“I’m not your teacher,” I said. “Right now, I’m just the guy who’s supposed to make sure you don’t have to go back to fourth grade. And that means honesty from both of us. And trust.” I stood from the bench and held out my hand again. “You can trust me, Theo. But only make a deal with me right now if I can trust you the same way.”

It never occurred to me, as a teacher and then later as an administrator, to talk to kids like they didn’t have the same struggles as adults. They understood stress and fear and anxiety, albeit on a different scale, with different language behind it.

That scale changed as you grew up. Your responsibilities took on a different face, and you knew how to label those struggles. But to them—at their age—the responsibilities still felt like the whole world was pressing down on their shoulders. It didn’t help if the adults in their life pretended otherwise.

So I knew I’d won something big when Theo Rossman stuck his skinny arm out toward me.

He gave me a firm handshake, his cheeks turning pink when I returned it.

“You sound like Iris,” he said quietly.

My heart skipped unsteadily in my chest at his use of that name.

“Who’s Iris?” I asked calmly. So very, very calmly. I’d only met one person in Green Valley with that name. And as far as I knew, she’d never come back. Not that anyone had told me, at least.

“My sister. I live with her.” He tucked his hand back in his pocket, his face softening as he answered. His love for her, even if it wasn’t my Iris, was immediately clear.

Behind my ribs, I felt a hot squeeze of pressure while my mind absolutely fucking raced.

“I knew an Iris once.” I watched his face as I said it. “She’d probably be about thirty-two now.”

His eyes narrowed, mental calculations evident in his face. “I think that’s how old my sister is.”

My breathing was choppy, my lungs struggling to pull in enough oxygen. “The Iris I knew … her last name wasn’t Rossman.”

He kicked at a stick, so blissfully unaware that all my insides were jolting with unchecked pulses of electricity at the mere thought of it being her.

“Yeah, she’s my half-sister. She had a different dad, so she has a different last name.”

“What’s your sister’s last name?” I asked, fighting the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake the truth from his mouth.

At the sound of a car, Theo’s attention was pulled to the parking lot. In an instant, he transformed. Wide smile and happy, bright eyes as he waved at the driver of a beat-up-looking SUV. “That’s her. Iris Black.”

I swiped a hand over my face and tried to check my breathing.

Check my pulse.

My ability to stay fucking conscious.

This was it. All the sleepless nights I’d wondered if I’d ever see her again. Wondered how I’d ever walked away from her, why I believed her when she said she didn’t have room for us in her life. If respecting her choice would damn me to a life that would always feel a little empty. Where every day held a slight edge of grief, something that might have worn down over the years but could still damage me if I caught it in the right way.

The last time I saw Iris Black, she wept as she told me to leave. That she couldn’t—wouldn’t—make room in her life for some great big destined romance. That she couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that it was true.

The last time I saw her, I told her I’d love her for the rest of my life, whether she was in it or not. And I walked away all the same.

And there it was.

A gentle snap, a whisper-soft snick of something sliding back into place underneath my ribs. The shift of something that had been out of place since the last time I saw her. The realization came as quick as a thunderbolt and just as powerful. As I slowly turned toward the parking lot and she stepped out of the car, I knew this was the reason I’d come back to Green Valley.

It was her.

The one I’d loved since the moment I saw her.

Who I hadn’t seen in twelve years.

The one staring at me like she’d just seen a ghost.