He swallowed down the things he wanted to say to that. Managing the barest excuse for a smile, he touched the outside pocket of the briefcase. Felt the spiral binding of the sketchbook he had placed there through the leather.
The fact that he still had it said he wasn’t worthy of anybody’s trust.
But he was trying to be.
Nodding, he turned his back on Lexie, on the room as a whole.
At his father’s insistence, he’d sacrificed the parts of his life that happened beyond this building, but not anymore. He had other responsibilities, other apologies to make.
He just had to pray that they’d be heard.
chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
“I didn’t peg you for a Brooklyn girl.”
Kate startled and whipped around, managing to yank her headphones out of her ears and knock over a brush in the process. As she fumbled for them both, she darted her gaze up. Liam, one of the guys from her program, stood behind her, looking way too amused at having caught her unawares. If the streaks of paint on his jeans and in the front of his messy, sandy hair were anything to go by, he’d been in the studio for a while. She must’ve really been out of it not to have noticed him until now.
As she ducked to retrieve her brush, she smiled. It wasn’t that she hadn’t made other friends among the students here, but Liam was the one who made a point of saying hi to her, of offering to grab her a coffee when he went on a caffeine run. She wasn’t under any illusions. The niceness was probably flirtiness, but that wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
If there was one thing she had learned from the mess this summer, it was how to handle a guy who wanted to get in her pants.
The slow flicker of a smile on her lips faded and died. She faltered as she stood back up. This summer . . . Well, she’d learned a lot of things, and most of them the hard way. But that was fine. Time healed all wounds, after all. The scars Rylan had left on her heart weren’t gone yet, but they were slowly closing over, leaving her stronger than she had ever been.
Slowly but steadily, she was recovering.
Now if she could only say the same about her art.
With a grimace, she glanced over her shoulder at the painting she’d been working on. Liam had recognized it at least, so that was something.
“What’s wrong with Brooklyn?” she asked.
“Nothing. Well, unless you’re talking about Park Slope, in which case only everything.” Liam grinned. “But Bushwick is pretty legit.” He nodded toward the photo she had tacked up beside her easel. “That’s where you took that?”
“Yeah.” She’d been scouring a bunch of local neighborhoods, taking pictures, looking for different sorts of architecture, different types of cityscapes. She just couldn’t seem to connect to them the way she had the sights in Paris. Trying to paint from them didn’t feel the same.
“You’re not happy with it?”
She sighed. “It’s a process.” That was what they all said when they were struggling.
“Maybe you’ve been staring at it for too long?”
“Nah, I’ve only been here for . . .” She wiped her hand on her pants and pulled out her phone and did a double take. How the hell had it gotten so late? “. . . okay, a lot of hours.” Maybe it was time for a break. Right on cue, her stomach made a groan of protest. Between covering the breakfast shift at the diner and running to her seminar class and then losing track of time completely here, she hadn’t exactly had a chance to eat. Or sit down. Or anything, honestly.
“You definitely need to get out of here.” His tone shifted, going just a little bit too casual. “You wanna go grab a bite or something? I know a couple of good places.”
The invitation made her pause. She half turned away, swirling her brushes through the turpentine to buy herself a second.
She’d just acknowledged to herself the fact that he might be flirting some thirty seconds ago, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he was making an overture. And yet she hadn’t been sure—she still wasn’t, honestly.
Lying liar that he was, at least Rylan had been upfront about his intentions.
Whatever Liam was trying for, she really didn’t have the energy right now. “Actually, I’m pretty beat. I think I might just head home.”
His eyes fell, but if he was too disappointed, he kept it under wraps. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Maybe some other time.”
“Okay.” That seemed to lift his spirits. “I think I’m going to go.” He pointed his thumb toward the door. “But you want me to wait for you? Walk you to the subway? Or whatever.”
She shook her head. “It’s going to take me a while to get this all cleaned up.”
He didn’t linger for long after that, and she couldn’t decide if she was relieved about it or not.
It was the first time someone had really made a pass at her since this summer, and it had unsettled her more than she would’ve expected it to. As she went about the work of washing her brushes and wrapping up her palette, she kept replaying it in her mind.
What was the worst that could’ve happened if she’d said yes? She and Liam were friends, sure, but they’d only known each other a little while. Even if their quasi date had tanked, they probably would’ve been able to get past it. She would’ve been able to get past it.
Her conviction about that much solidified as she tugged on her jacket and made her way down to the subway.
Being with Rylan this summer had taught her a lot of things. She knew now, in a way she hadn’t before, that she had a right to ask for what she wanted, to tell a potential partner what felt good and when he was leaving her cold. Or worse, hurting her. Sex was sex, and love was something else entirely, something that had burned her yet again. She’d gotten too attached too fast.
But she hadn’t made the same mistake with Rylan that she had with Aaron. The one her mother had made with her father. At the very first hint of Rylan’s deception, she hadn’t stayed to hear his excuses or let him sweet-talk her into giving him another shot. She’d packed her bags.
