He’d said it to her mother. Maybe he’d thought she couldn’t hear, or worse, maybe he hadn’t cared. She’d been right in the next room. She’s wasting her time on that crap. Like hell I’m paying for lessons. She’s gotta grow up sometime . . .

Maybe it was time to grow up. To give up.

She dug her nails into her palms, sharp enough to snap her out of it. No. No way in hell she was giving up. She’d spent the last ten years overcoming that kind of thinking, working to banish that doubt. It hadn’t been easy, after she and her mother had finally left, but it had been good. There’d been no more tiptoeing around a quiet house, afraid to awaken a sleeping beast. There’d been a tiny apartment full of love, and there’d been her mom, telling her she could do anything. Be anything.

Just like Rylan had this morning. Rylan, who’d taken it for granted that of course she could make it in the New York art scene. Rylan, who barely knew her and who believed in her.

She swiped a clean part of her wrist across her eyes. She was better than this. She could do better than this.

Turning the page, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

In her mind, she was back there on that Sunday afternoon, on this very hill and on the footsteps of this very church. Rylan stood behind her, his chest broad and solid against her spine, his hands warm on her skin. He’d kissed her neck the way he seemed so fond of doing—the way that made her shiver and turn to mush.

She’d felt something more than just in awe of the city at the time. Tired from the climb, and close to someone who was interesting and beautiful and who treated her like she and her pleasure were precious. She’d felt . . . connected. To Paris. To her own life and breath.

To a man with more secrets than she had time.

That wasn’t the doubt she needed right now.

If he were here, he’d be sitting right beside her. Quiet and supportive. Reading or playing with his phone, making random comments as they struck him. But he’d be patient. He’d let her see the city the way he knew and loved it. He’d let her make something of what she saw.

She opened her eyes again, and the cityscape in front of her seemed to resolve itself. Without looking, she traded her pencil for a stick of soft, ephemeral vine charcoal and started sweeping out the world in broad strokes.

Once she had the basic shapes sketched in, she eyed the work she’d done. She was calmer now, better able to look at it with an analytical eye. It needed more bulk. More weight. She fumbled for the little tin of powdered charcoal she’d made fun of herself for bringing at the time. It was such a mess, but when she dipped her fingertips into it, the sootiness of it felt right. She smeared it onto the page, using the hard pressure of her strokes to show the crevices and depths between buildings. A light blush of it to hint at the wispy expanses of clouds in the sky.

Darker, more permanent compressed charcoal now. Finer lines. Her fingers started adding in other things, too. Spindly intimations of connections between rooftops and streets, anchoring the sky to the earth. Tying her and it and the lover she could almost feel behind her back together in one rough portrait of a place. Of a time.

Of herself, from beyond the page.

Finally, she set her stick of charcoal aside. Her shoulders were stiff and her left foot was half-asleep, but in her lap, she had a drawing. She regarded the image for a long, long time. Relief broke over her like the dawn.

When she looked up at the city again, she smiled.

There was something wrong with Rylan. His incessant pacing brought him face to face with a wall again, and he groaned before turning around. Putting his back to the plaster, he covered his face with his hands.

Late afternoon. He was supposed to meet Kate back here at the room sometime in the late afternoon, and here it was, barely past two and he was wearing a hole in the carpet waiting for her.

But what else was he supposed to do? He’d gone for a run, then stopped by the apartment to swap out some of his dirty clothes for clean ones. Had lunch in a café and caught up on the business papers. Deleted emails and voicemails from his inbox.

On a normal day, he’d read a book or watch a movie or maybe cruise for pretty girls beneath the Eiffel Tower, but none of that appealed right now. He just wanted Kate to get home already so he could ask to flip through her sketchbook. Tell her she was amazing, and that she was insane for even considering turning down a chance to pursue her art for real. Take her to dinner and then turn all his charm to getting her naked with him again.

He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.

What the hell had he been doing with his life before this week?

He’d just about finished another circuit of this stupid, tiny room when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, hoping like hell that it would be some kind of diversion.

His sister’s face stared back at him from the screen, and his thumb froze over the button to either accept or ignore the call.

They’d spoken a couple of times in the year he’d been away. It’d been a while, though. The last time, she’d been relentless in her insistence that he come home. He hadn’t picked the phone up since.

He surprised himself when he did today.

He stared blankly at the screen as Lexie’s voice, distant but there, came across the speaker. “Teddy? You there? . . . Teddy?”

God, he hated that nickname. Forget that he didn’t even go by Theodore anymore, that he’d shed his father’s name nearly a decade ago. But he brushed it off and raised the phone to his ear. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, Lex.”

“About time I got a hold of you.”

Something about her tone grated his nerves. His hackles rose, and just like that, instead of annoyed and bored, he snapped into annoyed and defensive. “What do you want?”

Her eye roll was almost audible. “Nice to hear your voice, too.”

He sighed. Took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault she sounded like their mother and talked like their father—all clipped sentences, all too fast. Even as children, it was like they hadn’t spoken the same language sometimes. And somewhere along the way, they’d lost the dictionary.

“Sorry,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “How are you?”

“Same as usual. Busy.” She was always busy. “You?”

“About the same as usual, too.”

She made a huffed sound that got across exactly what she thought about that. “I’m sure bumming around Europe is terribly taxing.”

She had no idea. He dropped his hand and rapped his fingers against the wall. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a dick, but seriously. We both know this isn’t a social call.”

“It could be.”

“It isn’t.” It hadn’t been. Not since he’d turned his back on the mess their father had left for them, the mess his father had told him was his destiny. Not since he’d walked away.

She hesitated for a second. And then dropped all pretenses. “You still haven’t gotten back to Thomas about the new board. He’s been trying to get in touch with you for months.”

Ugh. “Try a year.”

“I don’t know what you’re running from—”

Yes, she did. She knew all the pressures, all the expectations, because they’d both been forced to deal with them. She’d emerged from the crucible a workaholic, desperately driven to prove their father wrong about her. While Rylan . . .

He’d worked himself to the bone, rising to the top, just the way their father had demanded. And yet with every floor he rocketed past, the walls had started to close in until he couldn’t breathe. When the bottom had fallen out . . .

He’d looked down, only to see nothing but air underneath him, and he hadn’t been willing to spend another minute in that fucking box, trying to live up to the expectations of a criminal, of a man who had ruined lives and ruined everything they’d worked for. Even their family name had become a joke.