I let Ava pull Nathan toward the dance floor before I turned back to Grant. He was still staring after her, the color gone from his face, the smirk long dead on his lips. “Is she mine?” he asked again, quieter now, almost pleading. Melissa stood frozen beside him, and for the first time in five years I saw genuine fear in the woman who had once whispered “I’m sorry” through my front door.

I could have made him wait. I could have let him spend the whole evening tormented by the arithmetic. But I had made peace with this story long before Grant ever walked into that reception hall, and I owed him nothing, least of all suspense. “Yes, Grant,” I said calmly. “She’s biologically yours. Four years and three months. Which means you did the math right, and you already know exactly when I got pregnant.” His mouth opened. “But before you say another word,” I continued, “you should understand something very clearly about what that word ‘yours’ actually means now.” And then I told him the truth he had signed away with his own mouth five years earlier.