This design wastheirs.
A marriage in architecture—structure and chaos, steel and softness, logic and dreams.
The lines on the page had started to look like something new, something better than either of them alone.
Tom stared at the screen until the ache in his chest eased into something steadier.
Hope, maybe.
He saved the file under a new name.
Barrett House – Reimagined.
The quilt layacross his lap, its seams a roadmap through his marriage. He’d lost track of how many nights he’d spent studying it.
Tonight, his fingers found the square with the red door. Their first place together. He let his fingers drag to the square with the coffee cups. Then to the hiking trail where he’d proposed.
All places he’d taken her back to this past month.
Tom leaned back in the chair. He’d been following her path. Her memories. The map she’d left him stitched in thread.
He swallowed hard. He’d been so certain all his life that he should lead—be decisive, be strong, be the one who knew where they were going.
He’d been so blind.
He wasn’t strong. He was weak. He saw that now. But maybe that wasn’t the curse he’d thought it was. Weak wasn’t useless. Not once you knew who to follow.
Laurenhad always known where they were going.
No wonder he’d been drawn to her. No wonder he’d known, even at the first date, that he was going to marry this woman.
He laid his palm flat over the next square.
The fabric under his hand was different—smoother, finer. Silk. She’d used that fabric to stitch a chapel and quilted it with two interlocking rings.
Their wedding.
Tom traced the stitched outline of the little church, his thumb resting over the rings.
The happiest day of his life.
The room fell away and he was back there. The sound of organ music, the scent of lilies. He’d promised to love her, to honor her, to cherish her.
Words he hadn’t lived up to.
He bent forward, elbows on his knees, the quilt bunching in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the stitched chapel, to the memory of that day.
The confession loosened something in his chest.
He’d thought he was the builder. But Lauren had always been the foundation.
He lifted his hand and touched the square again, softer this time, reverent.
Tom leaned back. His heart ached, but the ache felt almost good.
He was going to make these promises again, and this time he would be true.
