His Inspiration

by Tanya Gallagher

  Gabe tried to reassure her, steady and confident like he always was. “I know you’re worried, but this will take your mind off of it.”

  “It’s not that.”

  His voice tightened. “Then what is it?”

  A helpless puff of air left her lungs. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do what Bex?” His voice hardened, closer and closer to metal as he noticed the change in her tone. Closer to steel.

  It wasn’t fair to him to do this now. She clamped her lips around the words and chose new ones. “Nothing. Never mind. Go enjoy your show.”

  Twenty minutes later, when Bex arrived home, Gabe was waiting on her front steps. He was heartbreakingly beautiful in a suit with no tie. He had styled his hair in the way she loved, and his dark eyes followed her without hesitation as she walked from the car to her front door.

  “What are you doing here?” Bex opened the door and let them both in because she wasn’t sure how to push him away outside.

  “I’m checking on you.”

  Her heart squeezed, and tears burned her throat. “It’s ten minutes to opening time. You need to go to your show, Gabe.”

  “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.” He searched her eyes, unwilling to look away. But he needed to drop this and leave.

  “I’m scared about my results, okay? But I’ll be fine. I just can’t face the world right now.”

  Gabe dropped his keys by the front door and started to shrug the suit jacket off his shoulders. “Then I’ll face it with you from the couch.”

  What was he doing? He couldn’t. “Gabe, no. This is your moment. You are not giving up your chance to go impress everyone just because I’m sitting at the self-pity buffet right now.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing. There are more nights to go to the gallery. The show’s going on for another week. But if you need me today, this is where I’m going to be.”

  “Your brother is waiting for you.”

  “He’ll be fine.” Gabe took another step into the room. “I’m staying here.”

  She hardened her voice. “I don’t want you to.” Didn’t he see?

  Gabe’s voice came out pained. “We’re partners, Bex.”

  But they wouldn’t be. And it was easier this way—safer for him—to end this before he got too hurt. She was a ticking time bomb, and eventually time bombs exploded. She was not going to ruin him.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be anymore.”

  She was a yielding to smaller pain now instead of to something life-shattering later. Because theirs could have been a big love if she’d let it. And big loves left the biggest wounds.

  Gabe reached for her. “What are you talking about? Why did you start changing your mind?” He gasped, bare pain etched on his face as he demanded answers. “Is this because of the job I took the other night? Is it because of my past?”

  “No, of course not. It’s me, Gabe. I told you I’m not wired for this. For relationships. Everyone that gets close to me gets hurt. Being apart is better.”

  “Not for me. And not for you either.”

  He was right; she was better with him—freer, more fun, less in her own head. He’d shown her how beautiful the world could be, and she’d started to see it that way, too. But fear was a black curtain draped over the furniture of her life. Everything changed shape in the dark. Grew fangs.

  Gabe took a hesitant step forward, stopping just shy of reaching out to her. “You keep saying that pushing me away is safer for me, but I think it’s only yourself you’re protecting, Bex. I think you’re scared that if you let someone in you could get hurt.” His voice wavered. “I get that you’ve been through a lot, honey, but I’m not out to break your heart.”

  Too late.

  Because that’s exactly what this was—her heart shattering, crushing. A huge space in her chest imploding. She was a bomb in a glass room. She was moon dust in outer space.

  “This is what we need,” she whispered. She was fractured and fragmented, and she might never be whole again, but walking away from this was still the right thing to do.

  Gabe took another step. If he touched her, it was going to ruin everything. It was going to tear down all her walls. “You don’t get to do this just because you’re scared, Bex.”

  Her mouth filled with tears, and her lungs deflated like an empty bag.

  “If you thought we weren’t compatible or that what we have wasn’t incredible, that would be different,” Gabe said. “You need to fight for this Bex. For me.”

  But she couldn’t. And she couldn’t speak, too scared to open her mouth and beg for his forgiveness. She loved him too much to let him suffer for her.

