Chapter 17
LEAH
The morning after the livestream ended, my phone had forty-seven missed calls.
I told her to decline all of it, then silenced my phone.
The lyric pages for Tess’s new song were still on the kitchen table, a coffee ring dried into the upper right corner.
The narrow alley outside looked the same as yesterday.
The laundromat’s back door opened on schedule.
The downstairs grinder started up at exactly seven.
The world had finally learned my name, but it had not changed a single thing inside this apartment.
Evan sent a link with one line: Item one has been updated.
I opened the official page for “Still Burning.” The cover was still the photo of Asher and Sabrina standing in front of the flame effects, and the play count hadn’t reset.
I scrolled past the performer and production information.
The songwriting credit field held a single name.
Leah Morgan.
I looked at it for a long time. The font was no larger than any other credit on the page, and there was no note telling listeners I had waited thirteen years for those words.
Sabrina kept her performance credit. Asher’s vocals, guitar, and arrangement contributions each remained.
No one was erased from the work they had actually done.
Only the song had finally stopped lying.
The back catalog updates weren’t all finished yet.
Of the twelve titles on the list, four showed as pending, three had already added my name, and several others required platform re-syncing.
The execution confirmation from the lawyers listed only songwriting credit, royalty split, and performance and arrangement contributions—all processed according to the final fact sheet, with no conditions attached regarding the marriage or future collaboration.
I opened the lead track from the first album. That page was still syncing; for the first time, the credits column listed what each of us had actually done. My finger rested on Leah Morgan. The name didn’t change the music. It decided whose archive this work would enter.
I saved a screenshot of the updated page and didn’t forward it to any media outlet. The screenshot went into my own work files.
The email came from the lawyers, not from Asher. He hadn’t added a personal note at the end of the documents, and he hadn’t asked whether I’d watched the livestream.
The PR consultant inquired through the lawyers whether I wanted to release a statement. I deleted the passage in the draft that thanked Asher for his courage in speaking the truth and kept three sentences:
I confirm that “Still Burning” and the related works currently being corrected will have their songwriting credit, royalty split, and performance and arrangement credits updated to reflect actual contributions.
I am grateful the record is being corrected.
I will not be commenting on private matters relating to the marriage.
After the statement went out, the interview requests multiplied.
One streaming platform offered to produce an exclusive documentary centered on “the rock star’s erased wife,” on the condition that I provide notebooks, old recordings, and private emails from the period of the divorce.
A publisher offered a seven-figure advance for the complete story of thirteen years of uncredited work.
Two record labels promised a formal release within six weeks, provided I addressed “my first fan” in the lead single.
Every proposal said it wanted to give me back my voice, then specified that I had to use Asher to explain myself.
I declined all of them. Marisol asked afterward whether I’d be willing to run another session after the six-week course ended.
She hadn’t raised my pay because reporters were camped at the door, and she hadn’t suggested rebranding it as a celebrity class.
The next session would still be twelve mismatched chairs, the out-of-tune piano, and the same hourly rate.
“Yes,” I said.
At ten that morning, Marisol taped a sign to the community arts center entrance: CLASS IN SESSION — NO PRESS. A camera van was still parked across the street, its lens aimed at the door. She asked whether I wanted to cancel the class or come in through the back.
“No,” I said.
I walked in through the front door without stopping to answer questions. All twelve chairs were filled, and three drop-in observers had joined. Someone had clearly recognized me, but no one reached for a phone. Traces of the lyric-structure notes from the last class still clung to the whiteboard.
I wrote the day’s topic at the top: Write what you actually know.
“We’re not talking about the news today.” I turned around. “Who wants to go first?”
Maya raised her hand. By the second verse she was still dodging the most specific line.
I stopped her and asked where the story had actually happened.
She said it was the school parking lot, not the train station she’d written.
We cut the train station and put the rain-slick parking space back in, along with the person she’d never admitted to herself she had waited for.
An hour later, the camera van was still outside. No one in the room was watching it anymore.
Over the weekend, Tess and I finished a second song. She wrote the melody and the first verse; we revised the second half together. The song was about a woman repairing the roof of an old house—not revenge, and not a single line that could be clipped as a response to Asher.
