* * *
• • •
The shop was closed on Sundays, but something made Michael go there anyway. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside. After passing by the empty fitting room, he entered the work area in back. There, he scanned the mechanized rack where they hung the dry-cleaned clothes, the walls of multicolored thread, and the green commercial sewing machines.
This place was his mom’s livelihood, and she was incredibly proud to be the owner of such a thriving business. Of all their extended family, she was one of the most successful. Well, she would have been, if not for his dad.
To Michael, this place was a prison. He didn’t want to do tedious fittings and alterations and dry cleaning. He wanted to create something from scratch.
He went to the bureau at the back of the room and pulled out the small drawer he reserved for his sketchpads. The book on top felt cold and familiar under the pads of his fingers, the paper soft. He sat at one of the worktables and opened the book to a blank page, set his pencil tip down.
Usually, he started the clothing design first, the collar and shoulders, sometimes the waist if that was the focal point of everything. The face was usually just an impression, a profile, the curve of a jaw. Hands and legs were quick pencil strokes, just vague ideas. Today, he started with the face. It was the only thing in his mind.
Those eyes and the heavy fringe of lashes. Arching eyebrows. That nose. Those kissable lips. When he finished, Stella stared at him from the page. He’d captured the essence of her perfectly. His hands knew her every line.
Her likeness was enough to make the blood rush to his throat, and he dug his phone out of his pocket and checked it for messages or missed calls.
Nothing. Just like the other ninety-nine times he’d checked today.
She’d said she would stalk and call, and he was messed up enough to want it. If obsession was all he could have from her, he wanted the works. The more drama, the better. Maybe they’d have no choice but to get back together.
The screen on his phone blacked out, and cold reality sank into him. Her obsession hadn’t been strong enough to stand up in the face of his family’s criminal past, not on top of all his other drawbacks. It really had been just practice and sex.
His phone buzzed with an alert from the agency app. Someone had booked him for this Friday. For a second, he thought it might be Stella, and bright happiness flooded his being. Even knowing everything about him, she still wanted him. He clicked through the screens on his phone as fast as he could, but when the app loaded, he saw it was someone new. His stomach dropped.
There’d been a time when he’d liked the variety his escorting assignments provided. Now, his body crawled with revulsion at the mere idea of touching someone else, let alone kissing or having sex with them. He felt . . . permanently pair-bonded, like a goddamned swan. Only the swan he’d chosen hadn’t pair-bonded back with him.
Why would she have?
Look at all the people he’d fucked. What had he accomplished with his life? What had he really done? A lot of dry cleaning, that was what. He was nothing. Good for a test drive, but not to take home. He should be proud he’d helped bolster Stella’s confidence and proven he was better than his dad, but he was a selfish ass, and all he wanted was more of her.
&n
bsp; In the foreseeable future, she’d be pleasuring another man—that shit Philip—in the precise way that drove Michael out of his mind. Her hands would touch another body, her mouth would—
He crammed his palms into his eyes and breathed away his gut-churning nausea. If she was going to fuck other people, he would, too. He’d go right now. He started to stand, but paused. It was Sunday morning. Not trolling time.
And he physically could not.
Touching another woman right now would make him vomit. Or worse, cry like a baby.
He was having a hard enough time keeping it together as it was. His eyes burned, and his throat ached, and he hurt everywhere. No women. Not unless they had soft brown eyes and a shy smile and loved economics and made the sweetest breathless sounds when they kissed him and—
Fuck. Enough already. He clawed his fingers through his hair and tried to squeeze thoughts of Stella out of his head.
Toughen up and soldier on.
But he was tired of being tough and soldiering on. He’d been doing it for three endless years. He was trapped here, trapped in his life, trapped in never-ending debt. Trapped by love.
That was his problem. He always loved too much. If he could just tear his heart out and stop feeling, he would be free. A frenzied kind of madness gripped him as he stared down at his sketchpad.
Whispering a silent apology in his head, he ripped out the picture of Stella and tore it straight down the middle before shredding it. The pieces floated to the ground like leaves from a dying tree. Then he flipped to the front of the book. Sun-saturated mornings with Stella had inspired the white and yellow dress on the page. It was his absolute favorite. He tore it out and destroyed it. And the next design. And the next. All of them. Then he went to the bureau in back, grabbed all his sketchpads, and threw them in the trash. After that, he opened the large bottom drawer where he kept the projects he’d been working on in secret. Gritting his teeth, he ripped the fabric apart, seam by seam, garment by garment, dream by dream.
When he’d finally destroyed everything that could be destroyed, he stared at the carnage on the floor and spilling from the garbage.
It had worked. He felt nothing now.
He walked to the sewing machine he usually used, sat down, and considered the pile of unfinished clothes next to it. A few pairs of pants needed hemming, dresses needed to be taken in, and a jacket had a torn inner lining. They were all clothes someone else had designed. Someone else’s vision.