When she looked up at the city again, she smiled.
There was something wrong with Rylan. His incessant pacing brought him face to face with a wall again, and he groaned before turning around. Putting his back to the plaster, he covered his face with his hands.
Late afternoon. He was supposed to meet Kate back here at the room sometime in the late afternoon, and here it was, barely past two and he was wearing a hole in the carpet waiting for her.
But what else was he supposed to do? He’d gone for a run, then stopped by the apartment to swap out some of his dirty clothes for clean ones. Had lunch in a café and caught up on the business papers. Deleted emails and voicemails from his inbox.
On a normal day, he’d read a book or watch a movie or maybe cruise for pretty girls beneath the Eiffel Tower, but none of that appealed right now. He just wanted Kate to get home already so he could ask to flip through her sketchbook. Tell her she was amazing, and that she was insane for even considering turning down a chance to pursue her art for real. Take her to dinner and then turn all his charm to getting her naked with him again.
He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
What the hell had he been doing with his life before this week?
He’d just about finished another circuit of this stupid, tiny room when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, hoping like hell that it would be some kind of diversion.
His sister’s face stared back at him from the screen, and his thumb froze over the button to either accept or ignore the call.
They’d spoken a couple of times in the year he’d been away. It’d been a while, though. The last time, she’d been relentless in her insistence that he come home. He hadn’t picked the phone up since.
He surprised himself when he did today.
He stared blankly at the screen as Lexie’s voice, distant but there, came across the speaker. “Teddy? You there? . . . Teddy?”
God, he hated that nickname. Forget that he didn’t even go by Theodore anymore, that he’d shed his father’s name nearly a decade ago. But he brushed it off and raised the phone to his ear. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, Lex.”
“About time I got a hold of you.”
Something about her tone grated his nerves. His hackles rose, and just like that, instead of annoyed and bored, he snapped into annoyed and defensive. “What do you want?”
Her eye roll was almost audible. “Nice to hear your voice, too.”
He sighed. Took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault she sounded like their mother and talked like their father—all clipped sentences, all too fast. Even as children, it was like they hadn’t spoken the same language sometimes. And somewhere along the way, they’d lost the dictionary.
“Sorry,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “How are you?”
“Same as usual. Busy.” She was always busy. “You?”
“About the same as usual, too.”
She made a huffed sound that got across exactly what she thought about that. “I’m sure bumming around Europe is terribly taxing.”
She had no idea. He dropped his hand and rapped his fingers against the wall. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a dick, but seriously. We both know this isn’t a social call.”
“It could be.”
“It isn’t.” It hadn’t been. Not since he’d turned his back on the mess their father had left for them, the mess his father had told him was his destiny. Not since he’d walked away.
She hesitated for a second. And then dropped all pretenses. “You still haven’t gotten back to Thomas about the new board. He’s been trying to get in touch with you for months.”
Ugh. “Try a year.”
“I don’t know what you’re running from—”
Yes, she did. She knew all the pressures, all the expectations, because they’d both been forced to deal with them. She’d emerged from the crucible a workaholic, desperately driven to prove their father wrong about her. While Rylan . . .
He’d worked himself to the bone, rising to the top, just the way their father had demanded. And yet with every floor he rocketed past, the walls had started to close in until he couldn’t breathe. When the bottom had fallen out . . .
He’d looked down, only to see nothing but air underneath him, and he hadn’t been willing to spend another minute in that fucking box, trying to live up to the expectations of a criminal, of a man who had ruined lives and ruined everything they’d worked for. Even their family name had become a joke.
So he’d gotten out, and if his sister couldn’t see why he wasn’t willing to get back in . . .
He curled his hand into a fist and worked his jaw. “I’ll come back to New York when I’m ready to.”
“And when will that be?”
If the pounding in his heart and the cold sweat on the back of his neck were anything to go by, not for a while. “I don’t know.”
A long couple of seconds passed. “We’ve only got a few months left before the board becomes permanent. If you don’t step up, McConnell stays at the helm, and you know Dad trusted him as far as he could throw him—”
Rylan straightened his spine and widened his eyes, incredulous. “And I’m supposed to care about who Dad trusted?”
“Look, I know you’re still angry.”
“Damn right I am.”
“But it’s your company now! I’m not old enough to take over, but you are. If you give a shit about our family, about anything—”
“If Dad had given a shit about our family he wouldn’t have fucked it over in the first place. He wouldn’t have fucked us over, he—” He snapped, shoving the side of his fist into the wall, and fuck. He hadn’t let himself get so worked up about this in a year. He forced his fingers to unclench, forced his lungs to expand and contract. Between them, in the space above the center of his ribs, his father’s ring hung from its chain, searing like a metal brand against his chest.
Why the hell had he answered the phone in the first place?
When Lexie spoke again, her voice was measured in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. “You care. You pretend you don’t. You fuck off to Europe to avoid all your responsibilities. But. You. Care.”
He’d cared too much.
He laughed, and the sound was shaky in his throat. “You always did like to believe the best about everyone.”
He tore the phone from his ear, ignoring whatever else Lexie was trying to say, hanging up before he could dig himself in any deeper. When he’d blanked the screen again, he stared at it for a long, aching moment, until his vision flipped and he wasn’t seeing the empty screen but instead was staring at his own reflection in the glass.
After all the shit he’d given Lex about her voice. He had his father’s face and his mother’s eyes. Had their faithlessness and their morals, and every single thing he’d come to resent them for.
He turned his phone over so the dull plastic case was facing him. Then tossed the damned thing on the bed before he could throw it through the window.
chapter SIXTEEN
Kate was practically walking on air as she stepped off the elevator on their floor. She’d filled her sketchbook. Finished it. Images of Montmartre and Sacred Heart and the view from the top of the hill. Little cafés and giant cityscapes, and for the first time, there was this certainty buzzing through her veins. The drawings were good. More than that, they were her.
She couldn’t wait to tell Rylan how well her day had gone. To see that conviction in his eyes when he told her she could do this after all.
At the door to their room, she rucked her shirt up and reached into the security wallet she still kept strapped around her waist. She grasped the keycard between two fingers and slipped it into the door, pausing long enough for the light to flash green before turning the handle and striding through.