Lahat ng Kabanata ng He Ruined Me, Now I’m His Step Mother: Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 20

I thought winning in court would fix everything but it didn’t, it just gave me space to realize how much of me was still tied to Marcus even when he wasn’t in the room, because fear leaves fingerprints on your bones and mine were everywhere, in the way I flinched when my phone buzzed, in the way I measured every word before I said it out loud, in the way I kept waiting for the moment James would get tired of my mess and walk away like everyone else always did when things got hard.But James didn’t walk, he stayed, he stayed through the nights I couldn’t sleep and the mornings I snapped at nothing and the afternoons I locked myself in the studio because designing felt safer than feeling, and he never asked me to be fixed before I was loved, he just loved me while I was still broken around the edges and that pissed me off sometimes because I didn’t know what to do with a man who didn’t need me to earn his patience. Luminère was exploding in the best way possible after London, emails ke

Paris didn’t feel real until I was standing backstage with pins in my mouth and Lily holding my hand and James behind me trying not to look as nervous as I felt because he knew if he panicked I’d panic harder, and the sound of the crowd on the other side of the curtain was like an ocean I wasn’t sure I knew how to swim in yet, but then the music started and the lights came up and one by one my girls walked out wearing pieces that were built from every night I didn’t sleep and every time I chose myself over fear and every paper flower Lily ever gave me because I stitched a little bit of her into the lining of each dress so no matter who wore them they’d carry some of that pure, stubborn hope with them. The show was twenty minutes that felt like a lifetime and a blink at the same time, and when the last model came out in the gown I’d made from that first bolt of blue silk Tayo and I fought about, the one that looked like storm clouds breaking open, the whole room stood up, not because

Lily started asking about her father again, not Marcus, she never asked about him, she asked about the man who used to make her laugh before everything went bad, and I told her the truth in the way Dr. Kemi taught me, that some people aren’t meant to be in our story forever but they still mattered for a chapter, and that her real father was the man who showed up every day, the man who taught her how to skip rocks and wear paper crowns and eat ice cream for dinner, and she thought about that and then said “James is my real dad, okay, can we tell people that now,” and James was in the other room but I know he heard because his voice cracked when he said “Yeah, kiddo, we can tell people that, I’d be honored.” We didn’t do a big announcement, we just started saying it, “my dad James” when Lily introduced him at school, “Lily’s dad” when James talked to her teachers, and the word fit us like the dress I made called Freedom, like it was always meant to be there even when we didn’t have the

Forever started looking different once we stopped waiting for it to end, it looked like mornings where the coffee was still terrible but James made it anyway and Lily rated it one to ten every single time like she was a judge on a cooking show, it looked like Luminère’s new studio with windows that let the sun in all day and fabric hanging from the ceiling like we lived inside a dream we’d sewn ourselves, it looked like me not checking my phone for bad news first thing because bad news didn’t own my mornings anymore, joy did, and joy was louder now. The “After After” sketch became a whole collection faster than I expected because once you start designing from peace instead of pain the ideas don’t stop, they just flow, soft knits that felt like being held, dresses with hidden pockets for notes and keys and courage, pieces in blue because blue was the color of the first stitch Lily and James gave me and now it was the color of us, and when it launched women sent me videos of themselves

The morning after came soft. No alarms. No emails. Just light through the blinds and James already in the kitchen, moving quiet so he wouldn’t wake me. I heard the kettle click off and smelled coffee, then toast. Burnt, like always.I pulled on his hoodie from the chair and walked out barefoot. “You’re up early,” I said. He turned with a plate in his hand. Half the toast was black. The other half was just pale. “I was trying to get it right,” he said, setting it down. “Failed.”I sat at the table and took a bite anyway. Still tasted like him. “You don’t have to cook,” I told him. “I know,” he said, pouring me coffee. “I want to. You let me handle dinner last night. Fair trade.”Lily would’ve rated it a three out of ten. I gave it a seven, just to make him smile. He did, quick and real, then sat across from me with his own mug. No phone. No TV. Just the sound of the street below and us not filling the silence.My phone buzzed. Tayo. Studio flooded. Pipe burst. We’re moving