The groom, Michael Thompson, leaned toward her and whispered, “Emily? Do you know him?”
Emily didn’t answer.
Instead, she dropped to her knees in front of Lucas, her wedding dress spilling across the stone floor. Tears welled in her eyes as she studied his face—his lashes, the shape of his nose, the faint scar above his eyebrow.
The same scar she had never forgotten.
“I was nineteen,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I had no money. No support. I was terrified.” She glanced briefly at the stunned guests before looking back at Lucas. “I believed leaving you somewhere safe was the only way you’d survive.”
A wave of gasps swept through the crowd.
Lucas swallowed hard.
“I was found by a man named Arthur,” he said softly. “He raised me. He told me not to hate you.”
Emily collapsed, pulling Lucas into her arms as if afraid he might vanish.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” she sobbed. “I kept this bracelet because it was the only part of you I had left.”
