17. Melody
— ? —
Melody
In less than three weeks, the papers arrive.
I’m at Noah’s penthouse when the lawyer calls, her voice carefully professional as she delivers the news. “It’s done. You’re officially divorced.”
A pause, and then, because she’s human under all that professionalism: “For what it’s worth - his attorney called us Monday morning, first thing. Signed everything. No conditions, no counters.”
I’m not surprised. After the garden party, my lawyer had sent Leo’s attorney the whole file - Patterson’s dated notes, the certified-mail record for a letter addressed to me that I never received, the photographed texts - along with a cover letter explaining that intercepting someone’s certified mail is a federal matter, and that we were prepared to treat it as one.
It turns out the phrase federal referral accomplishes in one page what weeks of asking politely couldn’t.
I hang up and stand there in the middle of his living room, looking out at the city spread below me, trying to understand what I’m feeling. Relief. Exhaustion. A strange, hollow ache where my marriage used to live.
And underneath all of it, something that feels terrifyingly like joy.
“Melody?” Noah’s voice comes from the doorway. “Was that-”
“It is over.” Four years of my life, condensed into a single breath.
Noah crosses the room and takes my hands. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.” I laugh, and it comes out wet. “Free. Terrified. Like I just stepped off a cliff and I don’t know if I’m falling or flying.”
“Maybe both.”
“Maybe.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let myself be held. Let myself feel the weight of his body against mine, the steady rhythm of his heart beneath my ear. This is real. This is mine. This is what I chose.
“The inheritance comes through next week,” I say against his chest. “My lawyer said the paperwork cleared yesterday.”
“How does that feel?”
“Surreal.” I pull back to look at him. “I keep waiting to wake up. To find out this was all some elaborate dream and I’m still standing in that honeymoon suite, reading those texts for the first time.”
“You’re not dreaming.” He kisses my forehead. “You’re awake. You’re here. You made it through.”
“We made it through.”
“We did.”
His hands slide down my back, pulling me closer. I can feel the heat of him through my clothes, the familiar need building in my stomach.
“Take me to bed,” I whisper.
“You’re always in a hurry.”
“I am.” I rise up on my toes and press my lips to his ear. “I want to celebrate. I want to feel good. I want you.”
The bedroom is dark except for the city lights streaming through the windows. Noah lays me down on the bed and takes his time with my clothes, peeling them away layer by layer until I’m bare beneath him.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice rough.
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
He kisses me slowly, thoroughly, his hands mapping every inch of skin like he’s memorizing me. I arch into his touch, needing more, needing everything.
“I need you. Now.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes dark with want. “You have me. Always.”
And then he’s inside me, and I’m not thinking about Leo anymore. Not thinking about the inheritance or the family party or any of it. There’s just this - the weight of him, the rhythm we’ve built together, the way he looks at me like I’m the only person in the world who matters.
I roll us over, taking control. His hands grip my hips as I move above him, slow at first, then faster. His jaw goes tight, his breath coming in short gasps.
“Melody-”
“I know.” I lean down and kiss him, swallowing whatever he was going to say. “I know.”
The pressure builds, spiraling higher and higher until I shatter against him, his name on my lips. He follows a moment later, pulling me down against his chest as we both come apart.
***
Afterward, we’re tangled together in the sheets, the city glittering beyond the windows.
“I love you,” I say.
It’s the first time I’ve said it. The words have been sitting in my chest for weeks, but I couldn’t make myself speak them. Not until now. Not until I was free.
Noah goes still beneath me. Then his arms tighten around me, pulling me closer.
“Say that again.”
“I love you.” I lift my head to look at him, and his eyes are bright with something that might be tears. “I love you, Noah Carter. And I’m sorry it took me so long to-”
He kisses me before I can finish. Deep and desperate and full of everything he’s been holding back.
“I love you too,” he says against my lips. “God, I love you too.”
We stay like that for a long time, wrapped up in each other, the world reduced to this room, this bed, this moment.
“What now?” he asks eventually.
I think about everything that’s happened. The wedding. The discovery. The bar where I met him, mascara running down my face, convinced that my life was over. And now I’m here, in his arms, with more money than I ever imagined and a future that’s mine to shape.
“Now I rebuild,” I say. “I live. And you’re in it, if you want to be.”
“Of course I want to be.” He kisses my hair. “I’ve wanted to be in it since the first night.”
“Even when I was a mess?”
“Especially then.” He pulls me closer. “You weren’t performing. Not for one second. I’d never met anyone who felt things that honestly. I wanted to know everything about you.”
“Now you do.”
“Do I?”
“Almost.” I prop myself up on his chest so I can see his face. “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I’ve had in mind for weeks - I’ve just been waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For today. For the ink to dry.” I take a breath. “I didn’t want to start building anything while my name still had his attached to it.”
Noah goes very still, the way he does when he’s actually listening. “I’m listening.”
“Patterson told me something, on our last call. About Dorothea - my great-grandmother. I always thought she was just some stern old woman I met twice. Turns out she ran a supper club in the forties. Then a banquet hall. Then three of them. She built the entire fortune throwing other people’s celebrations.
” I laugh, and it comes out amazed. “Weddings, mostly. Eighty years apart, and she and I had the same job.”
“Had,” he repeats carefully.
“Had.” I trace a seam of the sheet, needing somewhere to put my eyes.
“So here’s what I want to do with her money.
My own company. Events. Destination weddings.
Small and honest and mine. I’ve spent eight years building perfect days for strangers.
I want to build them for people who mean it, and I want my name on the door.
” I finally look up at him. “I watched my own wedding get used as paperwork for a con. I think I’d like to spend the rest of my life making the opposite of that. Is that insane?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he smiles, slow and wide, the smile from the driveway, the one with nothing held back.
“You realize,” he says, “that I own eleven venues.”
“This is not a merger proposal, Carter.”
“Everything’s a merger proposal if you’re brave enough.” He pulls me down and kisses my hair. “Build it. I’ll be your first jealous competitor.”
I close my eyes and let myself drift, safe in his arms, finally free.
Tomorrow there will be paperwork and lawyers and a thousand decisions to make.
Tomorrow I’ll call Patterson and ask him what it takes to turn an inheritance into a beginning.
There’s already a name circling in my head, the only name it could ever be - hers and mine, eighty years apart, two women who built other people’s celebrations until one of them finally built her own.
Hayes & Dorothea.
But tonight, there’s just this. Just him. Just the two of us, together, at the beginning of something new.