So he’d gotten out, and if his sister couldn’t see why he wasn’t willing to get back in . . .

He curled his hand into a fist and worked his jaw. “I’ll come back to New York when I’m ready to.”

“And when will that be?”

If the pounding in his heart and the cold sweat on the back of his neck were anything to go by, not for a while. “I don’t know.”

A long couple of seconds passed. “We’ve only got a few months left before the board becomes permanent. If you don’t step up, McConnell stays at the helm, and you know Dad trusted him as far as he could throw him—”

Rylan straightened his spine and widened his eyes, incredulous. “And I’m supposed to care about who Dad trusted?”

“Look, I know you’re still angry.”

“Damn right I am.”

“But it’s your company now! I’m not old enough to take over, but you are. If you give a shit about our family, about anything—”

“If Dad had given a shit about our family he wouldn’t have fucked it over in the first place. He wouldn’t have fucked us over, he—” He snapped, shoving the side of his fist into the wall, and fuck. He hadn’t let himself get so worked up about this in a year. He forced his fingers to unclench, forced his lungs to expand and contract. Between them, in the space above the center of his ribs, his father’s ring hung from its chain, searing like a metal brand against his chest.

Why the hell had he answered the phone in the first place?

When Lexie spoke again, her voice was measured in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. “You care. You pretend you don’t. You fuck off to Europe to avoid all your responsibilities. But. You. Care.”

He’d cared too much.

He laughed, and the sound was shaky in his throat. “You always did like to believe the best about everyone.”

He tore the phone from his ear, ignoring whatever else Lexie was trying to say, hanging up before he could dig himself in any deeper. When he’d blanked the screen again, he stared at it for a long, aching moment, until his vision flipped and he wasn’t seeing the empty screen but instead was staring at his own reflection in the glass.

After all the shit he’d given Lex about her voice. He had his father’s face and his mother’s eyes. Had their faithlessness and their morals, and every single thing he’d come to resent them for.

He turned his phone over so the dull plastic case was facing him. Then tossed the damned thing on the bed before he could throw it through the window.

chapter SIXTEEN

Kate was practically walking on air as she stepped off the elevator on their floor. She’d filled her sketchbook. Finished it. Images of Montmartre and Sacred Heart and the view from the top of the hill. Little cafés and giant cityscapes, and for the first time, there was this certainty buzzing through her veins. The drawings were good. More than that, they were her.

She couldn’t wait to tell Rylan how well her day had gone. To see that conviction in his eyes when he told her she could do this after all.

At the door to their room, she rucked her shirt up and reached into the security wallet she still kept strapped around her waist. She grasped the keycard between two fingers and slipped it into the door, pausing long enough for the light to flash green before turning the handle and striding through.

“Hey!” She dropped her bag on the bed and skipped across the carpet. Rylan was at the little desk in the corner, his back to her. She tugged at the chair to spin it around. But when she saw his face, she paused, drawing her hand back. “Are you okay?”

There was something haunted to his eyes—a weariness she’d caught a glimpse of in the past, but not like this. Shadows under his cheekbones and a tightness to his jaw. A coiled anger, an old anger.

For the briefest fraction of a second, he reminded her of her dad.

She blinked and it was gone, but she was already backing away. He reached out, wrapping his hand around her wrist before she could retreat any more. With what looked like effort, he twitched the corners of his mouth upward, but it wasn’t a real smile. She knew what those looked like on him now.

“I’m fine,” he said. The sharpest edges of his expression bled away, but now that she’d seen them, the signs of his agitation were everywhere, in the corners of his eyes and the set of his lips. His thumb stroked across the bone of her wrist. “Sorry. Was just thinking about some things.”

“Things?” She arched her brows, but something inside her was shaking. She fought to push it down. To joke with him the way she normally would. “Like what? Torture?”

He laughed at that, and it made a little of the tension in her shoulders ease. “Close.”

Touching his face felt like a risk, like pushing past some kind of boundary. She did it anyway, wary, half expecting him to flinch. He did, a little bit, but allowed the contact. She swallowed to try to slake the sudden dryness in her throat. “Really, though. You okay?”

“Fine.”

She almost believed it.

He turned his neck, shifting to press a kiss to her palm, lips lingering there for a long moment. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they seemed clearer. He let go of her wrist to settle both hands on her hips. “How about you? How was your day? Get everything done you wanted to?”

She took a deep breath, the tremor inside of her melting away.

The dark look in his eyes might have echoed an expression she’d seen before, one that had haunted her for years. But it had only been an echo. Her father. Aaron. Any of them. Their bad moods didn’t end with them getting a hold of themselves and focusing on how she was doing.

She was safe here.

She slid her palm down past his neck and collarbone to rest against his heart. “It was good. I drew a lot.”

“Yeah? Can I see?”

A nervous flutter fired off behind her ribs, but she nodded.

Slipping out of his grasp, she headed over to the bed. She opened her bag and pulled out her book, planning to flip it to the work she’d done today, but before she could, he plucked it from her grasp. He sunk down to sit on the bed and opened to the very first page.

It wasn’t just nerves anymore, beating inside her chest. “There’s a lot of old crap in there.”

Old crap she’d put so much time and energy and dedication into, and letting them be seen like this . . . It was like letting him see all the unfinished edges of her. A work in progress, and he’d already witnessed her naïveté in other situations. In his bed and with her hands between her legs.

She fought the instinct to rip the book from his grip.

Oblivious to how she was churning up inside, he turned the pages slowly, gazing at each with an appraising set to his jaw. Her face went another shade warmer with every amateurish imitation of another artist’s style, every mistake in perspective. Every sketch that betrayed exactly what a mess she was and how little she knew.

“Really.” Her voice was rough. “Some of those are ancient.”

He lifted up a single finger and shook his head, asking her to be quiet without saying a word.

She resigned herself to her fate. Picking at her fingernails, she moved to sit beside him, close but not quite touching. He’d told her he liked the couple of drawings she’d shown him before, and he’d expressed such confidence in her ability to hack it in grad school. But he hadn’t really known, then, had he? He hadn’t seen enough to make that kind of statement, and the idea that he might take it back now, after having seen more, made her stomach clench. It hardened further about halfway through the book, when the quality of the images changed. That had been about when she’d started thinking about what she was going to do after college, a hundred futures spinning out in front of her. Grad school and office jobs. Huge risks and life sentences.