♛Chapter Fourteen♛
Lola
I keep my back straight, my shoulders squared, and my face impassive.
I stay strong. All the way out of the gallery.
Through the suffocating air of the city.
Through the streets pulsing with life, with laughter, with people who aren't unraveling from the inside out.
I don't let the cracks show. The thought of going back to the apartment complex makes my stomach twist. If I return, Mikhail might knock on my door.
Or worse, he won’t.
I book the hotel room before I can second-guess myself. It's a place to fall apart in private, because I know I will. I hold it together until the door shuts behind me.
Then I break. A ragged sob rips from my chest as I press my back to the door, sliding down until I’m crumpled on the floor.
My hands clutch at my arms, nails digging into skin.
I haven’t cried since my mother’s funeral, and yet, the tears won’t stop coming.
I cry for the fact that the only man I’ve ever loved thinks of me as nothing more than a fuck. A convenient fuck.
Had I pursued him too hard? Made myself too easy?
He thinks I’m a slut. I’ve never been ashamed of who I am or what I want. I don’t play coy when I have an itch to scratch. But I really thought we were more. I was wrong.
And don’t get me started on the exhibition.
I spent months preparing for tonight. Moving to New York was supposed to be my test, my proof that I could make it on my own.
That I could build an audience without my father's name. And yet, every face in that room was already familiar. My father’s colleagues.
His connections. His world, not mine. All present to kiss his ass.
I didn’t draw a single new person in. Not one.
For the first time in a long while, I don’t feel like a winner. I feel like the biggest loser.
Mikhail thinks I’m mediocre. That fucking prick.
All this time, I thought he saw something in me.
I never imagined he was humoring me because he thought my pussy was convenient.
I wish I could say it doesn’t make me want to seek him out.
To storm into his apartment. To look him in the eye and make him say it to my fucking face.
I wish I didn’t have the urge to check the cameras in his place. Obsession dies hard. But it will die.
I won’t give in to these urges anymore. I won’t give him another second of my thoughts, my time, or my soul.
I will put all of it, this rage, this betrayal, this heartbreak, into my art.
Because the truth is, ever since I moved into that damn apartment complex, Mikhail has been a distraction.
A dangerous, all-consuming, suffocating distraction that pulled me under and kept me from doing what I came here to do.
I’ve been playing into this game instead of focusing on my dreams.
Maybe this is for the best. Maybe I needed this, to see him for what he truly is. A liar. A manipulative bastard who sees me as nothing more than passing amusement. Maybe now I can finally become who I was meant to be.
I push myself off the floor, wipe my face, and adjust my makeup. My mother taught me that when you put your mind to something, you never lose. I lost the battle. But I will win the war.
Mikhail is the past.
And me? I'm going to make myself one of the most famous artists in New York.
I head to the dimly lit hotel bar and slide onto a stool. My body feels heavy, my mind buzzing with static. I signal for a drink. "Whiskey. Neat."
The first burn is sharp, cutting through the ache in my chest, but not deep enough to carve it out. So I order another. And another. The bartender raises an eyebrow, but he pours anyway.
A few stools down, there’s a guy in a suit. One of those sleek, expensive ones you see in magazines, but he’s slouched. Tie’s loose. At first glance, I think, yeah, the type of man my mother would've pointed at and said marry that one . I look again.
His hair’s a wreck, like he’s been dragging his hands through it on loop. Cheeks flushed, lips dry and cracked. He’s chewing the bottom one like it wronged him. He’s been here a while. Long enough to stop caring how he looks.
He finally glances my way, eyes glassy.
"You drink like you're trying to forget something."
I lift my glass halfway. "What gave it away?"
He lets out a dry laugh, almost a cough. "Experience."
Then it's quiet. The not-uncomfortable kind.
Another drink. Another sting. I let the burn sit in my chest. "No one’s had a worse night than me," I mutter, raising the new glass in the air.
"Want to bet?" he says, turning fully to face me this time. His eyes are a mess, bloodshot, rimmed red, just... tired.
Why not? "Alright. Bet what?"
"A hundred bucks."
I laugh, a real one this time. First of the night. "You’re on." I tilt my glass his way. "You go first."
He scrubs a hand over his jaw and lets out a long breath. "Girlfriend of five years rejected my proposal."
I let out a low whistle. "Damn. That sucks."
"Cheers to heartbreak and bad decisions."
I pull out a crumpled bill and slide it his way without a word.
His lips twitch. "You're not even gonna try to top that?"
