“Theodore Rylan Bellamy the third,” he said, like he were introducing himself for the first time. It was a weight lifting off his shoulders and an anchor sinking him to the bottom of the sea. “Firstborn son of Theodore and Felicienne Bellamy.”
She repeated the name, pronouncing it slowly, recognition a distant but approaching hollowness to her eyes. “Theodore Bellamy.”
“I’m surprised you don’t remember it, if you go to school in New York. It was in all the papers last year. He embezzled half the earnings out of Bellamy International.” He couldn’t help grasping the ring through his shirt. “Within five years, it went from one of the biggest IPOs of the decade to a cautionary tale.”
Her gaze followed the motion of his hand as he tightened his grip on that little slip of gold. “Your father who went to prison.”
“Currently starting the second of a fifteen-year sentence.”
“I don’t remember—” She cut herself off. “I was in school. I didn’t pay that much attention to the news.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Well, unless you skip to the gossip pages. Then there’s his society wife who was having dalliances with half the young men in Europe. She had her own assets, so when Dad went away, she started over again. Somewhere. I imagine she’s doing well.”
“And your assets?”
“My father lost almost everything, but we each had trust funds predating the crimes. The courts couldn’t touch them.”
Looking faint, she sunk down to sit on the edge of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. “Trust fund. You have a trust fund.”
Of course that was what she keyed in on.
“I never lied to you, Kate.” Spoken aloud, it sounded just as empty as it had when he’d thought it in his head the night before.
She look up at him, eyes blazing, and fuck. Apparently, it sounded even worse than that.
And then she laughed, the sound ugly and wrong and bordering on hysterical. “No,” she choked out amidst it all. “No, of course you didn’t. Stupid me just made assumptions about you being a normal guy. Stupid me suggested you’d been staying in as terrible of a hostel as I was.”
“I should have corrected you.”
“Damn right you should have. Crap.” She buried a hand in her hair and tugged. It looked painful—made him want to cross the room to her and stop her, or soothe the ache with his touch. “Shit, you must think I’m such an idiot.”
“No. Not at all.” He went so far as to reach out, but she recoiled, standing and stepping back, putting as much space between their bodies as the room could afford.
It was a slap in the face. One he deserved, but one that took him by surprise. It hurt even more when she wrapped her arms around herself.
Her expression was lost. “You lied to me. I trusted you, and you lied to me. After everything I let you do, after everything I told you last night . . .”
“I wanted to tell you . . .” His excuses and his plans seems so pathetic now.
She shook her head. “With that kind of money, you can have anything, do anything you want. Stay at the nicest place in the city. And yet you’re here.”
“I thought you’d be more comfortable—”
“What? Someplace cheap?”
This was all spinning out of his control so fast. “Someplace . . .” The word stuck in his throat. “Normal.”
Because that was what he’d been stealing here, what he’d been squirrelling away in this pocket of time. The chance to be normal. To have a normal life instead of having to be . . . him.
It had been exactly the wrong thing to say.
“Normal.” The corner of her lips twitched downward. “Ordinary, right?”
She was the furthest possible thing from ordinary. “No!” He planted his feet, raked his hand through his hair. “You’re twisting everything I say.”
“Because you lied.” She said it so quietly. “I asked you who you were, so many times, and you lied.”
“Not about the things that mattered.”
Something in her eyes broke. “But they were things that mattered to me.”
And what could he say to that?
He wasn’t sorry. She never would have touched him had she known, and he wouldn’t give up what they’d had for all the money in the world. Even with how much this hurt right now. He wouldn’t give it up.
“Tell me how to fix this.”
Shaking her head, she looked away. “I don’t think you can.” She swiped a hand under her eyes and turned, picking her purse up off the floor.
Reaching for her suitcase.
Everything in him screamed. She wasn’t really leaving. Not without giving him some kind of a chance to make this right. “What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“And where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. Back to the hostel. A different hostel. I don’t care.”
“No. No way.”
“I’m sorry, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
His throat ached. “You’re really going to throw this all away? Just like that?”
She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. “Throw what away? This was never going to last.” And there was something bitter there. “Even if—even if you hadn’t . . . It was a fling. I live in New York and you live here. Even if I were in your league—”
“Don’t you ever say that.” He steamrolled right over her. She could say a lot of things, but she could not say that.
“Please,” she scoffed. She looked away again, but not before he saw the redness in her eyes. “I’m this naïve, broke art student, and you’re . . .”
The word came out before he could stop it. “Lost.” With her, he’d felt found for the first time in months. In years. “You weren’t wrong, that day in Montmartre. When you asked me what I was running away from. I may have more resources—”
“And more experience, and all these . . .” She waved her hand, flustered. “. . . moves. Your pickup crap.”
“My pickup crap never worked on you.”
She shook her head. “It worked so much better than you ever would have imagined. I just pretended it didn’t because—”
He gave her a beat before asking, “What?”
“Because I knew you were going to break my heart.”
God.
“Kate . . .”
“No.” She grabbed the couple of things she’d spread out on her nightstand and shoved them into one of the pockets on her bag. “It doesn’t matter.”
Two could play at that game. “It matters to me.”
She snorted, clambering over the bed to avoid touching him on her way to the bathroom. The second she stepped away, he headed over to her bag and started taking things out again. She came back, her toiletry and makeup bags in her hands, and glared at him.
“I’m not letting this go without a fight,” he promised. “After everything. All the places we went, and the . . .” His gaze drifted to their bed. The one where she’d let him strip her bare. Let him taste her and touch her and put himself inside her. He squeezed his hands into fists. “After everything we’ve done together.” His heart dropped another inch. “After I posed for you.”
He’d shown her his fucking soul, and now it was all worth nothing to her? Because he’d told a couple of little half truths?
She paused, breathing slower, and for a brief instant, he let himself harbor a hope. She surveyed the tiny space where they’d touched and kissed, and dammit, made love.
And then she gave him the most watery, awful smile. “Maybe it’s better this way.”
“Better?”
She stepped around him, placing her things into her bag. Swallowing hard, she grabbed his hands, and it felt so fucking good just to have her touch him. Right up until she took the shirt he had balled up in his fist and pried his fingers away.
She repacked it, along with the other items he’d removed. “If this had gone on—if I’d left feeling the way I felt yesterday . . .” Her voice cracked, and just the sound of it had his own eyes burning. “I would have held a torch for you forever. I always would have wondered.”