Chapter 63

Lumi

Callum’s head snapped up from whatever he’d been pretending to read the second the door opened.

His eyes landed on me, then flicked to Ren standing just behind my shoulder, and his whole face twisted into something sour before he’d even opened his mouth.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice sharp, like I was the intruder in this scenario and not the other way around.

"What does it look like?" I said evenly, sitting opposite him without waiting for an invitation.

I picked the papers and set them close to him, so he could see them clearly, since it seems like he’d lost his sight just a few months of me being away.

I pulled the pen from the little holder on his desk without asking. I signed my name on the line marked for me, my hand completely steady, and slid it across to him.

Then I straightened up and raised my brow, waiting.

He stared down at the papers like they’d personally offended him. His jaw worked for a long moment before he finally looked back up at me, and something ugly settled into his expression.

"You’ll regret this," he said, his voice low, almost lazy, like he wasn’t even bothering to try very hard.

"You know that, right? You’re throwing away the one person who actually loves you." I didn’t say anything. I had nothing to say to that.

I just watched him, waiting for whatever he thought was coming next.

"I made one mistake," he continued, leaning back in his chair like this was some casual conversation between old friends.

"One. Do you know how many men do what I did? It’s not even a real thing, Lumi. Every man slips up eventually. You act like I burned the whole marriage down over nothing." I felt my jaw tighten, but I kept my face still.

"And let’s be honest," he went on, waving a hand vaguely in my direction, like he was doing me some kind of favour by even explaining this.

"Where exactly do you think this goes from here? You think Neve’s going to keep you around forever? Best friends drift, Lumi, especially once she gets married and starts her own life. And your little pet.." He said, like it tasted bad in his mouth.

"You think a man like that keeps a woman like you around without expecting something for it? Sooner or later you’ll have to sleep your way into staying relevant to these people. That’s just how it works." He tilted his head, almost thoughtful.

"You should really think about what you’re doing." The room went very quiet.

I felt Ren shift slightly behind me, tension rolling off him in a way I could feel without even turning around.

But I didn’t crash. I didn’t yell, and I didn’t cry, and I didn’t give him a single one of the reactions he was clearly fishing for.

I just smiled.

"Worry about yourself first, Callum," I said calmly. "You’re the one who’s going to need it."

His face went red instantly, some of that lazy arrogance cracking right down the middle.

"Fine. If this is what you want, I’ll do it. Just don’t come back begging."

He snatched the pen up off the desk and scrawled his signature across the line with more force than necessary, the pen almost tearing through the paper.

I picked the papers back up, folded them neatly, stood up, and turned toward the door, where Ren was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed slightly like he was trying to read something underneath my expression.

"Let’s go," I said simply.

I walked out of that office with my head held high, my hips swaying with every step, refusing to give Callum the satisfaction of watching me shrink.

I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t the one who needed to hide his face in that room. He was.

Neither of us said a word until we reached the car. Ren opened the door for me, but before I could climb in, I noticed him staring, his eyes moving slowly over my face like he was searching for something hidden underneath it.

As I sat, I turned to him, forcing a light smile. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

He didn’t smile back. He didn’t look away either. He just stared at me a moment longer, his gaze steady and far too knowing.

"I hate it when you do this," he said quietly.

I blinked, genuinely confused. "Do what?"

"Pretend like you’re fine when you’re not." His voice dropped even lower, rough at the edges. "You don’t have to pretend with me, Lumi. You don’t have to act strong when you’re breaking. You don’t have to smile when all you want to do is fall apart." He paused, his jaw tightening.

"I hate seeing you sad. God knows I do. But I’d rather see you cry than watch you smile while you’re breaking inside."

I tried to hold it back. I really did. I pressed my lips together and blinked hard, willing the sting behind my eyes to just stay there, to not spill over in the middle of a car park where anyone could see.

But it fell anyway. One tear, then another, sliding down my cheek before I could stop them.

I knew how it looked. I knew people would wonder why I was still crying over a man I’d wanted nothing more than to be free of, why it still hurt when I didn’t even want him anymore. Honestly, I didn’t fully understand it myself.

I had always wanted the fairy tale. The one man, the promise, the till death do us part. I used to believe in it so completely, back when I was young enough to think love worked out simply if you just tried hard enough.

And now here I was, barely into my thirties, already divorced, standing in a car park with my ex-husband’s cruelty still ringing in my ears.

And ended up like the one person that hurt me the most, my mom.

I didn’t regret leaving him. Not for one single second. But regret and pain weren’t the same thing, and grief didn’t care whether the thing you lost had been good for you or not.

I let the tears fall, quiet and unashamed, right there in front of Ren, because for the first time in a very long while, I didn’t feel like I had to hide it.

Ren didn’t say anything else. He just reached out, brushed his thumb once beneath my eye to catch a stray tear.

"It’s fine, you’ll be fine. I promise." he said gently then paused.

"We’re not going back to the hospital yet." I frowned, wiping the rest of my face with the back of my hand.

"Ren, I need to check on Theo."

"Neve’s with him. She texted twenty minutes ago, he’s fine, he’s eating breakfast and demanding cartoons." He held my gaze steadily. "You need an hour, Lumi. Just one. For yourself."

I wanted to argue, out of habit more than anything, but the look on his face told me he wasn’t going to budge.

So I climbed into the car, and he shut the door behind me before jogging around to the driver’s side.

We drove for almost forty minutes, weaving out of the grey heart of the city and into brighter, noisier streets, until the car finally slowed in front of a set of tall metal gates strung with colourful lights, even in the middle of the day.

Beyond them, the shapes of rollercoasters curled up into the sky, and the distant sound of screaming and music drifted over on the wind.

I stared out the window, completely stunned. "An amusement park?"

"You looked surprised," Ren said, killing the engine. "Good. That was the point."

"Ren, I can’t... I have responsibilities, I have Theo, I have..." I tried thinking of multiple excuses.

"You have one hour," he said, cutting me off gently but firmly. "One hour where you’re not a mother, or a business owner, or a woman standing in a divorced husband office. Where you’re just Lumi." He turned to look at me properly.

"You’ve been locked in a box for years, doing what’s expected, holding everything in so nobody has to worry about you. I’m not letting you carry that box in here." Something in my chest cracked open a little, warm and unexpected.

I looked at the gates, at the noise and the colour and the ridiculous joy leaking out from every direction, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I actually wanted to go inside.

"Fine," I said, a small, helpless laugh slipping out. "One hour."

"We’ll see," he said, already climbing out of the car with a grin tugging at his mouth.

The moment we stepped through the gates, it was like stepping into a different world entirely.

Music blared from speakers shaped like ice cream cones, children ran past screaming happily, and the smell of sugar and fried batter hung thick in the air. I hadn’t been anywhere like this since I was a teenager.

"Where first?" Ren asked, looking down at me, his hands shoved into his pockets like he genuinely didn’t have a plan, though I suspected he had already scouted the whole place from the car.

I looked around, and my eyes landed on a massive, twisting rollercoaster looping high above the trees, its cars currently flipping upside down with a chorus of terrified, delighted screams trailing behind it.

"That one," I said, pointing before I could talk myself out of it.