Chapter Twenty-Eight
ARIA
He doesn’t come home.
Although, to be fair, he did say he wouldn’t be coming home tonight. Still, I tell myself it’s fine.
I eat the dinner Matteo made—salmon with roasted vegetables and some kind of lemon sauce that’s probably delicious and I wouldn’t know because I’m too busy staring at my phone to taste anything.
I put his plate in the fridge and rinse my wineglass.
I turn off every light on the first floor because walking through an empty house with all the lights on feels sadder than walking through it in the dark.
Then I go upstairs and get into his bed alone.
Our bed.
It’s too big without him. I lie on his side for a while because it smells like him, and then I feel pathetic about it and move back to mine.
I check my phone twice. Then a third time, because apparently I’m a person who does that now.
The heart emoji I sent is the last thing in our thread. No response. No goodnight. Not even a sleep well.
Forty-eight hours ago this man carried me to the shower, called me insatiable, and looked at me like he fully intended to spend the rest of the morning proving it. Now I’m lying alone in his bed sniffing his pillow like an obsessed weirdo.
This is fine. I’m fine.
I fall asleep telling myself that, which is never a great sign if I have to convince myself.
Morning comes and I wish I could say that I slept well, but I didn’t.
I reach for my phone before I’m fully awake.
Two texts.
Still dealing with this. Going to be at the tower until it’s resolved. Don’t worry.
Then, twenty minutes later:
I’ll keep you posted.
I stare at the screen.
Don’t worry is the kind of thing you say when there is absolutely something to worry about. And I’ll keep you posted is the kind of thing you say to someone when you’re putting them off so they won’t keep asking for updates. Neither of those things brings me any relief.
I type three different replies and delete all of them. The first one is too needy. The second one is too casual. The third one autocorrects I miss you to I miss tour and I take that as a sign from the universe to stop.
I send:
Okay. I’m here if you need anything. Come home when you can.
The read receipt appears almost immediately, but there’s no answer back.
I set the phone face down on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling.
Part of me wants to drive to Seattle. Show up at his office with coffee made just the way he takes it. But I know Everett.
I know what happens when you push a man who’s already pulling away. He doesn’t push back. He just shuts another door. And then another one. And then you’re standing in a hallway full of closed doors wondering which one he’s behind.
If I drive to Seattle right now, I won’t find the man who carried my bags into his bedroom and said for longer. I’ll find the version that runs a billion-dollar company on zero sleep and the sheer force of not letting anyone see him sweat.
I’m not ready for that version.
Not today.
So I stay.
I shower. I make coffee in the kitchen—his kitchen, our kitchen, the kitchen where he stood barefoot in sweats two mornings ago and slid my mug across the counter without looking up. Like we’d been doing that for years.
God. That was two days ago.
The house is quiet. Not the good kind. The kind where you can hear the refrigerator humming and your own footsteps sound too loud and you start to understand why rich people always have so many dogs.
I should get a dog.
I should not get a dog. I should drink my coffee and stop spiraling.
I take my coffee upstairs to the studio.
The room is different in full daylight. When Everett showed it to me, it was early morning—silver and soft, everything still possibility.
Now the clouds have broken enough to let real sun move through those north-facing windows, and the light is almost impossible.
It catches on the hardwood. Warms the canvases. Turns the whole room into invitation.
I set my coffee on the drafting table—the one that now comes with a very specific memory that still makes my face hot—and stand in the middle of the room for a second.
Just breathing.
Then I unpack my satchel. Brushes. Palette knife. The tubes of paint I carried back from France because I couldn’t leave them, like the colors themselves were proof that something happened there. That I’m different now.
And around me, everything Everett chose.
Professional oils in brands I used to stare at in catalogs and close the tab. Brushes I never would’ve bought on an assistant’s salary. Belgian linen canvases stacked against the wall.
He didn’t just build a studio.
He armed it.
My phone buzzes on the drafting table.
