Valentine's Day made her nauseous this year. The flowers, the pink and the red, and hearts made her own heart beat a shutter-quick tattoo that couldn't be blamed on the transplant or stress at work. This was all agitation. Anthony had tried a ploy to slip back into her good graces. His warmest most ingratiating smile, his fingers in her hair as he kissed her like the only woman in the world. The words had been right and the gestures were more than heartfelt on the surface, but Sora hadn't lived in Hana's shadow her entire life by being taken for a fool. Once, yes; twice, by mistake, yet never a third time. Sora could learn. Thus, it came as no surprise to her to discover her former husband canoodling with her sister at Misra not long after he'd been chasing her.

In the middle of Misra headquarters, Anthony had Hana wrapped in his arms while, smirking, he whispered in her ear. Hana was giggling, a tiny adoring smile on her face. They looked like an ad for middle-aged dating website. They made it look like the American dream.

Sora had come to see Ravi first and foremost, and given some minor thought to stopping to see her big sister. They were trying to get along better, to put the last few years behind them and move forward with love. Moments like these made moving on seem like an impossible prospect.

On noticing Sora rooted to the floor in front of the elevator, Hana shook Anthony off to embrace Sora in greeting. Sora hugged her because Hana hugged first, as though nothing was amiss. Who was Sora to make a scene anymore? She was the wallflower, the follower to Hana's lifelong leader. Hana hugged Sora, Sora hugged back. A tale as old as time.

When Sora and Anthony stumbled face to face, Sora said not a word. Anthony had to good sense keep his smug mouth shut. Sora was proud she didn't run to Ravi's office fast as her Manolo Blahniks could carry her when that morbid scene came to an end. Seeing further evidence that her dream life was just a nightmare in the making all along didn't make a coward out of her.

Nevermind the fact that she took the stairs in lieu of spending a painful two minutes in the elevator with the two people she used to love most in the world. She'd suffocate alone with them; she was suffocating anyway.

Her dignity intact, Sora stormed into Ravi's office and immediately launched herself into one of Ravi's cushy office chairs, distracting him from his latest sketch. Yes, she'd ignored his assistant to get here; no, she hadn't knocked—and, no, she didn't care.

Smirking at her annoyed expression, Ravi made another broad stroke across the page in alizarin red. "By all means, help yourself."

"Ha," Sora replied humorlessly. "And thank you, I think I will."

Ravi flipped his sketchpad shut and tossed it aside. "Should I start building these little visits into my schedule?"

"As often as you interrupt my workday just to shoot the breeze, you're getting cranky?"

"Not cranky at all. I'm happy you feel you can visit me here. Mi oficina es su oficina." His gruff voice rasped around the Spanish language, water over a rocky shoal. She loved when he switched languages. It was oddly comforting.

"I'll keep that in mind the next time I need an escape." Sora toed off her pumps, immediately sighing in relief. It felt good having somewhere to go. "There's something to be said for disappearing without a trace. God, get me out of here already." She swept her dark layered hair off the back of her flushed neck, hating how she reddened when embarrassed. She shouldn't have to be the one to feel ashamed when they were the wrongdoers; only shame was all there was to this situation. She was ashamed.

"You've got a point about getting away. I've done it. Rome is a beautiful place. So is Helsinki. Vienna. Amsterdam. Prague. Ankarra. It's freeing to be able to walk away from everything, to just wash your hands of the whole...situation. The downside is you gotta come back sometime."

"Sounds perfect to me. I left a few months ago...after everything. When I first found out, I thought a few days would give me some perspective. I took Tommy to Davao to see my mother's cousins." They had clucked sympathetically over her sad face and Tommy's puffy cheeks, and fed them both to bursting between breathtaking hugs.

Ravi rubbed his jaw. "How was that? Being away from Anthony and Hana and...this whole crazy situation?"

"Freeing. Peaceful. It was nice to go somewhere where I wasn't being told that the worst thing that ever happened to me was my fault."

"You shouldn't have had to leave home to find that."

Sora smiled ruefully. "You're still the only person who thinks that. Welcome to the Twilight Zone, where everybody else is crazy or maybe it's just us."

Ravi rose to pour them each a drink of water, which Sora accepted with gratitude. He went back to his chair.

"I don't know about that. You seem pretty sane to me."

"You, too, just don't ask anybody else."

"They don't give you enough credit for knowing your own mind."

Sora wasn't up to talking about it anymore. She'd just seen Anthony and Hana and that fire of resentment still burned.

"Let's not talk about that. What's happening here? Have you found your place at Misra yet?"

Ravi leaned back and put up his feet. "Probably more so than my little brother would like." Narsi was the youngest of Manendra's boys by decades, a love child born of an ill-advised affair between Hana and Manny long ago. Narsi had married Anthony's niece Imogen the year before, making the young man Sora's nephew twice over. The interlocked family trees of the Misra, Himura, and Gallegos clans verged on a jumble of tumbleweed.

"Narsi's been pretty prominent in your absence. He headed up the Yelena's Truth re-launch with Imogen and it's been an enormous success by all accounts. He may be feeling a little threatened by your sudden return."

"He doesn't have a reason to be. I just want Misra to succeed on all fronts it puts forth, not just Yelena's line. That's what I'm here for, to make sure it continues to do well what it's always done best: Couture."

"Between the two of you, the company couldn't be in better hands."

"You saying that because he's your nephew or because we're friends?"

Sora wavered. Ravi waved away her answer before it was fully formed on her lips.

"Don't answer that, it wasn't a fair question." He worked the kinks out of his neck. "I know I have a lot of time to make up for. Life doesn't stop because I'm gone, work doesn't stop and people—they move on. Empty spaces get filled because they have to be. I don't mind that so much. I just want to a chance to find out where I fit, if I fit."

"You do. Like you said, it'll take time. You have time."

Ravi rubbed his lower lip. "Maybe."

"Well, you have time with me and I've got a lot of vacancies in my life. No rush."

Ravi looked to her from where his gaze lingered in the distance. He rested his hand over his heart. "No rush."

Sora chose not to read too much into it. That didn't keep her from smiling at the gesture.

Ravi broke her gaze, appearing almost embarrassed. Sora sipped her water to hide how big her grin had grown. She'd never known him to be embarrassed.

"Enough of that. You came to see me for some reason. What's up?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to get out of the office and Imogen was busy. Once I checked her off, I realized there wasn't really anyplace else for me to go but home. I didn't want to go home, so here I am."

"Here you are."

"I can go if you're too busy for company." She didn't want to go.

"Stay. I like having you here. This all makes a little more sense when you're around."

"Is that why you love my office so much?"

"Nah, I gotta confess, it's you." He cocked his head in a shrug. He was smiling as much as Sora was. We must look insane. She didn't care. "And the view. The skyline is incredible from the CEO's office."

"Better with two."

"Almost everything is."

Sora looked down at her bare hands, easily recalling how well Anthony's ring had fit on her finger. She hadn't expected to take it off. She'd hardly had it on long at all before she was tossing it at him in disgust. The one man she'd allowed into her heart in the hopes of keeping him there had betrayed her with the woman she had naively believed would never. More the fool me.