Maybe, just maybe, she could try again with someone else. Learn from this mistake the same way she had from her last one. She could find a guy, be it Liam or whomever, and she could get all the touching and kissing and bone-melting sex she’d had the barest taste of in her week with Rylan, except this time without all the pain. If she guarded her heart, it might even work. She could keep it casual and keep her feelings and her secrets to herself. She could give herself a chance.
Maybe she was ready, at least for that much. For a fresh start.
By the time she finally made it to her stop and trudged the last few blocks home, she’d just about managed to convince herself that this time, really, she was ready to move on. Crossing the street, she dug around in her bag for her keys, only to find the door to her building had been propped open anyway. Ugh. People locked their doors around here for a reason. She kicked the doorstop out of the way before checking her mail and heading for the stairs.
At the top of the second flight, she turned in the direction of her apartment, fumbling with her keys again. Once she’d found the one she needed, she lifted her gaze from them. And froze.
Her knees shook, and she gripped the strap of her bag hard enough to make her knuckles hurt. A half dozen times, she blinked, but nothing about the vision before her changed. It was there. Real.
Her worst nightmare and her most infuriating, shameful fantasy.
The figure sitting on the ancient carpet outside her door—the one dressed in a fucking three-piece suit, gorgeous hair a finger-combed mess, jaw as sharp as it had ever been—was Rylan. Beside him was a suitcase.
And in his hands lay her sketchbook.
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
It was the tiniest sound. The faintest hint of a whimper, but it was as loud as gunfire in that quiet hall. Rylan jerked his head up from his near-meditative consideration of the cracks in the plaster wall in front of him. The ones he’d been staring at for hours now. So long that if it hadn�
�t been for her name beside the buzzer at the door, he might’ve worried he had the wrong place.
But all that waiting, it’d been worth it. He would’ve waited the rest of the night if he’d had to, and still would’ve called it a fair deal.
There she was. Kate. For a minute, all he could do was drink her in. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright and hair a mess. She was wearing the most unappealing, awful, shapeless pair of paint-streaked jeans he’d ever seen, and fuck. He wanted her. Not just in his bed and in his arms but in his life.
Her name rose to his lips, but before he could so much as get it out, all the words he’d planned, the ones he’d rehearsed for this very moment, evaporated in his mouth. Moving slowly, as if not to spook a skittish horse, he dusted off his slacks and climbed to his feet. The distance between them pulsed. In the silence, he willed the words to come.
Then finally, quietly, she said, “Rylan.”
He nodded.
“You’re here.”
His face cracked, a smile stealing over him, and he found his voice. “Yeah.”
She didn’t move, and he didn’t, either. Their very first conversation rose to his mind. That first cup of coffee in a bustling French café. She’d been suspicious, and he’d been overconfident, and every single word he’d dragged out of her had been hard-won. A softness crept over him just thinking about it. His Kate.
Well, he could do the conversational heavy lifting here, too. He opened his mouth.
But she cut him off before he could speak. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
The soft haze of memory evaporated. The sharpness in her tone and the anger in her eyes slid like a knife between his ribs.
Right. This wasn’t a cozy nook in a coffee shop, and they weren’t two tentative prospective lovers, feeling each other out. She wasn’t the same quietly cautious girl. He wasn’t that brazen, bored, angry man.
Her gaze grew more pointed, and his chest squeezed. He would’ve denied it, if anyone had pressed him on it, but there’d been this piece of him that had clung to the hope that she might welcome him with open arms. Even after everything he’d done and all the ways he’d hurt her. All his illusions crumbled to the ground.
It wasn’t quite like being in front of the firing squad of the boardroom, but he found himself drawing up straighter all the same, bracing himself for whatever defenses he might have to construct. Grounding himself.
She wasn’t going to throw herself at him? Fine. But he wasn’t going to let her walk away this time without hearing him out.
“I . . .” He worked his jaw. Where did he even start? Gripping the spiral binding tighter, he lifted her sketchbook. “I found this.”
Her brows rose. “And? Are all the postal workers in France on strike?” He faltered, but she didn’t miss a beat. She let out a harsh, sad bark of a laugh. “I mean, I know the economy is rough, but if billionaire moguls have to resort to taking courier jobs—”
“Kate—”
“No.” She lifted a hand up in front of herself, and he stopped in his tracks, held back from the step he’d been about to unconsciously take forward.
Because she was here. Real and beautiful and everything he’d ever wanted and been too much of a fool to keep back when he might’ve had a chance, and he needed to touch her so badly it ached.
“Kate,” he tried again, “you have to know—”
“No, I don’t have to know anything.” If it was possible, her posture went even more closed.
He took that single step forward. Threw his arms wide, ready to throw her sketchbook, too, if it weren’t the most important thing he had. “You have to know, I came here for you. To see you. This is yours. I found it in our room after you left. It was selfish of me to keep it for so long—”
“For three months. Three months, Rylan. You can’t just walk back into someone’s life after that kind of time.”
“But I’ve spent every second, every moment of it thinking about you.”
