Chapter 293

I hadn’t seen Louisa Granger in months, not properly, not since my broken engagement with Rhys. She had always liked me. Sometimes I even thought she loved me more than my own mother did. When I was younger, she would invite me for tea in her sunlit drawing room, listen to my chatter, and beam at me as if she was already imagining me as her daughter-in-law. She wanted me married to Rhys so badly it seemed like it was her dream as much as his. But that was before everything went wrong. Before Rhys destroyed whatever we had with a slap, before he married Catherine, and before the Granger family unravelled. Since then, I had kept my distance. Now I was walking into a quiet café in Midtown, the kind of place with whitewashed walls, leafy plants, and soft jazz floating from hidden speakers. Neutral ground. I thought it safer than her house, which was haunted with memories I didn’t want to stir up. She was already there, sitting near the window with a cup of coffee untouched in front of her.