She’d come here for a reason. Both to Paris and to this café.
Swallowing hard, she rummaged through her bag and pulled out her sketchbooks. She flipped through the one she’d finished, forcing herself to really acknowledge the progression in the images flicking past her. More than a year’s worth of drawings, more than a year’s worth of trying to figure out who she was.
When she got to the one she’d done from the top of Montmartre, she ran her thumb across the bottom of the page. It was good. Really good. A nice capstone to all the other styles she’d tried on over the past year—one drawing done in a style that felt like her own.
She’d found something that day. The whole trip was worth it, just for that. No matter how much the rest of it hurt.
Refusing to dwell, she closed that book and opened up the one she’d started yesterday. She’d filled a dozen pages with studies of statuary in the Louvre, and views of the Arc de Triomphe and the Seine. They didn’t have the same quality to them as the ones she’d done before things with Rylan had fallen apart. But that was okay. She could recapture that with time. After a few days alone to lick her wounds.
Nodding to herself, she turned back to the computer screen and entered in her information. Once she was in, she opened up a web browser and fired up her email. She glanced at the clock, giving herself exactly five minutes to indulge herself.
The snapshots Rylan had sent her took a few seconds to load, and she watched the screen with her heart in her throat. When they appeared, the sight of them was a punch to the gut. God. That first day, with the two of them outside the museum, him looking so debonair, her with a smile that seemed about to crumble right off her face. Brittle and wary. She’d had no idea what she was getting herself into.
And then their last day together, when she was a whole different kind of miserable.
He looked . . . fragile in this picture. Like he knew, and had accepted it, and was waiting for the blow.
Well, she’d delivered it. He deserved even worse for how he’d used her and lied to her and betrayed her trust. But at least she could hold her head high. She’d figured him out, and this time she hadn’t hesitated. She wasn’t her mom, and she wasn’t her old self, either.
She deserved better. And she was finally starting to demand it.
As much as part of her wanted to forget their whole time together, that was one thing she could be grateful for. Rylan’s voice had joined her own in drowning out her father’s. He’d told her that her artwork was amazing, and it hadn’t just been simple praise. He’d really looked at the work she’d done, and with a considering eye. He’d always taken a moment to think before making his pronouncement.
He’d told her that it was she herself who was special. Her way of seeing. The pieces of herself that she let bloom across the page.
He’d told her she already knew what she wanted to do.
There were still a couple of minutes left of the five she’d budgeted for wallowing, but she minimized the window with the images, returning to her inbox.
It only took a moment to pull up the messages that had been haunting her this entire time. She brought each one up in a new window and arranged them side by side.
Grad school or a real job. Risk or safety. Dreams or security.
She’d come to Paris chasing a dream. She’d followed a different one, one about love and sex and the ideal of a man who might treat her with honesty and care.
That one had turned out to be a fantasy.
But the other one . . .
Rylan might have been a fantasy. But he’d told her some things she’d needed to hear.
Without another thought, she clicked on the message from the admissions office.
She typed out her acceptance with shaking hands. This might be crazy, but if she didn’t take the chance, she’d regret it always.
Her reply declining the job offer was even quicker and easier to write. Once you knew what you were doing with your life, everything seemed to flow.
She hit send on both messages, then closed the windows.
Before logging out of the terminal, she brought up the photos of her and Rylan again. Every moment since she’d left him, she’d been torn between wanting to punch his teeth in and wanting to contact him. She didn’t know what she’d say, but things felt somehow unfinished between them.
Just in case, she checked her inbox one last time. Her chest deflated when there wasn’t a message from him. A tiny part of her was still hoping for some kind of overture, some kind of apology.
Just as well.
With her time on the computer running out, and with only an hour until her flight, she took one last look at his face on the screen. She was still angry, but there was more there, too.
She pressed her fingers to her lips and then grazed them across the screen.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You asshole. For everything.”
She ended her session and gathered her things.
It was time to leave Paris—and Rylan—behind.
chapter TWENTY-FIVE
Three months later
The stool next to Rylan’s made an ugly, scraping noise as it was dragged against the floor. He furrowed his brow. He hadn’t thought he’d been quite that unaware of what was going on around him. But shit happened. He looked up from his paper to take in the girl settling herself in beside him.
Smooth, caramel-colored skin, tight curls. One of those weird teardrop-shaped bags.
Shorts. Converse.
He folded his paper over and shot her a halfhearted grin, feeling a little sick at himself as he did. God. It was like muscle memory or a reflex, the way he flirted. No wonder he didn’t come across as the kind of guy to trust.
The girl smiled back and held up her hand to try to get the bartender’s attention. The man came over and glanced between the two of them.
Rylan tapped at his own empty glass. The man looked at the girl expectantly as he reached for Rylan’s whiskey.
“Anglais?” the girl asked. English?
Fuck it. Rylan was bored. Holding up a hand to stall the bartender, he turned to her. “Allow me. What would you like?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Red wine. Dry. Local would be nice.”
Rylan knew just the thing. He rattled off her order to the barkeep. While the bartender was pouring, Rylan held out his hand to the girl. “Rylan.”
She took it, her grip warm and firm. “Naya.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You, too.”
Her wine appeared in front of her. Dropping her hand, Rylan plucked his own glass off the bar and held it up. She clinked obligingly and they each took a sip.
It was a promising start, if a tired one. There were more than enough free stools at this particular bar this early in the evening. She didn’t have to pick the one right next to his. He didn’t have to buy her a drink. And yet she did and he did.
A handful of months ago, he’d have considered it ideal. Now it was just another way to pass the time.
“Traveling by yourself?” he asked. Creepy as conversational openers went, but he didn’t really care. This wasn’t going anywhere.
“Nah. My girlfriends ditched me for a club. Not my speed.”
He hummed and took a sip of his drink. “And what is your speed?”
“Quiet bars. Dark, mysterious strangers.” Her elbow nudged his, and God. A handful of months ago, he’d have considered this a dream.
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.
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 t
hat 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.
Seven Nights To Surrender Page 26
