“I have to go, Nick.”
He hold
s my gaze as he lets his hands fall slowly to his sides. “Will you come back?”
Come back to him, he means. The truth is, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.
I’m not sure I ever will be.
I think about the pain he caused me. The anguish that came from loving him, from believing I could trust him, that he had no reason to hide anything from me. I thought I was the only one with damning secrets that could destroy us.
But I can’t think about the pain Nick caused me without acknowledging the pleasure too. The passion that’s still pulsing between us now, just waiting to ignite.
Will the risk of getting hurt again be worth the promise of everything else we could have? I’m not certain. I can’t know anything for sure so long as Nick is looking at me like I’m the only woman in the world. The only woman he wants, needs . . . loves.
I move farther away from him, desperate for the physical distance.
“I’m not running away from you, Nick. But I don’t know if I can come back. Not like we were before.”
He nods gravely, something in his eyes shuttering now. I search for the right words, but I’m too raw to articulate everything I’m feeling. And overriding it all is confusion. Fear. A need for solid ground.
“Try to understand,” I murmur lamely. “I just . . . I have to go.”
I feel the heat of him behind me as I step out to the gallery hallway, but he doesn’t stop me.
Thankfully, he stays inside as I walk calmly out the door. He won’t see that I break into a hurried jog as soon as I’m out of his view.
He won’t know there are hot tears clogging my throat and stinging my eyes as the cacophony of the city swallows me up.
Chapter 9
Three nights later, I’m still trying to decide how I feel about everything Nick said. I’m still trying to convince myself that I did the best thing—the only sane thing—in telling him I needed time apart in order to think, to process.
I may never fully understand what he did. I know I’ll never be able to fathom why it was my painting—my face—that captivated him so completely. Will it ever make sense to me that Dominic Baine, a man who can have anything and anyone he desires somehow chose to love me?
No, I’m sure I’ll never begin to understand that.
As for the rest, I only wish I could pretend that I don’t know anything about the dark place Nick had been that night, drunk and alone in his private office at the back of the gallery. But I do know about that. I know what it’s like to feel broken. To feel irreparably damaged. Angry and hopeless. Empty.
I know because I’ve been there too.
If Nick had never entered my life, I might still be there.
If not for him, I might still be lost, still running away from the past that nearly destroyed me. Still afraid to believe my life would ever get better, that I might ever be happy.
Or worthy of being loved.
Regardless of his motives, Nick has given me more than any man I’ve ever known. I love him with every fiber of my being, yet I’m allowing fear and insecurity drive a deeper wedge between us.
I thought time away from him would be easier for me. I should have known, it’s never easy being separated from Nick. A year’s worth of practice wasn’t enough the first time. Now that I know he still cares for me—after hearing him say that he’s still in love with me—the only place I truly want to be is back in his arms.
“God, I’m an idiot.”
Standing beside me in a glittering hotel ballroom full of Manhattan’s gowned and tuxedoed elite, my friend Lita lifts her brows as she stares at me over the rim of her champagne glass. “An idiot for bringing me as your date to this fancy shindig? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. These aren’t exactly my people.”
It’s true, she was reluctant to come with me. Complaining she had nothing suitable to wear to Kathryn Tremont’s foundation auction at the elegant five-star hotel, Lita is absolutely beautiful in a vintage-looking black tea-length dress with chiffon sleeves that veil her tattooed arms in mystery and sweet kitten heels. The outfit, she informed me when we met outside the hotel tonight, is actually a theater costume she got on loan from a designer friend who works off-Broadway.
“You’re not the problem,” I tell her. “And you look amazing, by the way. Thank you again for stepping in tonight on short notice. I really didn’t want to come alone.”