I glance over, expecting Everett even though I know better by now.
It’s not him.
Gabriel Amaury.
Aria, I hope this isn’t too forward. I’ve been thinking about the piece you posted and the response to it. I meant what I said in Cannes. Your work deserves to be seen. I’m curating another showing, and I would love to include you if and when you’re ready. No pressure. Just an open door.
I read it twice. Then a third time, slower.
A showing. A real one. An actual gallery show curated by an actual gallery owner who saw my work and thought yes, that one.
Six months ago I would’ve laughed at that. A year ago I couldn’t walk into an art supply store without my chest closing up. I spent five years not painting. Not because I didn’t want to, but because every time I picked up a brush I saw my mother’s hands and it hurt too damn much to keep going.
And now I’m standing in a studio my husband built, holding an invitation from Cannes, and the man who built the studio won’t return my texts.
Life has a sense of humor. I don’t always appreciate it.
I type carefully.
Thank you. That means more than you know. I can’t commit to anything yet. My father is still my first priority, and life is… complicated at the moment. But I’m painting again. Really painting. And when the time is right, I’d love to talk.
The reply comes fast.
That’s all I needed to hear. The door stays open. Paint well, Aria.
I set the phone down.
I pick up a brush.
I don’t decide what I’m going to paint. That’s not how it works for me. Never has been. My mother used to say the best paintings come from the hand, not the head—that if you think too hard before you start, you end up painting what you think you should feel instead of what you actually feel.
So I squeeze out color. Titanium white. Ivory black. A muted gold. Warm red. Blue-gray tones that look like weather.
And I begin.
The first strokes are broad. Structure before detail. Shadow before shape. My hand moves faster than thought, building something before my brain can interfere and make it smaller.
I don’t check my phone.
I don’t think about Everett.
Lie.
I don’t think about Everett on purpose. He’s just there. In the background of every brushstroke, the way he’s been in the background of everything for months now.
Hours pass.
By the time I step back, the light has shifted.
And I see what I’ve done.
An aisle.
White chairs on either side. Flowers spilling everywhere. Petals scattered forward beneath an open sky. The sound in the distance, blue-gray and endless.
And at the end of the aisle, a figure. A man standing beneath an arch. Waiting.
The details aren’t sharp—he’s all broad strokes and stillness, more feeling than face. But I know him. The set of the shoulders. The height. The way he stands like he’s bracing for something.
I painted our wedding.
Not on purpose. Not because I decided to. My hand found it the same way it found The Lonely Billionaire in Cannes—without asking my permission first.
The woman walking toward him isn’t there yet. The frame cuts off before she appears. Just the empty aisle and the man at the end of it, waiting in all that light.
I stare at it for a long time.
My husband. At the end of an aisle. Waiting.
And all I can think is that he feels farther away now than he did before I married him.
I clean my brushes. Cap the paints. Wash the palette in the deep sink he installed. The motions are steady and familiar and I try not to think about how every single thing in this room is something he chose for me.
I think about it anyway.
Downstairs, I make pasta I don’t really want. I check my phone while it boils. While I drain it. While I scrape it into a container and put it in the fridge next to last night’s plate.
Nothing.
By the time I get into bed, the house feels too big again. I wash my face. Pull on one of his shirts because apparently that’s who I am now. Get under the covers on my side.
The quiet is different tonight.
It doesn’t feel like he’s busy.
It feels like he’s choosing this.
I lie there in the dark thinking about the painting upstairs and the man at the end of the aisle and the way my hand knew what I’m still scared to say out loud.
He’s pulling away. I can feel it. Not in anything I can point to or prove—just in the spaces where warmth used to be. In the texts that say nothing. In the silence where goodnight should go.
And I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t know how to hold onto someone who’s decided to handle everything alone.
I turn over. Press my face into his pillow. Breathe him in.
And I hate that this is the closest I’ve been to my husband in two days.