Chapter 11
ELEVEN
TORI
I never thought my life would look like this.
My hand hovers over the doorknob like touching it will detonate something. I’m dressed, handbag slung over my elbow, blouse buttoned, slacks on, feet in pumps. Pumps. I’m wearing fucking pumps.
Not sexy stiletto pumps, but the short, stocky ones. Like my mom would wear to church. They aren’t even black. They are gray. Dark gray, but still. Gray.
Should I change? I should change.
Maybe that’s why I can’t open the door and leave. Because I need to change.
I don’t have time to change my outfit. I’m going to be late, but my body refuses to take one more step and actually turn the knob and open the door.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph what the ever loving fuck am I doing?
Divorce attorney. Jacob—what was his last name again?
Something strong, something that sounds like it belongs on a campaign sign or stamped across a courthouse door.
A name people take seriously. Finegan? That’s not it.
Because then I’d keep saying Finegan Begin Again in my head. Okay, so it’s not Finegan.
Sterling. That’s it. Jacob Sterling, Esq. I should feel better knowing that, but I don’t.
Because the truth is, no matter what his name is, this life—life as a divorced woman at age thirty-two—is not the life I planned.
When I was twenty-two and wide-eyed, fresh from graduation, I thought marriage was the milestone that made you an adult.
I thought forever was a thing you could will into existence with the right vows, the right person, the right dress.
I thought I’d be one of those women who built a home around love, not fights and doctors and tension.
Who celebrated anniversaries, not endings.
Skye is probably going to make me do that.
Celebrate the divorce. She’ll want to have a party.
Like a bachelorette thing, but a divorcette?
Part of me wants to ask her what the word is, but my smarter self doesn’t want to accidentally inception an idea into her brain just in case it isn’t already there.
Now I’m thirty-two and staring at a door like a child afraid of the dark, about to walk into a cold, leather-clad office to pay a man with a briefcase to help me unravel the life I fought so hard to build.
My chest feels hollow. My bones feel like rickety scaffolding, two seconds away from collapse.
And that’s what really gets me—the collapse.
Because at twenty-two, I walked down an aisle in a white dress, thinking I was walking toward solidity.
Toward something permanent. People cried happy tears, toasted champagne, talked about our bright future like it was a fact.
And here I am ten years later, staring at a different kind of threshold, going to talk to an attorney about how I can sign my name to an ending.
It’s not an ending. It’s a beginning.
If I say it to myself enough times, I may actually start to believe it.
“I. Am. Ready.” My voice cracks on the last word, like it already knows I’m lying.
The click of a door down the hall startles me. Skye’s voice follows, steady and casual, like this is any other Tuesday. “Hold up. I’ll grab my bag.”
I frown and turn just as she steps out of her room, jean skirt, boots, leather jacket, keys twirling in her fingers like she’s heading to brunch.
Her eyeliner is perfect, blue hair pulled back in two french braids that end in messy buns on each side of her head.
She looks effortlessly beautiful, fun, and totally badass. If only I looked half as intimidating.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She raises a brow, like I’m the one being strange. “What do you mean? I’m coming with you.”
“Skye—”
She shakes her head before I can say another word. “There is no way in hell you’re walking into a divorce attorney’s office alone, Tori. Not happening.”
I blink at her. “I didn’t ask you to—”
“Pfft,” she cuts me off. “You think I’m gonna let my best friend sit in some buttoned leather chair across from a stiff white man in a suit, talking about legal separation and marital assets, without backup? Not a fucking chance.”
Her tone is flippant, but her eyes are not. They’re sharp, steady, and full of the kind of loyalty that doesn’t ask permission. My God, I love her. I also hate that right now I’m dressed like I could be her mother. Whatever.
Something inside me cracks. Not enough to spill, but enough that I feel the fissure spread. I press my lips together, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
Because part of me is relieved. The bigger part is ashamed.
I should be able to do this on my own. I should be the kind of woman who walks into a law office with her head high, her voice clear, her resolve unshakable.
