A month later, I returned to the U.K.

Around the same time, Bennett’s flight was headed back to New York.

We merely nodded at each other like acquaintances. Then I stepped past him and did not stop.

A wide-open road stretched ahead of me, my trench coat snapping in the wind. I never looked back.

Behind me, Isabel Lancaster recognized the face she had just seen. “It was her.”

This time, she had happened to be in San Francisco visiting relatives and spending a few days there. Today, she was flying back to New York with Bennett. She had not expected to run into that scene at the airport.

Isabel turned and looked at Bennett’s desolate expression.

“You remember that I came back to New York once a few years ago.” She glanced at Bennett. “Oh, right… she was the girl who left you that day, wasn’t she?”

Isabel’s words hit an old wound, but Bennett did not react much. After all, ever since Isabel heard that he had driven the girl away, she had not exactly spared him her mockery over the years.

But at that moment, as Isabel looked at that firm, decisive figure walking away, she did not feel like laughing at him.

She only began to worry. She was a woman too, and she could see it more clearly than he could.

“I’ve never understood it. Your father and I have always been so in love, so how did you end up like this?” Isabel looked at her son and sighed.

“You’re always calculating, always maneuvering. Yes, in business, that kind of strategy can beat your competitors and make your name.”

“But Bennett, the person you love is not an opponent to defeat. When you calculate every move in love, you gain nothing. All you ever get is loss.”

Bennett’s throat bobbed hard, and the faint indifference he had been clinging to scattered without warning.

His fingers tightened beyond his control. With a click, the lighter snapped open. In the flicker of flame, the panic in his eyes was revealed.

I can’t let this go.

The words suddenly surged up like a tide, threatening to drown him until he could barely breathe.

Isabel glanced at him, picked up her bag, and walked ahead, leaving him some space.

He had been far too slow. Even his refusal to let go and the ache of missing her had arrived three years too late.

But no one waited in the same place forever.

That girl had already set out for the next stretch of her life long ago.