But as soon as AJ locks the door and removes Belle’s harness, his shoulders tense. He runs a hand through his hair, his body nothing but coiled tension and nerves.
The headache that hasn’t truly faded in days comes back with a vengeance. “AJ, what’s wrong?”
“I’ve got somethin’ to show you.” My heart rate spikes, my mouth going dry until he holds out his hand. “It’s nothin’ bad. At least…I hope not.”
I lay my fingers over his palm, and he brushes a kiss to my wedding ring before wrapping his arm around my waist and guiding me down the hall to my studio door. It’s been closed for days. I thought…maybe it’d stay closed forever.
“No,” I whisper. “Please, AJ. I had such a great time tonight. I can’t go in there right now.”
“Trust me, darlin’.”
God help me, I do. So much that I nod while preparing myself for the warm glow of the evening to fade in an instant.
But when he opens the door, the studio…isn’t the studio anymore. Every wall has been painted white. The drafting table and chair still hold their space in front of the window, but the drawings I left half-finished three years ago are gone. The paintings that the other me did—before the scars and the loneliness and the pain stole her away—no longer rest in easels all over the room.
Blank canvases are stacked neatly in the far corner, but the rest of the room is bare. Just…waiting. Like me.
“You shouldn’t have to live with choices you didn’t make, darlin’.” His voice drops to a whisper, and he touches his wedding ring. “Any of ‘em. Really.”
I shuffle forward, alone, until I reach the drafting table. A circle of paint swatches—there must be fifty of them—is fanned out like a rainbow.
“You can pick whatever you want. Colors. Furniture. Fabrics. The room is yours now.”
The words crack something loose inside of me. Warmth and light and freedom and joy.
AJ didn’t just repaint a room. Or banish some clutter. He’s making it clear I don’t have to be the woman I was before. I don’t have to find her or become her to matter. To be loved.
I can be someone new. I can be the woman I am now.
“AJ…” His name escapes on a whisper. So quiet, yet still so loud in the blank slate of the room.
He shifts his weight, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as he stares at the floor. “If you hate it, we’ll put it all back. Everything’s in the garage, labeled and organized and?—”
“Hate it?” In two wobbly steps, I’m in front of him, my arms winding around his waist. “I… You did all this in four hours?”
“Not alone.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a weak grin. “Jas, Connor, Hardison. They helped.”
Tears give the room—my room—a gentle glow. “I don’t have words for what this means to me.”
AJ nods in the direction of the drafting table. “You can always start with a color.”
I turn, still leaning against him, and brush the swatches—the endless possibilities—until I land on a purple so pale, it can’t be more than a drop of tint in an ocean of white.
“This one.”
AJ
Did Grace understand? That when I told her she shouldn’t have to live with choices she didn’t make, I wasn’t just talkin’ about this room?
I love her with all my heart. The woman she was before and the woman she is now. But I’ll hand her a clean slate a thousand times over, even if that means she fills it with a life without me in it. Her freedom—her chance to be whoever she wants or needs to be—matters more than anything.
The light turns her dark blond hair a hundred shades of gold. She’s so fucking beautiful, and I hope she knows that every life I’ve ever imagined has her in it.
Grace turns her gaze to me, steady and sure. Her fingers tremble as she rests them over my heart. “You keep doing this, AJ. Giving me back pieces of myself I thought were lost forever.”
“Not givin’ them back, darlin’. I’m just reminding you they’re yours to claim. On your terms.”
Her breath catches, eyes shining. For a moment, I think she’s about to cry. But then she wraps her free arm around my neck, pulls herself up, and kisses me.
