“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.