The morning my mentor introduced me to a man, she did it beside the office coffee machine, between a spilled oat latte and a stack of client files. I had spent five years helping other people turn first dates into second ones while never once asking anyone I liked to have coffee with me. At Pairwell, the boutique matchmaking agency where I worked, my personal introduction count was a standing joke: zero. Celia thought she had found a way to fix it. Theo Mercer, a reserved theater carpenter with a talent for making old places feel alive, had agreed to meet me without knowing about my record or my carefully rehearsed excuses. I wanted to believe that was enough to make this different. But when a date begins as someone else's solution to your life, can you still choose what happens next?