"You're going to be okay," he said, and it wasn't a question.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked at him—at the faint graphite smudge on his cheek and the steady gaze that saw me not as a wife or a partner, but as an equal. He hadn't rescued me. He had simply reminded me that I was never the one who was lost.
"I'm starting to," I said.
Finn held my gaze for a moment longer, then turned back to the sketches.
I left the studio an hour later with a new folder under my arm. The original sketches were still inside, joined by a printed email with a client's name, Finn's notes on the glass connector, and a single sheet of paper bearing the words I should have written seven years ago.
Holland Hart. Founding designer. Original architect. Not invisible. Not replaceable. Not his.
The elevator doors closed, and I stood in the quiet of the descending car with the folder pressed against my arm. My name was on the cover page. I didn't need Callum's platform to matter. For the first time in seven years, I believed it.
Chapter Fifteen
HOLLAND
Sloane’s guestroom had better light than my entire marriage.
It was the kind of thought my brain served up now—a small, sharp detail to focus on when the whole truth felt too large to look at directly.
The room faced east. Morning came in soft and clean through white curtains, spilling across the hardwood floor and the edge of the desk Sloane had cleared for me without asking. She’d moved a stack of nonprofit binders to the hallway, set out a spare lamp, and left a legal pad beside it like she knew I’d need somewhere to put the thoughts I wasn’t ready to say out loud.
On the top line, in my own handwriting, were the words I’d written at two in the morning.
What is mine?
Underneath it, the list was already longer than I wanted it to be.
The Morrison lakefront estate.
The Thompson underpinning fix.
The Alden stair hall correction.
The original cantilever sketch.
The lakefront design language.
The client relationships.
The seed money.
The company history.
My name.
I stared at the list until the words stopped being words.
Seven years of work, and I had never once thought to protect it. Drawings, phone calls, site visits, revisions, client dinners, late nights at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee going cold beside my laptop. It had felt like breathing. You don’t document breathing.
But an attorney would. Dates. Documents. Authorship. Contribution. Ownership.
Proof.