Instead, I’m standing in the doorway of my borrowed apartment with sweaty palms and a heartbeat that feels too loud in my ears.
I feel twelve years old. Like a child playing dress-up in divorce papers instead of tiaras.
“Skye…” My voice thins, tears welling in my eyes. “What if I can’t do this?”
She closes the distance in two strides, hands on my shoulders, grounding me. “You can. You already are. The hard part was leaving him. This is paperwork.”
I laugh, short and humorless. “Paperwork that will decide the rest of my life.”
She tilts her head, bangs falling over one eye. “Exactly. Your life. Not his. Not the one he controlled. Yours. And I’m gonna be there every step of the way.”
Her certainty is a hammer to the shaky scaffolding inside me. For a moment, I almost believe her.
Almost.
But as Skye reaches around me to open the door and we step out into the crisp Colorado morning, the air biting my cheeks, I can’t shake the gnawing voice in my head.
The one that whispers how broken this looks.
How this wasn’t supposed to be me. How my parents might act supportive to my face but will whisper behind their polite smiles.
How the girl I used to be—the one who dreamed of love and babies and happily ever after—wouldn’t even recognize this version of herself.
I haven’t spoken to anyone in Moraine since I left.
Not a text, not a call, not a single word.
Just my mother’s cautious updates, lacking any real details about the goings on of neighbors and her friends at church.
But I don’t need details from my mom to know the truth.
Moraine is a small mountain town, the kind that thrives on tourists in the summer and gossip all year long.
Everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows everything.
And when they don’t? They invent the details until the story fits whatever narrative makes the best entertainment around the coffee shop tables and church steps.
So I can only imagine what they’re saying now.
How my name rolls through town faster than a middle school game of telephone.
How people lower their voices after church on Sundays, standing in little clusters outside the stone steps, whispering like they’re praying.
She left him. Ten years and no kids—no wonder.
She was always too ambitious, too focused on her career.
She couldn’t make it work. Bless her heart.
And Chase—God, Chase knows how to play that audience.
I can see him now, polished to perfection, sliding into the same pew every Sunday with his tie knotted just so.
Head bowed, voice heavy, letting himself be caught in the spotlight of pity.
Pray for me. She left. I don’t know why.
I did everything I could. She didn’t even say goodbye.
Took off like a thief in the night while I was out of town.
He’ll paint himself as the abandoned husband, a noble victim.
And the congregation, his friends and coworkers, everyone will eat it up, will nod and murmur and pat his shoulder, will fold him into prayers and well wishes with the kind of sympathy that makes me the villain without ever saying the word or considering that every word out of his mouth is bullshit.
The shame flares sharp, hot. But right on its heels comes something harder. A low, coiled defiance.
Let them whisper. Let him make a show of being abandoned.
Let him cry crocodile tears into offering plates and soak up the sympathy.
He can perform sainthood until the end of time, but he can’t rewrite what happened inside our walls.
They didn’t live my life. They didn’t survive his refusal to heal from his own goddamn trauma.
Skye taps the steering wheel to a song on the radio I can’t name. She glances over, a half-smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “You okay?” she asks, like she’s asking about the weather and not the slow collapse of my former life.
“No,” I say honestly. “But I will be.”
My throat tightens. I stare out the window, watching power lines blur into sky.
“I just keep imagining all the bullshit being said about me back home. What they’re probably whispering in Moraine.
How Chase is probably showing up to church every Sunday looking like a martyr, making me the villain in his fucking sob story. ”
Skye snorts. One hand on the wheel, she takes my hand with the other and squeezes. “Let them talk. We never liked those motherfuckers anyway.”
“Very true,” I laugh.
“And besides,” she continues. “If I hear of one person calling you the villain in his sad little sob story, I’ll drive up there myself, punch those snooty bitches in the vag, and light the church pews on fire. Metaphorically.” She pauses, then adds, “Or not.”
Another laugh hiccups out of me. It’s small and crooked, but it’s real, and laughing definitely helps to ease the tension and stress I’ve felt all morning. “You can’t punch every person who has an opinion.”
