But before he could reopen his mouth, she said, “Neither did I.” She didn’t look back.
The door opened and closed behind her. It sounded like a death knell. All the energy going out of him at once, he collapsed into the empty chair in the empty, empty room.
Just like that, she was gone.
chapter TWENTY-THREE
Oh God.
Kate just barely made it to the elevator bay before she broke down, smacking the button over and over while the dam burst inside her. She heaved out her first rough sob while still mashing at the button, waiting for the freaking doors to open. She had to get this under control—there could be someone in the lift, Rylan could decide to chase after her, hell, a maid might stumble by—but it wasn’t any use. She’d managed to hold it together that whole time in Rylan’s room, and now it was all crashing over her.
She’d walked out on him. He’d lied to her, had been pretending to be someone he thought she’d like. The entire time, when he’d touched her and when he’d told her she deserved more. It had all been one big lie.
The doors of the elevator slid open, revealing an empty car, thank God. Dragging her suitcase along after her, she stepped in and pressed the button for the lobby, letting out a whole new fresh torrent of tears with the closing of the doors.
Alone in that contained space, she shuddered and buried her face in her hands. She’d loved him so much. It had been too soon to feel so strongly, but she had. None of it had been real, though, and she’d been such an idiot to let him in in the first place. More of one to fall so fast and so hard. He was probably laughing at her right now.
Except she’d seen the look on his face. The devastation. He was a damn good actor, she knew, but was he that good? Did she care?
The elevator dinged as it arrived at the ground floor, and she scrubbed at her eyes. As if that would help.
She had practical things to worry about. She needed to find a place to stay for her last couple of nights. Rylan probably wouldn’t come looking for her, but there weren’t any guarantees about that, so she needed to find a different hostel than the one she’d started out in. He had her email address, but no other contact information for her. She was probably safe.
She shoved her hair back from her face and squared her shoulders before stepping out. The little details—the ones she’d somehow managed to ignore every time they’d strode through here in the past—stuck out to her like sore thumbs now. Gilded edges on mirrors and a marble bust beside the door. Thick draperies and gleaming tile. Of course this place cost more than he’d said. Lying liar.
Shaking her head, she marched up to the desk and dug through her purse until she found her keycard. She placed it down on the counter and slid it across to the woman standing there.
Who of course asked her a question in French.
Shit. She’d gotten way too dependent on Rylan handling all of their transactions this past week. She blinked a couple of times, all her high school French flying out of her mind, deserting her.
“English?” she asked weakly.
“But of course. Are you checking out, mademoiselle?”
“No. No, I—the other person I was staying with. He can keep the room.” It was his anyway. She bit her lip. Maybe she should offer to pay her half of the bill for the past few days. As if there was any chance she could afford it. “It’s just me who’s leaving.”
“I see.” She took the keycard and fixed her with a sympathetic look, and Kate wanted to melt right into the tile and disappear. “There is a water closet.” She pointed to the left, down a hallway, then gestured at her own face. “If you would like to freshen up, I can hold your bag.”
How much of a mess did she look like?
She nodded. “Thanks.” She rolled her suitcase to the end of the desk, where the woman tucked it under the counter.
Her cheeks burned as she rounded the corner to the bathroom, hauling the door open and stepping inside. At least there wasn’t anybody else there to witness her humiliation. She stepped up to the mirror and took a good, long look at herself.
It was worse than she’d thought.
Her eyes and nose were red, heartache written across every inch of her. In despair, she grabbed a wad of paper towels and ran them under the tap.
The goddamn gold-filigree tap.
Goddammit.
She squeezed the sodden mess in her fist and threw it away, turning off the tap and running to lock herself into a stall. Her head hit the back of the door, and her eyes blurred and burned. Hot tears made tracks down her face. Their room had been just as nice, the fixtures had shone just as brightly.
She felt so stupid, and not just for missing the signs.
Her mother’s voice kept coming back to her, telling her that people weren’t always who they said they were. Kate hadn’t learned from her mother’s mistakes, and now she hadn’t even learned from her own. After her last breakup, she’d sworn she’d learn to stand on her own, that she’d never let anyone lure her in with pretty words again.
Rylan’s words had been pretty all right.
Another choking sob tore itself free from her throat. He’d made her feel special, and so she’d let down her defenses, convinced that he was different.
She took a deep, shaking breath and blew it out, opening her eyes. She tore off a couple of handfuls of toilet paper and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
This time, she’d learned her lesson. Letting people in was a mistake, believing any of the things they told her to get her in bed. It was all a mistake.
One she was never, ever going to make again.
Rylan wanted to throw something. He eyed his phone, the lamp, half the contents of his suitcase. Reared back and started to take a swing at the wall itself but drew himself up short.
He could see the headline in the gossip page: BELLAMY HEIR TRASHES HOTEL ROOM. He didn’t need that shit.
He didn’t need any of this.