She rounded on him, her cheeks flushed, hands curled tightly into fists. “Like I haven’t spent it thinking about you? About what an idiot I was for you? You used me.”
“Never,” he said, and he spat the word. He’d come here to apologize, but not for that. Anger boiled low in his gut, taking up some of the space that had been nothing but regret and hurt. “I didn’t take anything from you that I wasn’t prepared to give back a hundredfold.”
“Except my trust.” Her face scrunched up, her eyes shining, and it was the first glimmer of anything except disgust. Her voice wavered. “Except my heart.”
His own shuddered. He took a deep breath.
He’d always wondered, deep down where he’d nursed the ache she had left in her wake. To get as angry as she had, to have acted so betrayed. She must have felt something for him. His stunted heart that hadn’t dared to feel anything for so damn long had grown three sizes for her, and maybe she wasn’t as attached as he was. But she had—she’d cared. At some point.
And fuck guardedness and fuck silence. They’d had enough of that these past few endless months. He edged even closer, hands in front of himself in a gesture of supplication. He licked his lips. “Like I said. Nothing I wasn’t ready to give right back to you.”
Her eyes snapped wide, her whole body going still, and something inside of him ached. If he could just reach out to her, just bridge this gap. There was something here. She’d admitted it. Something worth salvaging, if only she’d let him.
In the distance, a door on one of the lower floors creaked open and slammed shut. The muffled sounds of footfalls and the jangling of keys. It knocked Rylan out of his trance.
Jesus. They were in a public space here. Anyone could walk by. People in every apartment around them were probably listening in.
He shook his head and leaned forward that final inch. His hand closing around her arm was a jolt of electricity, the warmth of contact that soothed him even as it seemed to set Kate further on edge. He stroked the point of her wrist with his thumb, feeling her tremor through her clothes. He caught her gaze and held it, pitching his tone lower. No one else needed to hear this.
“You told me—before you left. You said I had a lot of things to figure out for myself, and I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying so damn hard.” Gulping, throat dry, he hauled her hand up to his chest, slotting it underneath his tie, pressing her palm flat to the muscle underneath. To where the absence of his father’s ring hung like its own kind of weight.
Did she understand him? He was freer now. He wasn’t running away, not from who he was or from the possibility of being known. And he’d never hide who he was from her again.
“There’s a lot of stuff I’m still working on,” he said, “but there are two things I’m certain of. I’m a better man now. And I’m a better man because of you.”
“Rylan . . .” Her gaze flickered down, to the rise of his chest. To his heart beneath her hand.
“I’m sorry. For everything. But please.” He wasn’t above begging. Glancing meaningfully at the doors around them, he pled, “Please just let me come inside. Talk to me.”
Her eyes drifted closed, her head shaking ever so slightly, and his stomach plummeted into his knees. But she didn’t pull back. “Do you have any idea how angry I am with you?”
“I think I’m starting to, actually, yeah.”
She curled her fingers in the fabric of his shirt, and it was so wrong, so inappropriate, but even as he was waiting for the verdict that would send him to the gallows, heat flooded his skin. His sex drive, nearly MIA these past few months, gave a kick.
When she lifted her gaze back to his eyes, it was with a new kind of uncertainty, one he himself had put there, and damn if he wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of his life working to take it away.
“Me inviting you in doesn’t mean I’m any less pissed.”
The sudden rebound of his gut snapping back into place left him dizzy. Relief, pure and simple, felt like the first breath he’d taken s
ince he’d let her go.
“I can work with that.”
“I know you can,” she muttered.
And it struck him that maybe, just maybe, he had a shot.
Pulling her hand from his chest, she turned toward her apartment. The center of his ribs felt cold without her touch, his eyes sore without the vision of her face as she bent to get the lock. But none of that mattered, because a second later, she was opening the door, and stepping inside, and instead of slamming the door between them, she held it open wide.
She twisted around to look at him and asked, “Well? Are you coming in or not?”
Never, not in the two years she’d been living in it, had Kate’s tiny shoebox of an apartment ever felt so small.
Mechanically, she undid the buttons of her jacket, then dropped her keys into the bowl on the little table beside the door—the one she had literally picked up on the side of the road. All the while, her eyes stayed glued to Rylan’s form.
She’d never seen him dressed anything but casually in their time together in Paris, but damn could the man fill out the lines of a suit. Expensive and perfectly tailored, it made him look even taller than she remembered, more handsome. Her eyes burned.
She wanted to give in to the trembling in her hands and in her knees. Run over to him and kiss him and beg him take her, hard, on her bed or on the floor or against the wall. It took all of her restraint not to.
She wanted to slap him.
It was like he sucked all the air out of the room, leaving none of it for her, and her lungs went tight. He took up so much space. Moved into it with hardly more than a by-your-leave. Entered it and dominated it, the same way he’d pushed his way into her vacation and then her thoughts and her life.
And, God, but how dare he? Three long months after she’d found him out, after she’d done the hardest thing she’d ever had to do in her life and walked away from him. After she’d spent all this time getting over him—and it had been working, too. She’d been so close.
Now she was going to have to start all over again.
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