"Did she overreact?"
It didn’t matter if she overreacted or not.
“Ihaveto get her back, Jake. I can’t live without her.”
Jake glanced toward the door, then back at Tom. "Here's what I know about marriage," Jake said. "And I've only been doing it for a few months, so take this with a grain of salt. But you have to forget everything you learned from watching Mom and Dad.”
Tom thought about his father’s patient corrections, his mother’s approving little smiles when he did something she liked. They had shaped him all his life. Who was he if he wasn’t that person?
Tom pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"So what do I do?" Tom asked quietly.
“I wish I could tell you,” Jake said, “but marriages don’t come with blueprints. Every one is built different.” Jake grinned ruefully. “The good news is that you're an architect. You’ll be able to figure it out.”
Tom sat in the empty break room after Jake left.
If the foundation of his marriage was unstable, he would have to demolish it. He would break it down and start again.
He looked down at his hands—the same hands that had held hers on their first date, clumsy and hopeful.
She’d stitched that day into fabric. Immortalized it. What if that was the answer?
He raked a hand through his hair, exhaling.
If he was starting over, this time he would make something solid.
If she'd let him.
If she'd even take his call.
CHAPTER 20
Lauren
Lauren spottedTom's car in the parking lot before she'd even pulled into her space. Her stomach dropped, an unfamiliar mixture of longing and dread was her new response to seeing her husband.
He was leaning against the building's glass facade, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, his breath visible in the cold air. He looked tired. Good. She hoped he hadn't been sleeping any better than she had.
Lauren gathered her things from the passenger seat—the two pieces she'd finished last night, wrapped in tissue paper and ready for Sage's photography session.
Tom straightened when he saw her and fell into step beside her. “Lauren,” he said quietly.
She didn’t look at him. “I’m late.”
“Come out with me tonight?”
Lauren stopped walking, her grip tightening on the wrapped pieces. "Tom?—"
He kept his hands in his pockets, kept his distance. "I know showing up at your work is—I tried calling. But you weren't answering my calls, and I?—"
Her first instinct was to shut him down. To make him feel what she’d felt—small, unwanted, dismissed. The wordnohovered on her tongue.
“Just to talk.” And then he added—softly, almost pleading. “Please.”
Lauren studied him. Tom was always confident, always sure of himself. But right now he looked… desperate.
Lauren shifted the wrapped pieces in her arms. Part of her—the part that was still so angry she could barely breathe at times—wanted to make him suffer the way she'd suffered at Christmas.