"The man I love told me I was nothing more than convenient sex."
He stares at the bill, then at me, before pushing the money back across the bar. "Keep it."
I do.
He's... attractive. Sharp features, clean lines, the whole brooding Wall Street fantasy. Under better circumstances, if Mikhail weren’t burned into the back of my brain like some kind of brand... well. I might've shown him a good time. Still might.
"Alright, enough with the sad vibes," he says. "What do you do?"
"I’m a painter."
He perks up. "Yeah? You any good?"
Instead of answering, I reach into my bag. My fingers find my sketchbook, the one I always carry with me. "You wanna see?"
He leans back, lazy grin on his face. "You planning to draw me?"
"I was thinking about it."
He shakes his head, chuckling like I’m the weirdest part of his night, but he doesn’t stop me.
Pencil hits paper. The noise of the bar fades.
It's just him, the page, and my hand moving on instinct. The slump in his shoulders, the way his tie hangs all wrong, the bruise-colored shadows under his eyes, it’s all there, waiting to be captured.
"You’re really serious about this, huh?"
"You asked if I was good. Let’s see if I am."
The pencil keeps going, dancing through lines and soft shading. My favorite part: when something starts to feel real. "So," I say, voice lighter now, "what do you do when you're not turning yourself into whiskey soup?"
"Finance. Investments. The kind of job that makes people assume I cry in my Tesla and have the personality of an A4 sheet of paper."
I grin without looking up. "Do you?"
"What, cry?"
"No. Have a personality."
He snorts. "It’s... questionable."
"You seem like you might have a personality buried in there somewhere," I say, pencil still moving.
He huffs, amused. "And what makes you the expert?"
I tap my temple, giving him a look. "I'm an artist. Comes with the job. We notice stuff."
"Oh yeah? So what do you see when you look at me?"
I pretend to think, biting the tip of the pencil. "I see a man who’s probably been here since before happy hour, regretting spending way too much money on a ring that never made it onto a finger."
He tilts his head like he’s genuinely impressed, even though he already told me most of that. "You’re good."
I smirk, angling the sketch so he can peek. "Told you."
He leans in, eyes scanning the mess of lines that are slowly becoming him. "Damn," he says. Out of nowhere, he blurts, "You’re a really attractive woman."
I blink, unsure what to say.
"Shit. Sorry. That was... creepy."
"Was it, though?"
He groans, dragging a hand over his face. "Well, no. It’s the truth. You’re beautiful." He swears under his breath. "If Maya were here, she’d murder me."
His whole body sort of deflates. The tension creeps into his eyes, tightening his mouth. There’s this stillness that says everything he’s not. I give him space and focus on the paper.
"What I meant was—if this whole thing is some weird setup to us hooking up and drowning in each other’s mess tonight..." He tries to laugh, but it comes out bitter. "I’ll probably call you Maya." He winces. "Actually, scratch that. I might not even be able to get it up."
That gets me. I laugh, hard.
"Glad my tragic sex life is so amusing," he mutters.
I set the pencil down and wipe my eyes. "Sorry. That was just... brutally honest. And no, this isn’t that. I’m not really in the market for being someone’s emotional crash pad."
"Good," he says. "Because I’m not exactly in the mood to be someone’s rebound screw."
"Who said you’d be a rebound? You’d just be... something to take my mind off things."
He feigns offense. "Wow. Cold."
"Maybe you need a little humbling."
He gestures toward the sketch. "Can I keep it?"
I hesitate. "No."
"No?"
I tuck the sketchpad into my purse before he can get another glimpse. "I need it. I want to remember tonight. Even if it’s a stranger’s face I never see again."
He watches me with a look that’s half entertained, half something I can’t quite place. "You’re kind of strange, you know that?"
"I’ve been told."
His gaze drifts over me, but not in a gross way. Just curious. "That guy? The one who said you were just convenient? He was a damn fool. You’re not that."
Something clenches in my chest, fast and tight, but I brush past it. "And Maya? She fumbled you too."
"Yeah. She did."
He sticks his hand out. "Daniel."
I look at his hand, then take it. "Lola."
His grip is warm and solid. He holds on a second too long, then lets go like he’s trying not to.
I slide off the stool, bag over my shoulder, and give him one last look. "Her loss."
He nods. "Likewise."
I toss a few bills on the bar, nod at the bartender, and walk out. I can feel his eyes on me the whole way until I turn the corner. By the time I get to my room, I already know. If things had been a little different, tonight could’ve gone somewhere else entirely.