Twenty years after prom night, the girl who once changed my life appeared at my door in the rain.

She did not recognize me. I recognized her immediately. Before the next night ended, I did something she never saw coming.

The rain was falling so hard it sounded like the sky had dropped onto my roof. When the doorbell rang, I expected takeout and a quick thank-you. Instead, I opened the door and found the girl I had carried in my heart for two decades standing on my porch in a faded delivery jacket.

Same dimples. Same wide brown eyes. Same gentle mouth I had once watched smiling beneath the prom lights when I was seventeen and too broken to believe in miracles.

Charlotte held out the food with both hands, her fingers trembling from the cold, a damp baseball cap shadowing her face.

“Your order, sir.”

Sir.

Not Tyler.

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