Chapter Fifteen
The headlines were fantastic, but his wife was prickly.
And he didn’t quite know what to do with her.
So when they went to Paris the next day, he made a few calls.
Yes, they would have to do some things that put them in front of the public, but he wanted.
..he wanted to give her something. Something he had never given to anyone before.
Not that it was difficult. He had never given anything to anyone before.
That was one of the astonishing things about Verity.
Taking care of her was something glorious.
When they were in bed, he had an easy time praising her. Telling her how special she was, but he could see that it wasn’t quite enough for her.
He could see that she was craving something more, and he wanted to find a way to give her that.
He wanted to give her everything. It was just he didn’t know where everything extended inside of him. Where it began. Where it ended.
“I want to go shopping,” he said.
She looked up at him from their lunch table, right at the base of the Eiffel Tower. “You want me to...go shopping? For something that will look good in photographs?”
“Something that looks good to you. You have no budget. I have a few things to arrange, and then I will have you meet me back at our hotel.”
“Very heavy-handed.”
“Perhaps. But you’re a good girl,” he said. “And you will do as I say.”
She flushed with pleasure, and he thought perhaps that he had done well.
Taking care of business was actual torture, when in fact he wanted to be with her.
She kept sending him photographs from dressing rooms, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
She was asking his opinion, and he found himself more interested in the cut of flowy skirts than he had ever been before in his life.
He had thought that he would prefer the outfits that showed more skin, that were tighter, the sorts of things that she often wore to the office, or the shockingly pink dress that she had worn to dinner that night in Athens.
He found that he could easily make a fantasy out of swirling, flowing fabric.
And all that wild blond hair.
He was on a video call, and it was his head of production that caught him being distracted. “Mr. Economides?”
“Sorry,” he said. “My wife is texting me.”
It was perhaps the most normal sentence he’d ever said in his life.
It made him feel something. The beginning of something warm, right there at the center of his chest. He put his hand there, and he tried to ignore the burning pain that accompanied it.
He tried to get his focus back on the meeting.
He was meeting her soon. He was quite literally counting down the minutes.
When at last he was free of his obligations, he raced to the front of the hotel, where she stood wearing a glorious, emerald green dress with a drop waist and glimmering gems all over it.
She was wearing a large cuff on her wrist, and it made him think of how he wanted to grab her, hold her down, hold her to him.
It was shockingly erotic, as was every detail.
Including the long teardrop earrings that nearly kissed her shoulders.
It was different to what he had seen her in before, except it did remind him just slightly of the wedding gown that she had selected. Something ethereal about it. Magical.
That same, painful feeling began to splinter at the center of his chest.
He swallowed hard. “Let’s go.”
He swept her into the back of the limousine that took them across the city to the Musée d’Orsay. He had rented it out for the night, only for the two of them.
“Isn’t this closed?” she asked as they approached the ornate building.
“Yes. For everyone who isn’t us. But tonight, you and I get to have a private tour.”
A flush of pleasure overtook her face.
“Just us?”
“Yes.”
“Not for show?”
“No,” he said. “I just want to see your face.”
It was true. He wanted to give her something.
In this museum, which contained so many of the beautiful works of art in the world, that seemed like a small thing.
Something lovely that he could make for the two of them.
They walked inside, beneath the glorious arched roof. The garden of sculptures greeted them.
It was lit still, but there were not even security guards. He had paid handsomely for the privilege. And for all of the security cameras to be turned off.
Tonight, this place might as well be their own private bedroom.
It was their own world.
“Do you like museums?” she asked, circling the first sculpture with an expression of wonder on her face.
“I never have. Do you like it, though?”
“I do,” she said. “How did you know that I would?”
“You’re one of those rare people who finds the beauty in so many things.
You’ve talked to me often about how you used to walk through the art museum at your university.
You always go to the beach on your day off, even though it’s a long drive, and it eats into your precious free time.
You like the beauty of things. This outfit that you chose tonight.
