That didn’t make his family’s struggle any easier though, and I got that.

Knowing Julian was with me, a twenty-one-year-old girl from the dregs of Worcester, would be a very hard thing to witness in person. It’s one thing knowing it from the sidelines, but another thing entirely seeing it in the flesh.

It was almost midnight when the cake finished baking in the oven, and Julian helped me ice it, sticking one solitary candle in the top and lighting it up at the exact moment that the clock struck twelve.

I pushed my glasses up my nose, eyes on him as I blew the candle out, and then the...