Chapter 61
Lauren
Vivian didn’t do anything halfway. The February issue included.
Lauren clutched the DIVORCED AF piece to her chest as she stepped into the photography studio.
It looked louder under the professional lights.
Brighter. Bolder. Almost indecent.
The coral base glowed. The layered tissue paper shimmered in overlapping patterns. The white letters she’d painted—steady, unrepentant, triumphant—cut through like a battle cry.
Sage spotted her. “Oh good,” she said, sweeping across the room with her camera hanging from her neck. “Our hero object.”
“The Valentine issue is about reinvention,” Vivian said briskly. “What romance looks like when you’re choosing yourself. This piece is the centerpiece.”
Lauren’s stomach swooped. “Centerpiece?”
“Of the entire issue.”
She nearly dropped the plaque.
Wren swooped in to take it from her careful hands, holding it like a holy relic. “Let me set this up,” she murmured, gliding toward the styled display.
Lauren followed automatically.
The set was… beautiful.
And intimidating.
A minimalist pedestal covered in matte black fabric. A spotlight forming a warm circle, precisely where the plaque would sit.
It looked like art. Not a craft project.
Not a joke. Not a coping mechanism.
Art.
Lauren blinked. “I thought the photos you took last week were for the magazine?”
Sage lifted the camera, adjusting the lens. “Those were for your website. Commercial shots—clean, catalog-y, very ‘please commission me.’”
Wren nodded. “Editorial is different.”
Vivian added, “This is the one people will rip out and pin to their inspiration boards. The one that says something.”
Lauren’s throat tightened. “Oh.”
Vivian placed the DIVORCED AF sign on the pedestal and stepped back. “Oh hell yes,” she said under her breath.
Lauren stared.
Her creation looked like a manifesto.
A declaration.
She’d made that plaque when she was still finding her feet as a separated wife.
Now she knew what she wanted. She wanted Tom. She was too greedy to give him up. She wanted him and she was going to have him.
It didn’t make her feel weak, like she’d feared. It made her feel powerful. She was going to demand his respect and his love. It was non-negotiable.
Vivian circled the set-up like a predator evaluating prey. “I want a close-up on the lettering,” she said. “Get texture. I want readers to see the individual brush strokes.”
Lauren swallowed. “Is that… good?”
“Handmade means bespoke,” Sage said, raising her camera. “And bespoke is very, very in.”
Lauren almost laughed. Instead, she pressed her palms together to stop them shaking.
Sage stepped behind the camera. “Lights!”
The studio brightened.
“Okay, Lauren,” Sage called, “stand over there so I can get a few with you in the background.”
“With me?” Lauren choked.
“Yes,” Vivian said. “You’re part of the story.”
Lauren glanced down at herself and winced.
God.
Of course she was wearing dorky clothes. The soft, oatmeal sweater with the stretched-out sleeves. The faded jeans she should replace. And her work shirt…
Her eyes caught on the cuff. A smear of coral paint. Right there. From the DIVORCED AF plaque.
Heat climbed her cheeks. “Vivian, I—I’m not exactly dressed for—”
Vivian waved a hand. “It’s an art magazine, not a fashion one. You’re perfect.”
Perfect.
In her dorky sweater.
With craft paint on her sleeve.
Sage lifted her camera, grinning. “The paint stains make it better.”
Lauren swallowed, suddenly aware of how real this was—her work, her clothes, her actual messy life—all being pulled into the spotlight.
And still, she stepped into place.
Sage lifted the camera. “Three, two—”
Click.
Her phone buzzed again.
Tom.
Not an emoji this time. His name lighting up her screen, steady and real.
She hesitated only a second before answering.
“Hi,” she said, softer than she meant to.
“Hey, Lo.”
God. His voice. Warm and low and hopeful. It drew her like gravity.
For a moment, she was in her twenties again, answering late-night calls from a man who kept asking if he could see her the next day, and the next, and the next.
“Can I see you again? Tonight?”
Lauren leaned against the wall, fingers curling into her sweater cuff. Something fluttered in her chest—light, bright, breathless.
It was just like back then. And just like then, she wanted it too. Tonight and tomorrow and the next day.
She let out a shaky exhale.
“Yes,” she said.
“I thought… maybe I could cook for you.”
Lauren blinked. “Cook?”
“In our kitchen,” he added. “Your kitchen, I mean. The house—”
Her stomach rolled at that. A warm, aching roll.
And suddenly her heart was beating faster. This was the next step in Tom’s courtship—another square of the quilt taking shape. The one she’d captured as blueprints stitched in blue thread. He was coming to cook her dinner in the house he had designed for their life together.
“You… still have your key?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said immediately. “Of course.” Then softer: “I haven’t been using it because… I didn’t know if… if I was allowed.”
Allowed.
Her throat tightened.
“You can use it,” she murmured. “You can use it whenever you want to use it.”
A breath caught on the other end of the line—audible, fragile, hopeful.
She pictured him closing his eyes, pictured the relief loosening his shoulders.
“Okay,” he said, voice thick. “Okay. I will.”
Silence stretched, warm and charged.
He broke it first.
“So… dinner? I’ll make the pasta you like. And that salad. And maybe—” He huffed a laugh. “God, I’m rambling.”
Lauren pressed her hand to her cheek, unable to stop smiling.
She remembered this—this eagerness, this man trying so hard.
The call ended, and Lauren stayed leaning against the wall, the phone pressed to her chest.
The photoshoot lights. The coral paint on her cuff. The emoji heart in her messages.
All of it spun together inside her like a snow globe shaken hard.
Tonight, her husband will be cooking her dinner. In the house he built.
Her pulse fluttered.
She wasn’t na?ve. She wasn’t healed. But God—she was hopeful.
And hope, she realized, wasn’t a weakness.
Hope was a beginning.