At the end of the hall we reach a closed door with a small metal sign marked PRIVATE.
Nick stops here and glances at me. “I haven’t been in here in almost two years. No one has.”
For the first time, I see doubt in his eyes.
I see shame.
I don’t know what lurks behind the door to this room, but based on his bleak expression I’m already dreading what I’ll find. “Nick, please. You’re scaring me. Tell me what this is about.”
“The truth.”
There is a keypad panel on the wall. He taps a five-digit code and I hear a soft snick as the lock disengages. I don’t move, can hardly draw air into my lungs as he opens the door then walks inside the pitch-dark room.
I take a hesitant step behind him just as he flicks on the lights.
Bright fluorescents burst to life overhead. My vision goes white momentarily, shocked by the sudden explosion of light in the darkness.
And then another kind of shock settles over me.
The room is a small private office. At least it appears it had been at one time. A cherry-wood desk lies broken, upturned in the center of the room. The chair that likely used to sit behind it has been savaged, too, little more than a splintered heap of tinder amid a sea of scattered paper, books, and smashed objets d’art.
Paint covers everything. Everywhere I look, violent splashes of red and black and a dozen other dark colors have congealed and dried wherever they were thrown. There is so much rage in this room, so much wreckage, I can’t hold back my gasp as I take it all in.
And then I see it.
The easel tilted drunkenly in the far corner of all this savagery.
A canvas barely clings to its perch on the wooden stand. It, too, has been brutalized.
Beneath the furious brush marks that strive to conceal it is a painting rendered in crude, halting movement. There is no finesse in the half-completed work, only frustration. It’s been abandoned. Aborted.
Ruthlessly destroyed.
Just like the rest of this room.
At my side, Nick watches me absorb the totality of the destruction before me.
“You did this.” I look at him in question, struggling to reconcile the strong, powerful man next to me and the utter lack of control manifested in this space.
I can’t fathom the despair, the hopelessness.
He moves away from me, deeper into the awful time capsule of violence and ruin. “I don’t recall what made me decide to come here that night,” he says, his voice toneless, his spine rigid. “It was late. I was drunk.”
As he speaks, I notice the empty liquor bottle nestled among the debris. Not the high-brow single malt whisky I’ve seen him drink from time to time, but a cheap fifth of rotgut that likely didn’t cost him more than twenty dollars.
He pivots, raking his palm over the top of his dark hair as he surveys the room. “Evidently, I decided it was a good night to paint. You can see how well that went.”
He chuckles humorlessly and holds up his scarred right hand, the one he nearly lost many years ago during an argument with his father. That careless altercation when Nick was eighteen—and whatever spurred it—isn’t something he has shared with me in any great detail. All I know is that in the end his father slammed him through a plate glass window.
Nick could have died. He was fortunate in that, but his injuries were horrific enough. Much of his arm and most of the tendons in his hand were shredded. The hand Nick used to paint with ruined in one irreparable moment.
His artistic gift lost before it had the chance to soar.
I’ve never seen his art, but Kathryn Tremont has. To hear her describe it, Nick’s talent was extraordinary, among the best she had ever seen. His rage over losing that part of him was deep and volatile. Until now, given all of his success in business and the fortune he’s amassed because of it, I believed Nick had come to terms with the loss of his art.
This room says otherwise.
It screams Nick’s pain with an agony that staggers me.
“I had a gun with me that night,” he says, no emotion in his deep voice. All I see in his eyes is raw, terrifying truth. “I was tired and angry and . . . Christ, so fucking empty. I remember thinking that night that I just wanted it to stop. I needed it all to end.”
A knot of ice-cold fear lodges in my throat as I listen to his confession. Dominic Baine, who to the rest of the world has everything he could possibly want or need, is telling me that the last time he stepped foot in this room he could think of no good reason to live.
I swallow past my dread, barely resisting the urge to offer him comfort. He won’t accept it. I can see that in the stoic way he stands, well out of my reach. If I try to close the distance between us right now it will only push him further away.
And he’s not finished telling me everything he needs to say.
“I passed out in the gallery at some point. I don’t remember leaving the room, but when I eventually came to, I still had the gun in my hand. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was a black-and-white portrait hanging on the wall out there.” He slowly swivels his head in my direction. “Your painting.”
I nod faintly, because I know this part of the story. The first painting I ever completed had been on display at Dominion months before I met Dominic Baine. More recently, on our way to Paris last year, I discovered that same painting hanging in in Nick’s state room aboard his private jet.
