a signal failure stranded dozens of passengers inside the station.
At 11:46 p.m., I was sitting on a wooden bench with a paper cup of terrible tea when a man beside me sighed over a small, battered notebook.
Its spine had separated from the cover, and several pages were slipping loose.
He was trying to keep them together with a rubber band.
“Please don’t do that,” I said before I could stop myself.
He looked up.
Dark hair, tired gray eyes, and a faint scar beside his left eyebrow.
His wool coat had caught the rain, and his expression suggested he’d been having a long evening even before the trains stopped.
“Sorry?”
“The rubber band.
It’ll damage the paper.”
He looked at the notebook, then at me.
“Are you always this passionate about strangers’ stationery?”
“Only when they’re threatening it.”
He laughed.
That was how I met Owen Delaney.
The notebook had belonged to his grandmother, who spent much of her twenties traveling through Europe with a theatrical company.
She had filled it with sketches, ticket stubs, and descriptions of buildings she visited.
Owen designed lighting for theater productions and historic performance spaces.
He’d inherited her curiosity about the way a room could make people feel.
I showed him how to support the loose pages without placing pressure on the damaged spine.
He listened carefully, following every instruction.
Then he asked whether he could pay me to repair it properly.
By 2:00 a.m., we were discussing architecture, bad coffee, our families, and the peculiar loneliness of building a career that other people didn’t understand.
I didn’t tell him everything about Callum.
He didn’t ask for anything I wasn’t prepared to share.
When the trains finally resumed, he took my business card and promised to contact me about the notebook.
He did.
Three weeks later, I returned it to him, carefully repaired and wrapped in acid-free tissue.
He sent a photograph of it resting on his bookshelf, followed by a thank-you note that made me smile during a particularly difficult Monday.
We exchanged a few more messages.
Then work grew busy, months passed, and our connection settled into a pleasant memory.
Until Kit called me about her wedding.
She was marrying Felix Bennett, a kindhearted veterinarian she’d met while volunteering at an animal shelter.
The ceremony would take place at a restored glasshouse near Whitby, overlooking a broad sweep of the North Sea.
I was delighted for her.
Then she mentioned the best man.
“Callum’s helping Felix with the speeches,” she said carefully.
I closed my eyes.
Of course he was.
Felix and Callum had been friends since university.
I knew there was no reasonable way to exclude Callum from the wedding simply because our relationship had ended badly.
But my mother made things worse.
“I’ve seated you beside him for the rehearsal dinner,” she announced during a family call.
“Perhaps you can finally clear the air.”
“Mum, we’re not getting back together.”
“I didn’t say you were.
I only think people deserve second chances.”
I wondered why everyone believed Callum deserved another chance, while I was expected to defend a decision I’d already made.
A week later, Callum sent me a message suggesting that the wedding might help us remember what we’d lost.
I didn’t reply.
Instead, I sat in
