What the Heart Wants

CHAPTER ONE The Life She Chose

At thirty-five, Maya Collins had learned that peace could be so quiet you almost mistook it for boredom.

On most mornings, she woke before Andre because sunlight slipped through the linen curtains of their West Los Angeles townhouse and landed directly across her side of the bed.

Andre slept on his back, one arm thrown over his head, his breathing steady and untroubled.

There was something almost offensive about how peacefully that man slept.

He could close his eyes after a hard day and trust the night to hold him.

Maya had never been that good at trust.She turned on her side and studied him.

Andre Bennett was thirty-six, an architect with a growing reputation for restoring old Los Angeles buildings without sanding away their history.

He was handsome in a way that did not ask for applause.

Deep brown skin, a clean beard, thoughtful eyes, broad shoulders that made his white T-shirts look better than they had any right to.He was also good.Not performatively good.

Not good because he wanted a reward. Andre remembered her mother's birthday without needing a calendar alert.

He brought her ginger tea when she had cramps and knew exactly which side of the sofa she wanted when they watched movies.

When Maya worked late at the branding agency in Culver City, he never accused her of being somewhere she should not be.

He just texted, Drive safe. Food is in the oven.She had once thought love was supposed to make your heart race.Andre made hers rest.That morning he opened one eye and caught her staring.

"You know that's creepy, right?" he said.Maya smiled.

"I wasn't staring.""You were studying me like one of your client campaigns.

""Maybe I'm deciding whether to rebrand you.

"He reached for her, pulled her against his chest, and kissed the top of her head.

"Too late. Brand equity is strong."She laughed into him.

This was what they were good at- ease. Their relationship had begun seven years earlier at a rooftop birthday dinner in Downtown Los Angeles.

Maya had been twenty-eight, overworked, tired of dating men who arrived with chemistry and disappeared with explanations.

Andre had been standing near the railing, talking about why the old theater across the street should never be torn down.She had liked the way he looked at buildings as if they deserved to be understood before they were changed.She had liked the way he eventually looked at her the same way.By thirty-one, they were living together.

By thirtythree, they had stopped pretending marriage was an abstract future topic and started casually sending each other pictures of houses and wedding venues.

Neither of them had children. Neither had been married.

They had careers they were proud of, good friends, enough money to travel and save, and the kind of partnership people described as grown.So why, some nights, did Maya lie beside him and remember a boy she had not seen in more than a decade?

She hated herself for it.Jalen Carter belonged to another version of her.

Eighteen-year-old Maya with hoop earrings too large for her face, glossy lips, and a heart that believed intensity meant destiny.

He had been her first real boyfriend, her first great secret, her first love, and - after she turned eighteen during their senior year - the first person she trusted enough to become intimate with.She had given him more than her virginity.

She had given him the authority to define love before she knew enough to challenge his definition.Jalen had been beautiful trouble.

Everyone had known it except Maya, and maybe Maya had known too.He could make her feel like the only person in a room, then disappear for two days.

He could swear she was his future and still flirt with girls in front of her.

He had cheated, apologized, cried, promised, repeated.

Their relationship had broken and repaired so many times that the cracks eventually became the design.When it finally ended, Maya did not miss the pain.She missed him.That was the part she never admitted.Andre slid out of bed and stretched.

"Farmers market?""Today?""You said we needed actual food in this house.

Apparently sparkling water and hot sauce don't count as groceries.

""According to who?""According to the human body.

"He disappeared into the bathroom, still talking, and Maya listened to his voice over the rush of the shower.This was her life.A good man.

A beautiful home. A career she had built from internships and impossible deadlines.

Friends who loved her. A mother who finally stopped asking whether she was eating enough and started asking when Andre planned to propose.Maya had everything her younger self had begged life to give her.And still, in a locked corner of her mind, a seventeenyear-old memory kept breathing.She told herself it meant nothing.Memories were not choices.Thoughts were not betrayal.And Jalen was not part of her life anymore.At least that was what she believed before Saturday afternoon at the mall.