Threading his hand through his hair, he gave it a good hard tug and turned around to look at the fucking empty room he’d been left with. She’d only stalked out a few minutes ago. If he ran he could catch her. For a few euros, the doorman would probably be happy to tell him which way she’d gone.
But no. Fuck, no. He’d already made his case. He’d stopped her ten times on her way out. Nothing he could say would change anything. It would probably just make things worse. He couldn’t go after her.
He couldn’t stay here, alone, either.
Jaw gritted, barely restrained violence still thrumming through his limbs, he gathered up what little of his stuff he’d let get strewn across the room and shoved it into his bag. Out of habit, he opened all the drawers and checked the closet. Even lifted up the bed skirt—
Only to find a book there.
A sketchbook.
Fuck.
It suddenly seemed impossible to breathe through the tightness of his chest. He flipped it open, and he had to close his eyes. Had to stop himself from crinkling the paper in the stone of his fist.
They were the pictures of him, of course. A dozen pages of his face and his eyes and his hands. All of him, spread nude across that bed.
He’d shown her so much. He’d hidden things he shouldn’t have, but his ribs were clawing at him with the anger boiling in his chest.
Well, fuck her. Fuck that and fuck everything. He grasped the pages in his fist and moved to tear them out and—
And he couldn’t. It was all he had of hers.
Faltering, eyes hot, he closed the book and laid it on top of all the other crap in his bag. He’d find a way to get it back to her. That would be the right thing to do.
With that, he zipped up the bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He took the stairs down to the lower level. When he slid his card across the counter to the woman at the desk, she raised one eyebrow and asked, “Vous partez?” Are you checking out?
That had been his plan, but . . . “Non.” He’d booked the room through the end of her stay.
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And he might be livid with her now, but if she couldn’t find someplace else . . . she could always come back here. He wouldn’t take that option away from her.
The woman furrowed her brow as she scanned the card. “Une clé nous a déjà été rendue pour cette chambre.” I’ve already had another key returned for this room. She looked up from her screen, and the expression on her face was damning.
Kate had dropped her key off when she’d left. It made him even angrier, that she would have left herself without recourse. What if she couldn’t find someplace? Her options had to be limited on her budget, and hostels sometimes sold out.
“Oh.” He blinked a couple of times. Dammit all. Refusing to be judged, he asked to add another name to the reservation.
Kate wouldn’t come back. Her pride wouldn’t let her. But if she had to . . . he’d make sure she was taken care of.
It was too little too late. But it was all he had left that he could do.
Of course the only open bunk was a top one, smack-dab in the middle of the room.
Kate put her bravest face on. She was lucky to have found a place to stay, and to have been able to afford it. Forget that it had no privacy, or that she was probably going to fall and break her neck if she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
She shook her head and rolled her suitcase up to the wall beside the bunk. She was lucky to be here, and it was only two nights. Two nights alone in a tiny bed, sharing a room with five strangers.
But it was fine. The best she could have hoped for, considering.
Grabbing her purse, she climbed the ladder up to her bed. At least the ceiling was high enough that she could sort of sit up without bumping her head. Sighing, she dug through her bag until she found her travel guide. It was already well into the evening, so there wasn’t much point going out, but she could figure out what to do with the rest of her trip. Not everything was lost. She had one more day here in Paris, and she had the freedom to spend it any way she wanted to. No negotiating about when to meet up with anyone for dinner. No smoldering, pleading eyes staring at her. No gorgeous man entreating her to stay in bed.
Just her and her sketchpad. Exactly how she’d wanted it to be.
But it wasn’t what she wanted anymore.
The idea of exploring museums on her own hurt her heart. Eating meals in cafés alone, reading a book when she could be snuggled up in bed, watching weird TV while listening to the translation being whispered, warm against her ear. It all hurt.
The cover of the book blurred as her vision went damp. She’d had so many ideas about what this trip would be, and all of them had been wrong.
She had one more day to see everything left she had to see.
And all she wanted to do was go home.
The door to the apartment banged against the wall as Rylan slammed it open. Shoving the thing closed behind him, he dropped his bag in the foyer and stormed into the kitchen.
The mess he’d left behind had all been cleared away, but the foul, stifling feeling in the air still lingered. No cleaning crew would ever be able to contend with that. He laughed darkly at himself.
Reaching up into the cabinet, he pulled down a highball glass. The good liquor was stashed behind the bar in the living room. Seemed a pity to waste thirty-year-old scotch on a mood as poisonous as the one he was choking on right now, but that was the benefit of his life, right? His stupid, pointless life.
Gripping the glass, he headed to the bar, not bothering to turn on the lights. He’d left the curtains open, so Paris’s glow was seeping in. He popped the top off one of the crystal decanters and poured himself a couple of fingers. The whiskey went down nice and smooth as he knocked it back.
He slapped the glass down on the top of the bar, then braced his arms and let his head hang.
A week. He’d had one fucking week with Kate. After spending a year essentially alone, it should have been nothing. A drop in the bucket. But it had been everything.