..it reflects that. You’re a sensual creature, and you love things that are beautiful just for the sake of it.
And so a museum is the perfect place for you, I would think. ”
“Tell me again,” she said. “Tell me again why you hired me.”
“Because I couldn’t let you go,” he said.
There was a real, raw emotion behind those words, even if he couldn’t quite untangle what it was.
He paused for a moment, and stopped with her in front of a sculpture of a young woman sitting down, a harp beside her. It was so real, like she might grab hold of the instrument and begin playing at any moment. But she was just marble. Like him. The notion was so funny, he nearly laughed.
He looked real. Sometimes, he even thought he might be. When he was with her. When he could feel her heart beating next to his. But it was just her.
It had been, from the beginning.
He had wanted to cling to it, wanted to grab onto it, not let it go. From the first.
It would be so easy to confuse it with his own humanity.
“You know,” he said. “I used to tell myself that I was only the right visit away from having a real set of parents. And every time a couple would come and see me and leave without me, never call back, never seek me out again, I would tell myself that perhaps I had gotten close that time. Perhaps, I had been on the cusp of having a family, and it had been cruelly snatched away from me. And then one day, I was perhaps nine, I realized that I was never close. They came on a visit to see a child. That visit didn’t mean they thought anything about me in particular.
It only meant they wanted a boy of my age.
Nothing was taken from me, because nothing was ever mine.
Because it was all forms and paperwork and things like that.
It was nothing real. It was never me. I let go of all of it. Of even the wish for a family.”
“Were you ever angry?”
“Yes. But I realize, you don’t do anything to be born into a family.
You simply are. You don’t ask to be created.
God knows I didn’t. But here I am. Here you are.
You didn’t ask for your parents, any more than I asked to not have any.
I imagine there are a great many children who are terrible.
Who hate their parents, despise them, and aren’t grateful for a single moment they spend with them.
It’s a lottery of birth, isn’t it? I didn’t deserve my life any more than you deserved yours.
So yes. I used to be very, very angry about that.
But there’s no point to it. No purpose. It’s just easier for there to be nothing,” he said.
“You did feel,” she said. “You used to be attached.”
“What? There was never anything there.”
“There was, though. A woman gave birth to you. She carried you in her womb for nine months. Just because you didn’t know her didn’t mean that connection didn’t exist.”
“I don’t even know if she ever held me.”
His words were far too loud in the silence of the museum.
“She did, though. Even if it wasn’t in her arms.”
“So did your mother,” he said.
“I can’t deny that. And you know, you don’t have to be grateful to her. I’m not grateful to my mother. It’s still a loss, though. That potential. It’s a connection. And I think maybe it’s even worse because it is, even if it was severed the moment she gave birth to you.”
“No,” he said. “Don’t mistake me. If any part of me ever felt connection, it was gone a long time ago.”
“It still does. Or you would’ve been happy enough to let me walk back out of your life the day that I walked in.”
Her words were like a knife slipped beneath his skin. “Verity...”
“Let’s walk,” she said, taking his hand and moving him into another display room.
The works of Monet were hung with only dark walls and spare lighting to highlight them.
One painting in particular caught his eye.
It was meant to be Parliament, but it was obscured.
The shape of it was clear, but it was like there was a fog all around it.
And yet again, he couldn’t help but think of himself.
Only the shape of a man, obscured by too much to ever really be clear.
Perhaps this was why he didn’t like museums.
There were too many opportunities to look at himself. And if he wanted to gaze into a mirror he could’ve stayed back at the hotel.
They entered the display room for van Gogh, and Verity exhaled a reverent breath. They might have stepped into a church.
The approached the Starry Night painting, her features softening, a small smile on her lips. “It’s so beautiful in person, I had no idea.”
He looked at it, at the strokes and color, the bright and the dark. He didn’t feel whatever Verity did. When he looked at her, though, he felt...
She closed her eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Wishing,” she said, looking up at him. “If you wish on a star, your dreams could come true.”