  “Look at me, Bex.”

  She wouldn’t meet his eye.

  “I’m willing to work at this. Are you?”

  She shook her head. “No.” The tiniest, biggest word. The hammer pulverizing everything to dust.

  Gabe’s face blanched, and his beautiful features tightened. “Jesus Christ.” He raked his hands through his hair. “Why today, Bex?”

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s too late for that.” Gabe grabbed his suit jacket and stopped at the threshold of her door. “You said everyone in your life gets hurt. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy when you’re the one who pushes them away.”

  Chapter 32

  “It’s about time.” Vinny clapped Gabe on the arm as Gabe stepped into the Trailblazer Gallery, buttoning his suit jacket. Vinny’s smile fell as he looked at his brother’s face. “Dude, what the hell happened to you?”

  Great. Gabe must look as shell-shocked as he felt.

  He frowned. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Is this chick the reason you look like someone killed your cat?” Vinny gestured at the wall to Gabe’s back, but he couldn’t follow his brother’s gaze. If he did, he’d see Bex staring back at him, all aglow in the sunrise at Red Rocks. Her face the morning they’d made love, when they’d shown each other everything out there in the desert. There were more photographs of Bex, too, all around Vegas and in his bed. Intimate portraits. A love story through his lens.

  Gabe had titled the show “Guilty Pleasures.” And maybe loving her was a guilty pleasure now that she wasn’t his.

  Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

  “Just help me get through tonight, okay?” Gabe asked.

  Vinny nodded without speaking and stepped away only long enough to pluck two flutes of champagne off a nearby tray and deliver them to Gabe.

  Vinny took a swallow of his drink. “Fancy party, at least.”

  Gabe shrugged. The party was a Friday night affair with passed appetizers and drinks, and some low, soft music playing from cleverly-hidden speakers. Something a little different for the opening night. There was a good turnout, too—a whole crowd admiring his artwork—but the Chihuly exhibit had moved on, and the riot of colors and glass was gone.

  Despite all the people, the gallery felt empty.

  Gabe took a swallow of his drink, and the bubbles slid down his throat and sent a burst of fizz up his nose. He sputtered, and Vinny clapped him on the back.

  “Jesus,” Vinny said. “I thought my visit would be a good thing.”

  Maybe it was. If Gabe didn’t have someone here with him, he might not have shown up at all.

  He swallowed more of his drink, getting buzzed enough to allow himself to nod and smile and play nice with the patrons. But he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to numb the pain coursing through him.

  A hand caught his elbow, and someone whispered in his ear, “Is this your show?”

  He had to turn to answer the voice, and this time his eye snagged on a portrait of Bex just over the brunette’s shoulder. Gabe winced and looked away. “It is my show.” He offered his hand to the woman because that’s what he was supposed to do. “Thanks for coming.”

  Her hand was delicate in his as he shook it. “Diana Hastings.”

  “Gabriel. Gabr
iel Marx.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She smiled, teasing the rim of her champagne flute with manicured fingernails. She wore a long Grecian-cut dress that showed off an elegant neck and a modest bit of cleavage. She was pretty, in a refined way.

  A lifetime ago Gabe would have gone for her type. Hell, a few weeks ago he would have. In his life before Bex. Only now there was just Bex. Except there wasn’t.

  Oh fuck. He loved her so damn much. Why did she have to run so scared? He’d thought, stupidly, that his love might be enough to change her. That she’d be able to let him in. That she’d been falling along with him. And all he’d done was let her break his heart.

  Of course.

  “These pictures are beautiful,” Diana said. She swept her hand back toward the closest image, and Gabe nodded. “It’s almost like the camera is a stand-in for the viewer. You can see how much the camera loves the woman, and so we, as viewers, do, too.”

  Was the whole art world going to be this kind of pretentious flattery? Couldn’t a picture just be a picture? Did everyone have to layer their interpretations onto the portrait?

