“Nope.” If someone had told her this morning she’d be turning down not one but two invitations to dinner today, she’d have laughed herself hoarse. Forget that dinner out for once sounded amazing. If Rylan was coming all the way out to the boroughs for her, coming into her home, he could deal with her food. Her terrible, terrible food.
She tugged open a cabinet and surveyed the prospects. She hauled out a packet of noodles with a sigh.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. It’d be a hit to her budget, but she was pretty sure she could spare the seventeen cents to feed a guest.
“I could eat.”
She bet he could. She grabbed a second pack and closed the cabinet. “I hope you like ramen.”
“Can’t say I’ve tried it.”
She dug her fingers into the counter hard enough to bruise. Slow and steady, she forced herself to take a couple of nice deep breaths. She unclenched her hands and turned her head.
He was there. Rylan, the guy who had stolen her heart this summer and then ripped it to shreds. He was standing there, his back to her, in that perfect, expensive suit, with his perfect hair, not even knowing what ramen was. And he was in her apartment, looking at her stuff. Looking at her life.
Her vision swam for a second as her focus shifted. She’d tried so hard, on a limited budget and with limited time, to make her home a sanctuary. Dove-gray walls to make a crowded space a cozy one, her friends’ art on display, an eclectic mix of things she’d found at flea markets and rummage sales all over the city giving the place character.
And it all looked so cheap.
If she’d known he was coming, she could have at least picked up a little. Her easel set up in the corner had another failure of a painting on it, and there were more awful drawings spread out on the floor. Every flat surface was covered in papers or books or art supplies, and her paint-streaked clothes threatened to spill out of her hamper. Worse, the ones that stank of fryer grease from the diner were piled on top of them.
And she was even more of a mess. She had pigment on her sleeves and probably splashed across her face. Her hair was all windblown. This man had been the one to make her really believe that she could be beautiful, but letting him see her like this, while he looked like that . . .
Her breath caught, a choked sound sneaking past her throat.
Fuck him for ambushing her. Fuck him for stealing the higher ground and for making her want him again.
“Kate?” He’d turned around to stare right at her, and she couldn’t stand it. Not for another second.
The tightness in her throat threatened to choke her. “Can you go to the bathroom or something for a minute?”
“Excuse me?”
How could she explain? “I just need . . .” She needed him to be somewhere else and she needed to fix this all. Take control of it. She needed to think.
Frowning, he narrowed his eyes at her, and he must’ve seen some fragment of how unhinged she felt. “All right.” He set her sketchbook down, and that right there—that he still had it, whether he’d stolen it or found it or what—that was a whole other can of worms, and her frayed nerves came one step closer to snapping.
She pointed at the right door; there were only two of them, a tiny closet and a tinier bathroom—it wasn’t as if he could miss it. He slipped inside, lingering briefly, watching her as if he knew precisely the kind of time bomb he was dealing with.
She waited until the door clicked closed and the sound of the fan came on to bury her head in her hands and turn around. With her back to the counter, she let herself slide down until her butt hit the ground.
Until there was no farther down to fall.
Okay. This was not how Rylan had seen this going.
While instant forgiveness followed by enthusiastic reunion sex had been his secret, dark-horse favorite for how this might turn out, he’d never discounted screaming, door slamming, and an invitation to go fuck himself. He’d even imagined a couple of potential middle grounds.
Sitting on the edge of her bathtub, idly scanning the ingredients on her toiletries, had not been among them.
How long, precisely, was he supposed to wait in here?
The drone of the exhaust fan muted any noises that might be coming from outside, but he hadn’t heard much of anything. He strained, listening harder, clenching his hand into a fist. She wouldn’t have left, right? If she didn’t want to deal with him, it would’ve made more sense to kick him out, not ask him to go sit in her bathroom while she escaped.
His heart squeezed. He was trying to keep his expectations low, but he’d been waiting so long to see her. If he could just get her to talk to him. To give him a chance.
Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He checked his watch and it’d been a solid ten minutes. With his phone long past run out of batteries and his patience about as empty, he sat up. Checked himself in the mirror. Then took a deep breath and cracked the door open.
“Kate?” What exactly was he supposed to say? Do I have your permission to come out of the bathroom now? He rolled his eyes at himself. “You still out there?”
“In the kitchen,” she called, and it shouldn’t have been such a relief, just hearing her voice.
And oh hell. He nudged the door a little wider and tried to peer through the gap. “Not that I’m not enjoying the décor in here, but . . .”
The sound of metal clinking on metal carried through the space, followed by a sigh. She grumbled something he couldn’t make out, then, louder, “Come on out, I guess.”
He poked his head out first, surveying the room. From his angle, he couldn’t see into the kitchen, which was a wonder. He’d lived in houses with closets larger than this entire place.
And yet he liked her apartment better than any of them. It hadn’t been some designer putting her home together for her. There was no feng shui or flow. Just art. Just life, where there had been so little of it in the mansions he’d been told to call home before.
Stepping out, he furrowed his brow. It was subtle, but the place was different than it had been before she’d banished him. Neater. He drew the one side of his mouth up, ready to tell her she really hadn’t needed to scoop her underwear off the floor for him, but then he paused. That wasn’t the only bit of tidying she’d done.
All the paintings, all of her artwork, were gone. Not gone gone, there wasn’t close to room enough in this place for her to disappear them completely, but the one on the easel—it had been of a bridge, maybe? She’d tucked it behind her dresser, leaving only the edge of it peeking out. The rows of pictures that had been lined up against the wall had all been turned. Staring at the blank backsides of canvases, he frowned.
The second day he’d met her, he’d gotten her to show him her sketchbook. Only the last few pictures, sure, but she’d barely hesitated before baring her soul to him that way. He’d treated it with the respect it deserved, really looking at her work before passing judgment or commenting, and the next time, she’d granted him even greater access. She’d let him flip through months’ or maybe years’ worth of drawings.
She’d let him see himself through her eyes, his hollow places filled in by the tender touch of her hand as she’d studied him and captured him on a page.
Now, he wasn’t allowed to look.
He worked his jaw against the ache it gave him. He’d lost so much when she’d walked out that door. More than he’d even realized at the time.
God, he hoped she gave him the chance to earn it back.
Squaring his shoulders, he turned to face the kitchen. If she’d been watching him, she buried her gaze back in the pot bubbling away on the stove. Didn’t spare a single glance at him.
“Dinner’s almost ready.”
He swallowed a couple of times, because that was the last of his concerns. “Sounds good.”