Today, he shook his head, grinning wryly. “What else?”
At least the girl could take a hint. She shifted her arm away. But she didn’t pick up her drink and go. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Art museums, I guess.”
She said it so casually, as if they were just another thing she’d get around to while she was in town. Not the way Kate had said it, voice warm with reverence. Like those shrines to old, dead masters were exactly that. Sacred.
Still, he lifted his gaze, his flagging interest recaptured. “Yeah? Which ones have you been to so far?”
“Hit the Louvre today. Musée d’Orsay is on tap for tomorrow.”
Rylan twisted in his seat to face her more fully. “You’re going to love it. They—” He paused, the back of his throat suddenly dry. “They have an amazing collection of Cézannes.”
“I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for them.” Her gaze raked him up and down. “And what’s your speed?”
Nope. Not happening. He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me.” He turned his glass in his hands, feeling that tight ball of wistfulness unfurling in his chest. “I’m just a guy.”
Just a part of the scenery.
He didn’t know why he was still here.
He slammed his fifth glass of whiskey down.
She pulled out her sketchbook.
He ordered another.
“Whoa, you okay there?”
Rylan listed in his chair, frowning unhappily at his empty glass. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Just fine.”
The girl paused, lifting her pencil from the paper.
Squinting, he tilted his head to the side. “You know who you remind me of?”
“Who?”
His smile felt like it would break. Just like his ribs.
Just like his heart.
He opened his mouth to answer—
Rylan woke the next morning to the sound of his phone. His head throbbed dimly, and vague flashes from the night before skipped through his mind as he struggled to sit up, reaching for his nightstand where he always plugged the damn thing in. Only it wasn’t there—
Only it wasn’t even his bed he was lying in. Jesus, he’d passed out on the couch again. A quick pat-down of his pockets and he found his phone. Holding it up to his face, he saw his sister’s name. Mashing the button to ignore the call, he tossed his phone aside. With a groan, he lay back down.
He hadn’t forgotten about her fucking board meeting, thank you very much. As if he could forget that the whole future of the company was riding on him tucking his tail between his legs and letting himself get sucked right back into the life he’d finally escaped. The one full of mandates and guilt trips and his father always breathing down his goddamn neck. High-stakes negotiations with clients and business partners, wining and dining, and the blood-heating rush of adrenaline, of power when you got what you wanted.
The satisfaction of a job well done.
He thunked his head back against the arm of the couch and instantly regretted it. A shock of pain burst through his skull. Wincing, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter and gripped the top of his head.
See? Why would he need his old life back? Here, he had an uncomfortable designer sofa. An empty apartment and empty days and an empty fucking heart.
And a hangover from hell.
What the hell had he done to himself last night? He’d dragged himself home at least, but he’d slept in the living room, in his clothes, and he smelled like the bottom of an ashtray.
Like perfume.
Fuck. There had been a girl. An artist. She’d tried to pick him up, and he’d said no. He’d definitely said no. He knew how that kind of thing ended now.
Kate had left and Lexie had left, and he had stayed, and he had tried to go back to his routine. To his distractions. But no one was Kate.
This girl hadn’t been Kate, either.
She’d still tried to draw him, though.
His stomach gave a protesting lurch as it started to come back to him.
The girl had waited until he was pretty hosed before she’d asked if she could do a sketch of him, and he’d tried to decline. But the girl hadn’t given up. Eventually, he’d closed his eyes and let her do her worst, and it had hurt. Deep inside, in a place that liquor could never touch, no matter how hard he tried, it ached.
Because he remembered that. He remembered being as naked as a person could be, lying back and letting a woman see every part of him. Letting her capture it on a page.
Only to have her walk out the door the very next day.
At some point, the girl had finished. She’d shown him her sketch despite his protests, and it hadn’t been like it’d been with Kate. The image staring back at him had looked as ugly as he had felt. In the very center of it had been the gap of his shirt. The glint of his father’s ring against his chest.
His hand darted up to his neck, to the chain draped over his collarbones. And it burned. He’d been wearing the thing for years now, and why? When it just reminded him of his father, how he threw everything away. He’d thrown away their mother for being as faithless as he was. Had thrown away Lexie for being a girl and Evan for wanting more, and Rylan . . .
Bile filled the back of his throat.
Rylan he’d kept, but only the parts of him that served. Anything else Rylan had wanted for his life had been discarded like so much trash. Like he’d tried to discard the ring itself.
Only for Rylan to save it. To hold on to it and wear it above his heart.
Just like that, Rylan was back in his father’s office, the day the papers had been signed on the divorce. He’d watched his father rip the band from his finger and hold it over the garbage bin. And Rylan said, “Stop.”
The world threatened to swim, and it wasn’t the low ripple of nausea or the way last night’s bad decisions still throbbed through his brain.
Kate had worked her way under his skin because she’d looked at the world differently. She’d looked at him differently.
And the sudden twist of vertigo was him seeing his life in a whole different kind of light.
Clutching the top of his head against the lingering ache there, he shoved himself off the couch and stumbled down the hall toward his room. He caught himself in the doorframe for a second, then made his way to the wardrobe in the corner. He tugged on the handle of the drawer he never let himself open.
Kate’s sketchbook was sitting there. Right where it always was.
He reached out a hand for it. Gripping the spine as delicately as he could, he pulled out the book and dropped backward, bracing himself as his ass connected with the floor. He winced at the impact, clasping his head a little tighter before letting go. Crossing his legs, he cradled the book on his lap and brushed his fingertips over the cover. And then he flipped it open. Past the cover where she’d written her name and her address, past her warm-ups, to the image of his body, naked on a bed for her.
Without even really thinking about it, he gripped his father’s ring. It stood out in Kate’s drawing, the chain darkly shaded against the bare skin of his chest. He’d kept it on him when he’d stripped everything else of himself away, and Kate had rendered it as if it were a part of him. Maybe it was.
Their very first day together, Kate had shown him this little sliver of her world, reminding him of art and beauty and all the things his father had taught him there wasn’t room for in his life. He’d wanted to give her something back, and it hadn’t even occurred to him at the time, as he’d led her into a deserted museum wing . . .
He hadn’t just been showing her a painting he’d once been fond of. He’d been showing her a sliver of himself, from before. When he’d still had hope.
Hope for Zeus and Hera and hope for his parents’ marriage. A vain hope, because he knew they both ended in ruin, but still. A hope that maybe, from all that pain and awfulness, there was something worth saving.