  A muscle in Gabe’s jaw tightened, and he made himself relax. It wasn’t the brunette’s fault she was right about the picture. About Bex. She’d read him so perfectly that he had to wonder if everyone in this room could read him, too.

  “She’s just a model,” he lied, forcing a smile.

  “Sure,” the woman conceded. “So how do I go about buying one of these pieces?”

  It was a silver lining, but he was still in the middle of a fucking storm. “Let me introduce you to Angelica.”

  Gabe led Diana through the crowd and deposited her in front of Angelica. He made the polite introductions, and as soon as he could, he extricated himself from the conversation and returned to his position staring at the door. From this view, he could avoid seeing most of the images of Bex. It was better that way.

  “Why’d you ditch the brunette?”

  Gabe turned to catch his brother’s eye. “So she could buy a picture. Make me a rich man.”

  “I don’t know,” Vinny said. “It looks like she wanted to buy more than just a picture.”

  “You say it like my body’s for sale.” Vinny cocked an eyebrow, and Gabe just shook his head. He wasn’t interested, but there was no reason to deny his brother a good time. Diana looked like she’d be a hell of a lot more fun tonight than Gabe would be. “She’s all yours, pal. Go for it.”

  His brother took his leave, heading off after the brunette but hopefully not soon enough to interrupt Gabe’s sale. Frankly, the idea of making money on the pictures made him sick to his stomach. He’d wanted this show to pave a new path for himself. But selling the pictures of Bex felt like handing over a piece of his heart. Anything he earned would feel like blood money.

  He could hear his brother’s distinctive laughter over the murmur of the crowd. Good. At least someone was having fun.

  Gabe made his way toward the front desk. It felt better to be moving than to be standing still. The thing no one told him about gallery showings was how much it would hurt to be on his feet in dress shoes for hours. He was so used to the casual shoes he wore to photo shoots that he forgot how much classy digs could hurt.

  He thumbed through a membership brochure that he found on the desk, forcing himself to read each word. They swirled in front of him, meaningless, so he counted letters instead.

  Two M’s in “membership.”

  Two E’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  Gabe jumped as Vinny set his champagne flute on the edge of the desk.

  “Nothing.” He scanned the room, and now it was his turn to ask, “Why’d you ditch the brunette?”

  Vinny flashed him a shit-eating grin. “I got a number. I’m meeting up with her later tonight.” He cocked his head. “But I need to know—is everything okay with you? You still look terrible.”

  “Bex and I broke up.” The words crushed the air from his lungs.

  Vinny’s face fell. “Shit, man.”

  “Yeah. So there’s that.”

  Vinny’s mouth twisted. “You know I love you and I’d do anything for you. But I was hoping now that I’m here and can sow my wild oats, that Bex would be the one to take care of your sorry ass.”

  Gabe couldn’t bring himself to criticize Vinny’s delivery. He agreed with him too much. “Me too.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “What?” A high-pitched laugh in the background made Gabe wince. “She needs space, Vinny.”

  His brother fixed him with a look. “Did you sit around and wallow when you got sick?” He forged ahead before Gabe could answer. “No, you didn’t. You fought. And you’re not going to give up on Bex because of one bad day. I won’t let you.”

  Vinny reached over the counter and snagged a piece of paper with the Trailblazer Gallery logo embossed at the top. He folded it into quarters and slipped it into the breast pocket of Gabe’s suit jacket.

  “Just consider what you might do with this.” Vinny patted the paper once more. “But before you do anything, I’m taking you upstairs to the Euphoria for a real drink. We have some catching up to do, and I think we’ve both had enough of this champagne shit.”

  Vinny, ever charming, was also right.

  “Sure,” Gabe allowed. “Let’s go.” Who fucking cared how much his hangover would hurt tomorrow? Nothing could compare to the pain of facing the rest of his life alone.

