At my divorce hearing, I was eight months pregnant when the judge ruled that I would walk away with nothing. My husband smirked, convinced he had won.

I had survived eighteen years in foster care. I knew how to sit in a room where the outcome had already been decided and keep my face calm until I was alone.

So I sat there.

Waiting.

I was twenty-eight years old, and I had been alone for every one of those years.

The foster system had taught me how to survive in places that were never built to care about me. Group homes. Temporary placements. New case files in new buildings. Adults who forgot my name but remembered my paperwork.

I learned to read people fast.

To take up as little space as possible.

To ask for nothing.

To expect nothing.

By twenty-five, I had a small apartment, a bookstore job I loved, two friends I trusted, and a quiet life that belonged to me. It was not the dream I once imagined as a child watching families on television, but it was mine.

Then Julian Vance walked into my life carrying imported orchids.