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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.