“Hey, Lo.”
God. His voice. Warm and low and hopeful. It drew her like gravity.
For a moment, she was in her twenties again, answering late-night calls from a man who kept asking if he could see her the next day, and the next, and the next.
“Can I see you again? Tonight?”
Lauren leaned against the wall, fingers curling into her sweater cuff. Something fluttered in her chest—light, bright, breathless.
Itwasjust like back then. And just like then, she wanted it too. Tonight and tomorrow and the next day.
She let out a shaky exhale.
“Yes,” she said.
“I thought… maybe I could cook for you.”
Lauren blinked. “Cook?”
“In our kitchen,” he added. “Your kitchen, I mean. The house?—”
Her stomach rolled at that. A warm, aching roll.
And suddenly her heart was beating faster. This was the next step in Tom’s courtship—another square of the quilt taking shape. The one she’d captured as blueprints stitched in bluethread. He was coming to cook her dinner in the house he had designed for their life together.
“You… still have your key?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said immediately. “Of course.” Then softer: “I haven’t been using it because… I didn’t know if… if I was allowed.”
Allowed.
Her throat tightened.
“You can use it,” she murmured. “You can use it whenever you want to use it.”
A breath caught on the other end of the line—audible, fragile, hopeful.
She pictured him closing his eyes, pictured the relief loosening his shoulders.
“Okay,” he said, voice thick. “Okay. I will.”
Silence stretched, warm and charged.
He broke it first.
“So… dinner? I’ll make the pasta you like. And that salad. And maybe—” He huffed a laugh. “God, I’m rambling.”
Lauren pressed her hand to her cheek, unable to stop smiling.
Sherememberedthis—this eagerness, this man trying so hard.
The call ended, and Lauren stayed leaning against the wall, the phone pressed to her chest.
The photoshoot lights. The coral paint on her cuff. The emoji heart in her messages.
All of it spun together inside her like a snow globe shaken hard.
Tonight, her husband will be cooking her dinner. In the house he built.
