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.

Not even a flicker of recognition.

Back in high school, I had been the overweight grieving kid people only noticed when they wanted to laugh. Now I was thirty-seven, leaner, steadier, and shaped by years of building a life from nothing. Charlotte had no reason to connect me to the boy I used to be.

But it still hurt.