  Chapter 33

  The love of Rebecca Kingsley’s life had just shit his pants. Weston Robert Kingsley, whose middle name was chosen in honor of his grandfather, looked up from his aunt’s arms and cooed at her, and all Bex could do was smile. At thirteen days old Weston was absolutely charming, from his wrinkly old-man baby face to his tiny grasping fingers. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t Bex’s biological nephew and that he was the dark-haired birth child of a teen mom in New Mexico. Weston was forever hers, and she loved him unconditionally. The only time Bex had let love sweep over her like that had been with Gabe. But she couldn’t think about Gabe without the world cracking open, and her tiny, soft heart bleeding out. So she forced herself to forget him.

  “Careful Bex. I think he’s quite taken with you,” Aderyn teased, swinging a burp cloth onto her shoulder and gesturing for the baby.

  “The feeling’s mutual. But if you want to clean that stink bomb in his diaper, I’m not going to stop you.”

  Aderyn smiled. “I’m going to take every dirty diaper I can get.” She lifted Weston into her arms and swept into the next room with the baby in tow, wafting a fine eau de poo.

  Bex leaned back against the couch cushions. “It is surprising how stinky poop can be, given that literally one ingredient goes into making it.”

  Sam indulged her with a smile. “The other day Weston had a poo-nami, and I swear I thought my face would go numb.”

  “A poo-nami?”

  “Yeah. It’s like a tsunami of poo. Straight into the shower for all of us.”

  Bex smiled at her brother, so damn happy that he was getting to do this dad thing. She would ask how he’d been holding up with the late nights, but frankly, she’d been here for most of them so she knew he was doing as well as could be expected. Maybe the bar hours had been practice for a baby’s erratic schedule.

  Sam’s face turned serious. “What are you doing here, Bex?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ever since her brother and family had returned home from New Mexico, she had made it a habit to swing by their house after work each night. She folded laundry for them and threw together easy dinners so they would have something hot to eat. It was easier to avoid her place, to not have to see the memories of Gabe everywhere she looked.

  Sam gestured around the house, which Bex had obsessively cleaned in her post-breakup haze. Other than the dirty diapers and the baby toys strewn about, it didn’t look like the home of new parents. Things were spotlessly organized, from Aderyn’s books, whic
h Bex had color-coded, to Sam’s bar cart, which he had been less than enthusiastic to see organized by bottle shape.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate you taking care of us like this, because I do. But shouldn’t you be with Gabe?”

  Bex jutted out her chin. “I’m sure he’s fine. You guys need me right now.”

  Sam shook his head, but before he could respond, Aderyn swept back into the room carrying three beers.

  “Weston’s down for a nap,” she announced, handing off the bottles. She cracked one open and took a lip-smacking draw. “One of the perks of not breastfeeding? Mama doesn’t have to watch what she drinks.”

  Bex’s wan smile didn’t match Dare’s teasing tone, but a knot of pain tightened her chest too much to breathe right.

  Aderyn took another swig of her beer and leaned forward. “Since you’re here, Bex, Sam and I have something we’d like to discuss with you.”

  Please not another comment about Gabe. She didn’t know how much more she could handle. “What’s that?”

  Aderyn smiled. “We’d love for you to be Weston’s godmother.”

  It took Bex a second, and the sound of rushing air filled in her ears. “His godmother?” Her stomach dropped, and her heart shot into her throat, her face going hot and horrible.

  “Yeah, Bex.” Sam looked at her. “Why are you crying?”

  She swiped at her face, and her hands came away wet. Oh god, how had that happened? She really was going to lose it. This week had been rougher than she’d ever expected.

  “Glad you’re happy for the privilege,” Sam said. “But I think this might be considered an overreaction.”

  Bex wiped at her tears. “It’s just…I’m honored,” she started. “But I can’t be his godmother.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “A godmother is supposed to protect the kid, take care of him and teach him how to be a decent human in this world.” She drew a shaky breath. “But everyone around me gets hurt. I couldn’t even make a relationship work with the one man who was absolutely perfect for me.”