“I didn’t realize I was looking at a self-portrait at the time.” His gaze holds me with such open admiration it steals my breath. “All I saw was an arresting beauty—and a hauntedness—that refused to release me. I couldn’t look away from it. Couldn’t look away from you, Avery.”
As unsettling as it had been to realize in Paris that it was some degree of obsession that brought Nick into my life, right now the primary emotion I feel is relief. Relief that he is standing here in front of me at all. Relief that he found some reason to hang on that night, even if the price was my own heart.
“I took your painting home with me. For the next three days, all I could think about was the face on that canvas and that fucking forty-five in my hand. I knew that sooner or later, it was going to come down to just one of them.” He walks toward me, his movements slow, but far from uncertain. “I can’t tell you all the things I felt when I looked at your image in the painting. Fascination. Adoration. A powerful, irresistible desire for a woman I thought was too incredible to be real. Things I feel every time I look at you.”
He reaches out and I hold my breath as his fingers brush gently along my cheek. I didn’t come here to be seduced, maybe not even to forgive, but intentions and boundaries have always been blurred when it comes to Nick and me. The soft sigh that slips past my lips only confirms that truth.
“I wanted the woman in the painting more than anything, Avery. Even death.” His touch leaves me, his hand drifting down to his side. “As for the talent I saw in that particular piece, it amazed me. Your gift was so raw, yet unmistakable. I looked at your art in that one painting and I felt awe and respect. Jealousy. Even rage. What I didn’t feel was empty. I threw the gun away, and that next day I went back to the gallery to find out everything I could about the painting. When Margot told me the artist and the model were one and the same, I had to know more. I had to know you.”
“Nick . . . I’m not sure how to respond to all of this. I’m not sure what to think.”
It’s going to take some time to process everything he’s saying and how I feel about it. Inside I’m breaking at the knowledge of how dark his life had gotten before we met. I’m humbled to think that I had anything to do with bringing him back from that brink.
My life had been dark before Nick too. My past had a grip on me I hadn’t been able to break on my own. In so many ways, he saved me every bit as much as I saved him. It was our mutual secrets that destroyed us. If we stand any chance of moving past them, we have to drag them all into the light.
I shake my head, trying to c
ling to the reason we’re both here. “You lied to me. From the very beginning and for all those months afterward, you let me think our meeting was purely coincidence when you orchestrated every facet of our relationship. You made certain that every path I took would lead me straight to you. For God’s sake, you even bought the apartment building I was living in and turned it into expensive condos to ensure I couldn’t stay there.”
“Yes, I did.” His expression is sober, but hardly contrite. “I learned that you were living in a dump at the mercy of a slum lord. It was unacceptable, so I gave you a reason to leave. And then I gave you someplace better to go.”
I tilt a wry look at him. “You hired Claire Prentice to come into Vendange where I was working and pretend she needed a house sitter. In your high-priced Park Avenue building where you also happened to live.”
“I wanted to know you were somewhere safe and comfortable. I wanted to remove the obstacles that stood in the way of you and the potential of your art. I wanted to see your talent set free to become what it has now. Most of all, I wanted you close to me, so I could get to know you.”
“You’re serious.”
“You wanted the truth,” he says softly. “Now, you have it.”
I had convinced myself that he had played me for a fool, that all of his manipulations and the efforts he took to conceal them from me had been some kind of sick game. I thought he used me simply for his own amusement, but it’s hard to reconcile any of that now. It’s impossible to ignore the earnestness in his eyes. As twisted as his actions were, there’s no denying that they came from a place of genuine concern.
“How can you make something so fucked up sound so well-meaning, as if what you did is the most reasonable thing in the world?” I heave a conflicted sigh. “Why not just ask me out like a normal person?”
He gives me a smile that’s full of irony. “I never said I was normal. You know that better than anyone.”
“I can’t make jokes about this, Nick. Jesus, not after everything you just told me. Not after everything you put me through.”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that. All of it.” His gaze searches mine, tender but unflinching. “I told you in the beginning that I wasn’t prepared for how much I craved you, how much you meant to me. I wanted the woman I saw in your painting. I wanted to help shape the talent I saw in your art, the talent I no longer had. But I wasn’t prepared for you, Avery. I sure as hell wasn’t planning on falling in love with you.”
