He raked a hand through his hair, tugging at the scalp until the ache lit up into a fierce, splitting pain.
Rylan had been so eager to believe the best about his parents’ lives, and about the lives of ancient, fictional gods.
But not about his own.
When he’d first gotten to Paris, he’d felt like hell itself was on his heels. The trial had still been fresh, the loss stinging. He’d thrown himself into wasting his life with gusto, and he’d done a damn good job of it, too. The time had flown by, right up until it hadn’t. Even then, the restlessness had only driven him to pursue his diversions more intensely.
Until, one day, a beautiful girl with eyes that saw the world in a way he’d never managed to before had walked into a coffee shop. She’d reminded him that there were parts of his life worth not throwing away.
And then he’d done what he’d been doing all year. He’d denied his past. God, but he’d deserved it when she’d left him.
Every day since then had felt like a year. He had no idea what he was doing anymore. Casual sex was ruined; sightseeing and chatting up tourists and exploring the city—they were all ruined.
He flipped to the page where Kate had drawn just his face.
It was such a contrast from what the girl last night had drawn.
It looked like the man he wanted to be.
His vision went blurry, his fingers curling in on themselves. Before he could destroy anything else, he closed Kate’s sketchbook and pushed it away across the floor.
Right before she’d left, Kate had told him that he needed to figure out what he wanted. That he had to stop lying. To her, to himself.
Maybe he already knew. Maybe he just had to get past the things that were stopping him, too.
Around him, everything went still. He held his breath.
With unsteady hands, he reached for the back of his neck. He fumbled with the clasp of the chain. One, two tries, and then it was slipping from around his throat.
Nothing happened. No music played, and his life didn’t suddenly change, but he felt lighter somehow. Dropping the ring into his open palm, he stared at the dull gleam of it.
Fucking off to France had felt like a way of saying to hell with everything and everyone. His father and all the ways he’d betrayed him; his mother and her distance, her abandonment. But all the while, he’d worn this symbol around his neck. He’d kept this reminder that even in the midst of an awful defeat, there had once, at its core, been something good.
Something worth not giving up on.
He’d done a lot of giving up of late.
He’d given up on Kate, had let her go without a fight.
He’d given up on his life and his family, on the company he’d helped build—and so what if it hadn’t been his choice? He was the one who’d let himself be corralled down his father’s path.
He was the one who could salvage something from its ashes.
But he’d given up on himself, too.
With his blood roaring in his ears, he took his father’s ring, and he set it down. Let the chain that had tethered it to him for years fall by its side, and then he stared at them both on the ground.
It was time to stop romanticizing people who’d been too flawed to save themselves.
There was something worth saving. In his life. In his work.
And with the girl who’d opened his eyes to all of it.
With Kate.
It didn’t seem to matter how hard Kate tried. Nothing was working.
Her frugality was the only thing keeping her from tossing the stupid canvas in the trash—or better, lighting it up. Well, her frugality and her vague goal of trying to come across as sane to the others in her program. Pulling her earbuds from her ears, she glanced around the studio. No one else was paying her any attention. Still, she suppressed her groan of frustration as she dropped her brushes in the turpentine and covered her face with her hands.
The semester had only just begun, and she was already starting to wonder if she’d made the wrong decision.
No. That was her father talking again.
She mentally slapped herself, pulling the brushes out of the soup and swabbing them off on her wad of paper toweling. Stabbing a little harder at it than was really a good idea for the health of the bristles, but whatever.
She belonged here, dammit all. She was as good as the rest of the students in her cohort, and she’d worked just as hard for her spot. Sacrificed as much, if not more. She was just in a rut, was all. A big Rylan-shaped rut.
Her heart gave a little pang, and she tightened her grip on the paint-soaked towels.
Three months it had been since she’d left him. Since she’d walked away from him and all the amazing, incredible things he’d done for her life and her confidence. He’d made her body and her art come alive. And then he’d torn her damned heart out.
She’d tried to paint him. Tried to process the mess he’d left of her chest in charcoal and oil. Working from grainy cell phone photographs and out-of-focus candids she’d snuck while he wasn’t looking, she’d traced the outlines of his face. And every time she’d tried to sketch in those lips or those soulful eyes, she’d just about broken down.
She’d tried to destroy him, in her paintings. Taken him apart in a completely different way from how she had in that perfect hotel room on that perfect afternoon. Sliced streaks of crimson and black through the lying lines of his smile, blocked out the hollow of an eye and scrawled her anger across his ear as if that could make him hear her.
Once or twice, she’d tried to worship him, too. Lovingly rendered the details of his brow line and his jaw. But that hadn’t worked for her, either.
She hated him and she loved him, and if she spent another second dwelling on either, she’d never make it out of this mess she’d made for herself. She needed to move on. Maybe she’d made the right decision, refusing to even so much as hear him out, and maybe she hadn’t. But she’d made her choice, and she had to live with it now.
And so here she was. Even her pictures of the rest of Paris had been soured by her memories, but New York . . . New York was home. Intent on embracing what she had instead of mourning what she’d lost, she’d taken her crappy point-and-shoot to all the corners of the city and tried to capture it. The people and the dirt and the beauty of the place. She’d tried to see it, the way she’d learned to on her trip.
Facing her canvas again, she sighed. The city street looked dull, the line work she’d been so close to getting somewhere with in Paris contrived and stupid and pointless.
She dragged her wrist across her brow.
Then she picked out a brush. Squeezed a little more cerulean out onto her palette and dabbed the bristles into the paint. She closed one eye and regarded the image.
Returning her headphones to her ears, she stepped in closer to the canvas again.
She’d given up on Rylan, but she wasn’t giving up on this. Time healed all wounds, and soon enough, with enough hard work, she’d find her muse again.
She’d find her self again. Here. On her own. At home.
chapter TWENTY-SIX
Home. Rylan turned the word over in his mind as he stared through tinted glass at the streets he’d left behind some fifteen long, pointless months ago.
At the time, he hadn’t given a shit if he ever saw them again. He’d boarded a plane with his proverbial middle fingers up and washed the taste of the trial and his father and his wasted life away with the burn of airline whiskey. He’d left with the clothes on his back and a couple of books in a knapsack, and he wasn’t returning with a whole lot more. A single suitcase and Lexi’s briefcase.
Kate’s sketchbook.
Swallowing hard, he ran his thumb across the cover one last time before tucking it safely back away. He’d have his chance to face that particular bit of smoldering landscape later. First, he had a different set of fires to put out—ones he’d once thought he’d just let burn.