I didn’t realize how hard it would hit me until it was already too late.

The image was seared into my mind, burned there like a scar that would never fade. Nova… my Nova, straddling another man. Her head tilted back, her lips parted in a soundless moan, her body moving in rhythm with his. She wasn’t shy, she wasn’t holding back… she was wild, unrestrained, breathtakingly alive in a way I had never seen before.

And she wasn’t with me.

I stumbled out of that club like a man escaping a ...