I close my eyes against the yearning those words open inside me. Now, at this distance, with this new clarity, I recall the things he said while we were together. All of the clues he gave me along the way. The warnings that he wasn’t a good man, that he never wanted to hurt me.
He’d been telling me all along, but I was too swept up in him—in the fantasy of who I became with him—to hear it.
“I know nothing will excuse what I did, Avery. My reasons don’t justify anything. No apology can make this right between us. But I am sorry for hurting you, for deceiving you.” He strokes my face with a caress that’s so gentle it wrings a small moan from deep inside me. “I will always be sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you. And no matter where we go from here, I will always love you.”
“No.” It takes every bit of my will to withdraw from his touch. My head is spinning in confusion, my heart swamped by too many emotions for me to sort out, especially when he’s touching me, looking at me with such raw honesty I can barely breathe.
“What do you want from me, Nick? What are you trying to do? It’s been a year since we’ve even seen each other, and don’t tell me that wasn’t deliberate. You severed all connections to me after Paris, including the sale of Vendange. If not for the other night at the university, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“You’re right.” He nods solemnly. “I wanted to give you space, freedom. I didn’t see any other way than to remove myself from your life completely. If I hadn’t, I knew it would only drive you further away.”
I can’t argue with his reasoning. There were countless times I thought of running away from New York. It would have been easier than staying in the place that held so many memories of the two of us. But I was trying to build a life here. I had built one for myself, even if it no longer included Nick.
Even if my heart broke a little bit more every day I spent apart from him.
“Why did you wait so long to tell me all of this? You could’ve come after me in Paris. You could’ve made me listen, but you didn’t. You didn’t even try.”
“I did try, Avery.” His dark brows furrow over his sober stare. “I did come after you. I made it all the way to the airport. I tried to force my way through security to try to catch you before you left.” He exhales a short breath. “I threw a swing at one of the soldiers who blocked my way at the gate. He landed his fist in my face, then he and three other armed guards took me down. I spent the night in a Paris hospital with a fractured jaw.”
I listen, torn between astonishment that he actually did follow me to the airport and concern for what he risked in trying to reach me. “The soldiers you struck might have sent you to jail instead of the hospital, Nick. God, they might’ve killed you.”
He shrugs it off with little more than a bland look. “I came after you, Avery. I wasn’t going to let you leave without hearing me out. But later, lying in the hospital after you were back home in the States, I knew it was better for you that you’d gone. Paris was supposed to be a fresh start for us. I thought it still could be for you, but that meant setting you free. I held myself to that promise this past year. And then I saw you at that reception the other night.”
My heart pounds in my breast as he moves closer to me. He knows I won’t stop him now. He knows I need him every bit as much as he needs me. With nothing but a breath to separate us, he brings his hand up, settling it warmly, intimately around my nape.
I’m not certain if he draws me to him or if I drift there out of instinct and yearning. It hardly matters, because in that next moment, his mouth lowers to mine. I moan as he kisses me, unable to deny the visceral expression of my longing . . . and my relief.
His touch feels too good on my skin, his lips on mine so achingly familiar and welcome.
God, what am I doing?
He’s already broken my heart once.
He’s wrecked me.
Yet here I am, ready for ruin all over again.
I moan again, but this time it’s a pained sound. My hands come up between us, pressing flat against the firm planes of his chest.
“I can’t do this.” I back away from him, my lips still tingling and wet from his kiss. I want more of him. I want it with a ferocity that terrifies me. “Nick, I’m not ready for this again. I—I have to go.”
I pivot and take a step toward the open door. Nick’s fingers shackle loosely around my wrist. “Don’t run, Avery. Please.” His voice is rough with arousal and something I hardly recognize in him. Fear. Vulnerability. “Please, don’t run away from me again.”
He doesn’t resist when I withdraw from his grasp, but his darkened blue eyes implore me to stay. “I just can’t, Nick. I’m not running, but I do need time. I need to think about all of this . . . about what all of this means. I can’t do that when you’re touching me, when you’re kissing me.”
“Then I’ll stop.”
I exhale a soft laugh. “You and I both know where this will go if I stay any longer.”
“Are you saying you can’t resist me?”
A ghost of a smile plays at the edge of his sinful mouth, the first real spark of humor—of light—I’ve seen in him since we arrived here. It’s tempting to give in to it, to give in to him. But I have to be cautious this time. I have to protect my heart.
My foolish, reckless heart that urges me to turn back into Nick’s arms and to hell with the consequences.
But my head is stronger now.
If barely.
“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?