“Watch me.” She slants me a look, then softens. “Let them whisper whatever bullshit they want, T. They don’t know shit. They don’t get a vote.”
Let them whisper. The words flare warm in my chest, quick as a match.
Maybe that’s the only answer there is. Let them whisper.
Let them talk themselves hoarse while I sign the papers that release me to build a life they won’t recognize.
Let them call it failure, while I call it truly, finally living.
We turn off the main drag into the heart of downtown, the part with the string lights crisscrossing overhead and the little boutiques stacked shoulder to shoulder with cafés and bookstores.
The kind of street that looks pretty on a postcard.
Skye practically lives down here—her coffee shop is just up ahead, the front windows already buzzing with mid-morning traffic.
A block down from it, the vibe shifts—less cozy charm, more clean and clinical. Glass windows, cold symmetry, metal letters gleaming across the facade: Sterling Law Group. The kind of signage that says we win before you even step inside.
My pulse hammers. I smooth my blouse, which is suddenly the wrong fabric, the wrong weight, the wrong life. The pumps pinch. I deserve better shoes than this. Did these shoes just become a metaphor? Probably. But I’m the math geek, not the English nerd.
“Okay,” Skye says, as much to herself as to me.
She pulls into a lot where the lines are freshly painted and the landscaping has zero personality but is definitely judging us.
“We go in. We do the consult. If he’s a good fit, we move forward.
If he’s not, we walk out and get someone different.
Either way, when this is over, we get obscene mimosas. ”
“Giant margarita glass mimosas,” I correct her.
“Giant margarita glass mimosas,” she echoes.
We sit there for a beat, both of us staring at the building like it might blink. My mouth is dry. “It looks… expensive.”
“Good,” Skye says. “Expensive is the energy we want.”
I nod because it’s that or laugh until I cry.
My hand finds the door handle, slips, finds it again.
The seatbelt catches when I try to get out too fast, tugging me back like a toddler on a leash.
I take that as a sign to slow down, breathe, and unbuckle like a normal adult human—not a person who requires child locks.
Outside, the air has teeth. Cold bites the naked slice of my ankle between my pant hem and pump.
Somewhere a truck rattles by, and a woman in a pencil skirt clips across the lot like a woman on a mission.
I wonder if she, too, ever stood in front of a door and thought she might explode from the inside out. And if she has, did anyone notice?
We walk side by side-ish, Skye’s boots thudding confident and sure, my pumps clacking behind like they’re trying to keep up. I wish my heels sounded as confident as the other woman from a few seconds ago, but they don’t. Her’s were more of a click click click, and mine are definitely more clunk.
Ah, yes. The difference between a woman to be desired and a woman to be pitied. I wonder if her shoes were also gray? Doubtful.
The glass doors loom. I can see us in them—Skye’s braids, my careful blouse, the way we lean slightly toward each other. A small, stubborn unit.
We stop at the threshold. Deja fucking vu. I stare at the handle like it’s the same one from our apartment, like I’ve been walking a slow circle and landed right back where I started.
Here’s the truth I don’t say out loud: I am both the woman who can do this and the girl who wants to run.
I am both the version of me that stayed too long and the one who finally left.
I am a thousand messy contradictions mashed into a person who can barely stand upright in these stupid, clunky, pinchy gray pumps.
Skye nudges my arm with her elbow. “Want me to open it?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ve got it.”
I swallow, find the handle, wrap my fingers around the metal.
It’s cool and solid and real under my palm.
My reflection stares back—eyes a little too bright, mouth too tight, hair behaving for once.
At least something is working for me today.
I look like a woman on a mission. Not a desperate woman looking to escape her marriage, but a woman taking control of her life and her future.
I do not feel like her. Maybe that’s okay. Fake it til you make it? Done.
Let them whisper. Let the building shine and the letters gleam and the pumps pinch. Let my hands shake. Let my heart race.
I’m getting divorced, bitches.