The bridge had originally said the storm had finally passed. I asked Tess to think again: what had actually changed the house wasn’t the weather; it was the woman climbing the ladder herself for the first time. She cut four lines and worked the sound of a hammer striking wood into the rhythm.
Tess wrote two names on the split sheet, then looked up. “Will more people hear it now?”
“Probably.”
“Should we release it early, while the news is still hot?”
I read through the lyrics one more time. “We wait until the song is ready. Not until the news cycle peaks.”
She nodded and left the release date blank.
Over the following weeks, the names in the back catalog were corrected one by one.
Each time a correction was completed, the lawyers sent a brief confirmation.
I saved the documents, but I didn’t refresh the platform pages every day or accept any interview that required me to publicly forgive Asher.
Online, some people called his livestream the most expensive love declaration in history. Others said that if a man was willing to give up a stadium tour, his wife owed him at least one chance. Those people converted the career price he had paid into an emotional debt I was supposed to repay.
In the third month, the divorce mediation took place on the scheduled date.
The office was in an unmarked commercial building.
Asher had arrived before the appointed time and was seated on the far side of the long table.
He wore a gray suit. No team stood behind him; only the documents his lawyer had prepared lay in front of him.
This was the first time we had seen each other since the livestream.
His gaze paused for a moment when I walked in, and then he stood.
He didn’t move closer, and he didn’t use my name to hold me in place.
I sat down beside my lawyer, and the mediator began going through the items already agreed upon.
The unreleased works, notebooks, and private demos would remain mine.
The songwriting credits and royalty splits for the twelve core works would follow the fact sheet.
Asher would retain his genuine performance and arrangement contributions.
Shared property would be divided according to the plan both parties had already confirmed, without being recalculated based on either party’s public statements or career losses.
The lawyers confirmed that Asher’s future performances of the existing works would not require him to contact me privately, but all public songwriting credits and royalty splits had to follow the final list. He would have no first-option rights to my unreleased work merely because he was my husband.
Asher did not ask to preserve a channel for direct inquiry; he only had his lawyer confirm that execution notices would continue to pass through both parties’ representatives.
The process did not last the whole day. No one argued over furniture in the old house, and no one turned the marriage into another copyright dispute.
The mediator turned to the final section. “Both parties may request a postponement of signing, or may request a review before the final divorce decree takes effect. Do you need additional time?”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at Asher.
He looked down at the documents. The projects he had canceled after the livestream and the compensation he had paid appeared in none of the exchange terms, and he had not asked to trade the rights he had returned for a private conversation.
He looked up at me for a moment. Those few seconds were enough for him to request a postponement, and enough for me to change my answer. Neither of us spoke.
“No,” he said.
The mediator asked whether he wished to request a reassessment of the property arrangement on account of the documentary withdrawal, the tour downgrade, or the compensation amount.
“No,” Asher said. “I said it myself, on that stage. Don’t charge any of it against her side.”
He didn’t say it while looking at me, and he didn’t wait for me to respond. The mediator checked the corresponding box and turned to the signature page.
My lawyer slid the property and creative-rights separation agreement across to me first. I signed page by page, and when I reached the last page, Morgan landed beside the date without my hand shaking.
Asher received the same document.
He signed slowly. When he finished the final stroke of Vale, his breath stopped for half a beat.
I tightened my fingers around my pen cap and didn’t raise my hand.
That was the last moment either of us could have called a halt; he didn’t use it to ask me to stay, and I didn’t use it to ask him to wait.
After he finished signing, he set the pen back on the table and pushed the document to the mediator.
I still loved him. My chest ached when he signed. Morgan was already written beside the date, and the ache did not make me cross it out.
The mediator collected the documents. “The agreement takes effect today. The final divorce decree will become effective according to the court’s schedule. Apart from implementation matters, neither party needs to contact the other directly.”
Asher nodded. “Understood.”
He didn’t say anything before he left.
I looked at the two signatures side by side on the last page, and for the first time I was certain: he had truly stopped using his role as my husband to hold me in place.