One week had been all it had taken to make the rest of his life look so hollow.
He raised his head a fraction, and his gaze focused in on the vase sitting on the corner of the bar. It was pink porcelain. Probably cost a fortune.
He hated the fucking thing.
He hated all the time he’d spent staring at it, hated the color of it, hated the idea that his mother—his mom had left it here along with all the other things she didn’t need. Left it here to rot.
The violence that had shaken his limbs at the hotel came rumbling back with a vengeance. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d picked the vase up and drawn his arm back. And he put all his force and all his anger into hurling it as hard as he could.
The vase hit the wall with a crash, shattering into ruin. A rain of jagged porcelain shards, crumbling into the carpet, and fuck. Just fuck.
He’d made such a mess of everything.
“Was that really necessary?” a voice asked out of nowhere.
He jerked his head up, flailing his arm to the side, getting his hand around a stray corkscrew that’d been left out. A figure was sitting up on the couch—the very one he’d just flung a vase over. Pulse rocketing, he reached behind himself, feeling along the wall for a light, flicking it up when his fingers connected with the switch.
He blinked hard against the sudden brightness, willing his vision to adjust. Once it had, he gaped. Set the corkscrew back down on the counter.
What the hell?
“Lexie?”
His sister arched her back, letting out an enormous yawn. “Long time no see, brother dearest.” She paused for a minute and sat up straighter. She blinked, then cocked her head to the side. “Dude. You look like shit.”
chapter TWENTY-FOUR
“Seriously, what happened to you?”
Rylan wanted to bang his head against the table, but he managed to restrain himself. Barely. “Could we maybe focus first on what the hell you think you’re doing here?”
“What”— Lexie looked around innocently—“in the dining room? Where else am I supposed to eat my dinner? Midnight snack? Is it closer to midnight in this time zone? I’m not sure.”
He rolled his eyes.
Once he’d more or less recovered from the heart attack she’d given him by showing up in his living room, he’d stormed off to the bedroom he’d been using as his own to wash his face and try to get himself under control. His sister had apparently taken advantage of the pause in conversation to order take-out.
Now she sat at the big, fancy dining room table he never used, dark hair tied in a knot on top of her head, bright pink pajamas making his already sore eyes hurt.
He gestured toward the croissant and lox and fruit she’d unpacked from the brown paper sack it had arrived at their door in. “Who even delivers croissants?”
She shrugged. “Beats me. Jerome can get you anything you want, though. Night or day.”
“Jerome.” The concierge down in the lobby. “How do you know Jerome?”
She gave him a look like he was an idiot. It wasn’t an expression he’d had directed at him in a while, but it was painfully familiar. “Mother and Evan and I killed an entire summer here one year.” She waved a hand at him. “But you wouldn’t remember. You decided to stay at Exeter or something, I think.”
Of course he had. He’d taken any excuse he could get not to go home back then. “You were, what? Fifteen?”
“Fourteen.”
“And Jerome was getting you anything you wanted, huh?”
“Within moderation.” Her eyebrow twitched upward. “Some things I preferred to handle internally.”
Rylan really didn’t even want to know.
He gave her a second as she tore off a piece of croissant, topped it with a bit of the salmon, and popped it into her mouth. The noise she made was borderline obscene. “You cannot get a croissant like this outside of Paris.”
Of course you could. There were five places he could name in New York alone. “Lex,” he finally said, out of
patience. He’d come back here to lick his wounds, dammit, not deal with his sister. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I was trying to take a nap, right up until you decided you didn’t like Mom’s interior decorating.”
He didn’t take the bait. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
She rolled her eyes. “I graduated two weeks ago. If you read your email you’d know that.”
“So, what, you decided to celebrate with a trip to Paris? Here to find yourself or something?” The question came out sneering, but it threatened to strangle him.
“Ha-ha. Not all of us have time to travel for pleasure, you know.” She stabbed a bit of her fruit, then set her fork aside, narrowing her eyes as she stared at him. “Look, Thomas has been trying to call you. I’ve been trying to call you. The one time you actually pick up, you brush me off within about three seconds. It’s been a year, Teddy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want. Family gets to do that.”
He snorted. “Family.”
“Yup. Like it or not, that’s what we are.”
“And we’re supposed to, what? Band together and pick up the pieces our disgraced patriarch left for us?”
“Basically.”
“Well, I don’t want to.” He rose from his seat, feeling too caged in there at the fancy table in this ugly, fancy room. Feeling too caged in this conversation. Rubbing a hand over his face, he paced over to the wall, then flipped, putting his back to the plaster. “I wash my hands of the whole damn thing.”
“You washing your hands of me and Evan, too?”
“Evan doesn’t give a shit about any of this.”
“He will, someday, when he wakes up from the hippy dreamland he’s living in.”
That hippy dreamland being art school. Anger rose up in Rylan’s throat. “Why do you always have to dismiss what he wants to do with his life?”
Seven Nights To Surrender Page 24
