things I never knew I wanted to know. My mother had been a good student, top of her class, until the accident. After her parents died, her grades slipped. She stopped showing up. She stopped caring. The foster homes were hard, some of them worse than others. She and Margaret were separated early, placed with different families in different cities. They wrote letters at first, then stopped. My mother told me once that she had no family, that she was alone in the world. I believed her. Now I knew she had been
SERENAThe boxes filled the living room.We had brought them all home from the storage unit, loaded them into the car and then into the house, until there was barely room to walk. Hope thought it was a game, climbing over the stacks with her stuffed elephant in her arms, laughing at the crinkle of old paper and the smell of dust and time.Aiden made coffee. I sat on the floor in the middle of it all, the letter from my mother still clutched in my hands, and tried to figure out where to start."There's so much," I said. "I don't even know what I'm looking for.""Maybe you don't look for anything. Maybe you just let it come to you."I set the letter aside. Picked up a photograph from the top of the nearest box. It was my mother, younger than I had ever seen her, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She was standing in front of a house I didn't recognize, wearing a dress that looked like it belonged to another era. She was smiling. Really smiling, the kind of smile I had never seen on her face. T
SERENAThe key sat on my nightstand for three days before I could bring myself to touch it again.Every morning I woke up and looked at it, this small piece of brass that had once belonged to a woman I barely knew, that had been saved for me across decades, that was supposed to lead me somewhere I needed to go. Every morning I told myself that today would be the day I started looking. And every morning I found an excuse to put it off.Aiden didn't push. He watched me with those patient eyes, the ones that had seen me through panic attacks and nightmares and the slow, painful work of putting myself back together. He knew I would get there eventually. He just had to wait.It was Lily who finally broke the stalemate.She showed up at the house on Saturday morning with a bag of bagels and a look on her face that meant business. "We're going to figure out this key thing today. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care what we have to do. We're doing it."I was still in my pajamas, Hope
SERENAMargaret Delaney died four days after we arrived in New York.I was sitting beside her bed when it happened, holding her hand, watching the rise and fall of her chest slow to a stop. The machines beeped their warnings, then fell silent. A nurse came in, checked for a pulse, pulled the sheet over her face. The room felt emptier than it had before, the way rooms always did when someone left them for the last time.I didn't cry. I had cried plenty over the past few days, in the hospital room and on the street and in the hotel bed with Aiden's arms around me. Now I was just tired. Hollow. The way you get after a long illness, when the end is more relief than grief.Aiden was in the waiting room with Hope. He came in when he saw the nurse leave, took one look at my face, and pulled me into his arms. Hope was in a carrier on his back, babbling happily, unaware that anything had changed."She's gone," I said."I know.""I was holding her hand. She just... stopped."He held me tighter.
SERENAI didn't even wait for the doorman to finish talking when I flashed my ID in his face and told him I worked for Knight Enterprises. He looked at the card then back up at me, then back at the card like he was trying to decide if I was lying. He looked like he was conflicted on whether to beli
SERENAI leaned against the doorway and watched Serena pace across the balcony while she talked on the phone with her mother. The late morning light made it easy to see her clearly from where I stood, and I couldn't stop staring at her even if I tried. She kept tucking her hair behind her ear every
ADRIANThe second the door shut behind us and we were hidden in that empty office, I pulled her into me again and our mouths met like we'd been holding this in for too long. Her hands were in my hair, my hands were on her waist, and every kiss felt hotter than the last one. I couldn't think straigh
SERENAI spent the whole weekend hiding in my room, and I didn't even bother pretending that I was functioning. I kept the curtains closed, and the room stayed dim all day, and I barely left the bed except to go to the bathroom. Lola knocked on my door a few times on Saturday morning, telling me th







