Something in his chest cracked open.
He crossed the room to his drafting table. The snow globe was already there, glitter drifting lazily inside the jar, lights from the window scattering silver sparks over the steel surface.
He set the frame beside it.
The two objects looked absurd in the office’s stark geometry. Handmade chaos invading a world designed to be safe and controlled.
Lauren’s photo caught the light.
The snow globe shimmered beside it.
Color bloomed in the gray room.
Tom touched the edge of the frame with one fingertip.
He sat down at the drafting table as the glitter settled and Lauren’s smile held steady inside the frame.
Tom couldn’t work.Couldn’t concentrate. The ache in his chest had teeth.
He’d been at his desk for nearly an hour. Plans were open on one monitor, spreadsheets on another—clean lines, tidy numbers, a life arranged in crisp black and white.
He couldn’t look at any of it.
All he could see was the frame and the snow globe—her smile behind streaked paint, her joy suspended in glitter. His wife. His whole world.
He shoved back from the desk, the wheels of his office chair rolling sharply over the polished floor.
The winter light leaked through the windows in a pale, washed-out glow. Art that was his father’s minimalist taste hung on the wall of his office, cold and dull. His reflection stared back at him in the framed certificates and awards.
None of it mattered.Laurenmattered.
He pulled out a sheet of paper and picked up his pen.
His hand hovered. Hovered.
His chest felt too tight to breathe.
He closed his eyes.
Then he put the pen to paper.
He needed her to understand. He didn’t want herdespiteher love of crafting. He wanted herbecauseof it. Because that was who she was. And who she was was perfect.
The words came out uneven. Stopping, starting, stopping again.
When he finally stopped writing, his hand ached. His chest ached even more.
He sat back, staring at the crooked lines. The uneven slant of his handwriting. The rawness bleeding between the words he’d finally let himself admit.
A confession.
CHAPTER 39
Lauren
Muse Magazine hummedthe way it always did—phones trilling, the low clatter of keyboards. Chic hairstyles. Designer clothing. Lauren stepped out into all of it, hair wind-roughed, eyes puffy from another night of sleeplessness.
The smell of drying paint and hot glue clung to her sweater. Her hands still had glitter in the knuckles, tiny flecks that caught the elevator’s fluorescent light and threw it back at her.
