Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard 2)

“I don’t understand what’s going on right now,” I admitted.

“I don’t need my humiliation put so plainly before me,” he said, motioning to the pictures on the wall. “Believe me, Sara, I feel pathetic enough without you coming in here uninvited.” He glanced up at a picture of my lips on his hipbone. “I made a deal with myself. I was going to leave them up for two weeks, and then put them away.”

“Max—”

“You told me you loved me.” His calm exterior cracked slightly; I’d never heard him sound angry before.

I had no idea what to say. He’d phrased it in past tense. But nothing felt more immediate than my feelings for him, particularly in his room, surrounded by the evidence of what we’d become that night. “You had photos of other wo—”

“But if you loved me how I love you,” he said, cutting me off, “you would have given me a chance to explain what you saw in the Post.”

“By the time explanation is needed, it’s usually too late.”

“You’ve made that clear. But why do you assume I’ve done something wrong? Have I ever lied to you, or kept anything from you? I trusted you. You assume I’ve never been hurt and that trust comes easily to me. You’re too busy guarding your own heart to realize that maybe I’m not the arsehole people expect me to be.”

Any response dissipated when he’d said this. He was right. After he’d told me about Cecily, and his romantic life after, I’d assumed it had been easy for him, and that he had no experience with the harsher side of love.

“You could have let me explain,” he said.

“I’m here. Explain now.”

His scowl deepened but he blinked away, nodding. “Whoever stole my bag sold the pictures as their own. The good folks at Celebritini found a hundred and ninety-eight pictures of you in my briefcase. On my SD card, my phone, and a thumb drive. Had they been able to decode the password on my laptop, they would have found another couple hundred. And yet, they chose to post a picture of your hip, and the picture of a woman I’ve never met before.”

I felt my brow furrow in confusion; my heart hammered wildly beneath my ribs. “You mean they just put her in there? It wasn’t yours?”

“It was on my phone,” he said, looking back at me. “But I don’t know who she is. It was a picture Will had texted me that morning, just before my bag was taken. It was some woman he’d seen a few times a couple of years ago.”

I shook my head, not following. “Why would he send you that?”

“I told him about the art I had of you, how it was all new for me. And, as is the way with us, he joked that of course he’d already done that before. Taken photographs of lovers, tasteful ones. It was all a game, that’s old sport, been there done that. He was taking the piss. He could tell I was sincere and loved you.” He stepped back and leaned against the wall. “But we’d been joking about it the day before my trip. He asked me if I’d stocked my phone with Sara  p**n . He sent just that one because he’s a twat and was having a laugh. The timing was just really, really poor.”

“The story said you had photos of a lot of women.”

“A lie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that? Leave a voice mail, or text the truth?”

“Well, one because I thought being adults we’d talk face-to-face. Everything we’ve done together required a great deal of trust, Sara. I gathered I deserved the benefit of the doubt. But also”—he ran his hand through his hair, cursing—“it would mean admitting that I’d told Will about how you let me photograph you. It would mean admitting I’d betrayed our secret. It would mean revealing that he’d sent me a private picture of a woman who had presumably trusted him. I’ve had my lawyers handle the containment issue, but honestly, it made us both look like pricks.”

“Not as much as seeing her in the paper did.”

“Do you not see it’s exactly the story they wanted? The story of me and all my many women? They found hundreds of photos of me and you and yet they just post one? There is one image of another woman, and bam—it fits their gossip narrative. I told you I wasn’t with anyone else; why wasn’t that enough?”

“Because I’m used to men who say one thing and do another.”

“But you expected me to be better than that,” he said, eyes searching mine. “Otherwise why admit you love me? Why give me a night like that?”

“I guess when the photos came out . . . I didn’t think that night meant as much to you.”

“That’s absolute shite. You were there, too. You’re looking at the photos now. You know exactly how much it meant to me.”

I reached for him but reconsidered. He looked really pissed, and my frustration with myself and him and all of it just exploded. I still remembered the stab I felt in my chest when I saw the picture of the other woman.

“What was I supposed to think? It just seemed reasonable that you’d played me. Everything between us always seemed so easy for you.”

“It was easy. Falling absolutely in love with you was really f**king easy. Isn’t it supposed to be that way? Just because I haven’t been brokenhearted in recent years doesn’t mean I’m incapable of it. Fuck, Sara. I’ve been wrecked for the past two weeks. Positively smashed.”

I pressed a hand to my stomach, feeling like I needed to physically hold myself together. “Me, too.”

He sighed, stared down at his shoes, and didn’t say anything else. In my chest, my heart twisted tightly.

“I want to be with you,” I said.

He nodded once, but didn’t look back up, didn’t even say a word.

I stepped closer, stretched to kiss his cheek, and only made it to his jaw because he wouldn’t bend to meet me.

“Max, I miss you,” I told him. “I know I jumped to conclusions. I just . . . I thought . . .” I stopped, hating how still he remained.

Without looking back, I walked out of his dressing room, through his bedroom, and back to the party.

“I want to go home,” I said to Chloe, once I’d been able to discreetly—semi-discreetly—pull her away from a conversation with Bennett and Will.

The two men watched us in the obvious way men have where they don’t even bother trying to hide what they’re doing. We all stood in the recessed portion of the living room that looked exactly like the room in the club. The memories sent sharp pangs through my chest. I wanted to get out of this dress, wash my face, and curl up in a tub of cookie dough.