“My work?” My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else.
Gio nods. “Yeah. He went on and on about how talented you are. Said you had something special. I kept hoping he’d come back with some of your paintings, but he never did.”
My lungs feel too tight.
Connie groans and grips my arm. “Oh no. This is going to wreck her world.”
I force myself to stand tall, blinking away the sudden lightheadedness. “I’m fine,” I insist. But I don’t feel fine.
Corbin went to a gallery about my art? He believed in me that much?
Then… why did he divorce me?
Why did he end us when he clearly believed in me this much?
“We should check out Cora’s art,” Connie says carefully, her eyes scanning my face. She knows. She can see how this revelation has shaken me.
“Y-yeah.” The word barely makes it past my lips before I tip back my champagne flute, draining the last drop. It burns in my throat, but not as much as the truth I just swallowed.
I follow Connie toward the first portrait, but my mind is a tangled mess of what-ifs and too-late realizations.
Corbin had a gallery lined up.
He pushed me to paint.
He was the one who convinced me to take that class.
And then after the gala…
The memory crashes into me so suddenly, I nearly stumble in my heels.
The gala.
The one where his dad spent the entire night picking me apart.
The one where I finally snapped.
I started a fight with Corbin when we got home. I begged him to stand up for me. I told him I was tired of trying to be perfect.
I asked him if we were going to last.
If we were going to make it.
He shrugged. Shrugged. Like it didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter.
“I don’t know,” he said.
I pushed harder. I asked if he wanted a divorce. I threw words at him I barely remember now. Something sharp, something reckless—
Something about how if he couldn’t be the man I needed, then he should just let me go.
And he did.
He let me go.
A lump rises in my throat as we stop in front of Cora’s second portrait. My vision blurs, my breath catching.
I always blamed Corbin for the divorce. I thought he ended it. I thought he walked away out of stubbornness, or spite.
