For 100 Reasons (100 3)

She scoffs under her breath. “I guess I should thank you for not attempting to lie to my face about it. I saw you with her at Gavin’s restaurant, not that I care. You’re free to fuck whoever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Really?” I study her, reacquainting myself with every nuance of her face, every emotion that plays across her delicate features no matter how hard she tries to conceal it from me. It stung her to see me with another woman. It still does, all these hours later.

Just as it burned me to think of her with another man.

“As I recall it, you were with someone at GC last night too.”

“So, you did see me.” She says it with resignation, as if she’d be more shocked if I hadn’t noticed her presence inside the crowded restaurant. Perhaps even disappointed.

The fact is, I would sense this woman anywhere. There isn’t a place I’ve gone in this city where I haven’t been acutely, painfully aware of her.

I am drawn to her now as I have been from the beginning, even though I know I’ve forfeited the right to act on it.

No, as she said only a few moments ago, I never had that right.

Regardless, I see no reason to play games with Avery. I’ve done enough of that already. And I know that if she believes she’s right—that I screwed the woman she saw me having dinner with just a couple of nights after I asked Avery to leave her art event with me—our conversation would end right here.

“Simone Emmons lost her husband last month.”

Avery tilts her head, far from convinced. “She didn’t look the part of a grieving widow to me. Especially when she was pawing at you across the table and batting her lashes.”

I shrug, unable to offer any defense for my dinner companion. “Simone is a flirtatious woman who married a wealthy man old enough to be her grandfather. She’s also my newest client. At dinner last night, she agreed to sell one of her deceased husband’s companies to me.”

Avery snorts. “I’ll bet she did. I’ll bet you were one hard negotiator too.”

“It was just business, and it went no further than dinner.” I pause as a cluster of pedestrians moves past us on the concrete. “Do you really want to talk about Simone Emmons?”

“No.” I see some of her suspicion diffuse, but not enough to persuade her to stay. “I don’t want to talk about anything with you, Nick. I’m on my way to the studio. Or, rather, I would be if you weren’t standing in my way.”

“Let me drive you there.”

“No, thanks.” Something brittle flashes in her gaze. “I don’t accept rides from people I don’t know.”

It’s a low blow, lower than anything else she’s said to me, but a deserved one. If I were a better man, I’d let her aptly delivered jab stick and head back to my car alone. For the past year I’ve managed to resist a confrontation like this, but after seeing her a few nights ago she’s all I’ve been able to think about.

I have things to say to her.

Things I should have said back in Paris or months before.

There are things she needs to know. Things she needs to see. Ugly things that may make her hate me even more. Or worse, pity me.

“All right, Avery. Then walk with me for a while. If you decide you still don’t know me, then I’ll escort you to the nearest subway station and I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”

She stares at me, a trace of confusion in her searching gaze. I see doubt there too. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, hesitant. “You really mean that?”

Fuck, do I? As difficult as it would be to keep a promise like that, I know I owe her the choice. The choice I didn’t give her before. I owe her the truth . . . and the why.

“Yes, Avery. I mean it. You have my word.”

For a long while, she says nothing. Doesn’t so much as blink as she weighs my promise in unbearable silence. She can break me right here and now, but I wonder if she truly understands her power. Watching her leave the first time was hard enough. Knowing how deeply I’d hurt her was a torment that’s eaten at me like a cancer ever since.

She doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t believe that I can be held to any promises, nor should she. But I would do this for her now. Not only because I know it’s the best thing for her, but because I also know the shame that’s waiting at the end of the path I’m asking her to walk with me.

I haven’t opened that door since the moment Avery entered my life.

I’m not at all certain I want to do it now.

She watches me too closely, already far too aware of the fissures in my soul.