1. Sienna

1

SIENNA

Six Years Later

Deep breath.

I’m ready. As ready as I’ll ever be.

This gallery is literally a dream come true; it’s no wonder the butterflies in my tummy are having the wing-fight of the century. I never thought it would happen. I mean, I know you’re supposed to tell the universe what you want, visualize it, mood-board it to within an inch of its life, and turn it into reality.

And I did that. Yep. Still have the fading mood boards to prove it.

But opening an art gallery is a big fucking deal. Especially when you’re a wannabe artist scraping by on what you earn from other jobs, just waiting for the day someone picks up a piece of your artwork and declares to the world: This woman is the next Picasso! Or Van Gogh. Or Frida Kahlo.

Whatever.

Let’s just say that kind of epiphany doesn’t happen often. Or ever if we’re being honest. So, would the universe have listened to me if my best friend Victoria hadn’t fallen in love with an Irish billionaire sex-God?

Not a chance in hell.

I glance around the gallery one last time. My eyes linger on my favorite piece, the largest piece I’ve ever painted, and the one that felt like drawing blood from a piece of marble. It’s a self-portrait although no one would ever know. It’s all color, swirls of ethereal garnet-red, cerulean, and tangerine, more like an aura-portrait.

An aura-portrait of the woman I was before…

Even if people don’t recognize me somewhere inside the splashes of bright acrylic, I hope they’ll understand the emotions oozing from the canvas.

I wander through to my office out the back.

My office.

I’ll never get used to these words: my office, my gallery.

I sip water from a glass through a metal straw, careful not to smudge my lipstick, and study my reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite the window.

The dress I’m wearing cost more than I used to earn in six months of teaching art at middle school. Victoria insisted on buying it for me. “Call it a happy-gallery-day gift,” she’d said with a twinkle in her eye.

She ignored my protests of, “But you and Caleb have already done more than I ever expected, V,” and “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.” She spotted the moss-green fishtail dress with the Bardot neckline while I was still eyeing up the racks of clothes I’d need a bank loan to afford, and grabbed it before I could even blink. Then she led me, dazed, into a changing cubicle and sat down in a comfy armchair to wait for my transformation.

Now, I smooth the crushed velvet bodice with the palms of my hands and turn my body this way and that, admiring the way it clings to my hips and trails across the floor behind me. It’s giving Morticia Addams vibes, only softer.

But what I’m really doing is avoiding looking at the scars above the neckline. The shiny pink flesh, like ruffles of frosting that tightens the skin between my cleavage and collarbone. I trace them with my fingertips, and the memories come flooding back as they always do.

My face is pale, making my eyes appear huge and dark. All pupil, no iris. My breaths come in rapid shallow gasps, the skin between my collarbones rising and dipping with the effort of trying to fill my lungs.

Even now, almost six years later, reliving the car crash takes my breath away.

It isn’t even so much the accident that has this debilitating effect on me. It’s knowing that if I allow the memory to keep going, eventually I’d reach the part where I regained consciousness and realized that I was alone.

Kenickie was gone.

I was trapped inside the car. Aside from the safety belt, something heavy and solid was pinning me to the seat. I couldn’t budge it. I couldn’t unfasten the belt that was cutting into my cheek and neck. I yelled for help, but no one came.

I managed to slide my hand into my pocket and wrap my fingers around my phone. My movements were slow, sluggish, clumsy.

“Please don’t drop the phone,” I muttered under my breath. “Please, don’t…”

I slid my thumb across the surface. I couldn’t move my neck to see what I was doing, I just prayed that I’d find the green button from muscle memory and hit the last number I dialed earlier in the day.

Victoria.

That’s when the mangled remains of the vehicle went up in flames.

I swallow painfully, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth and reach for the emerald silk scarf that I bought to match the dress I’m wearing. Looping it around my neck, I fasten it into a bow to cover the unsightly scars.

That night, I didn’t find out that Kenickie’s real name was Kyle.

Kyle Murray.

Billionaire bachelor and lawyer to the Irish mafia family.

I didn’t know who he was until my best friend Victoria agreed to marry his brother Caleb, in an arrangement designed to get Caleb’s crazy ex-girlfriend off his back.

Because this is the kind of world they roll in.

Fake marriages. Casinos. Leaving an innocent passenger to die in a car accident.

Kyle will be at the gallery opening tonight. I can hardly turn him away when it’s his family’s money that paid for it in the first place.

His brothers rescued him the night of the accident. They told him that I must’ve died on impact, and he believed them. Victoria believes them too. He wants us to start afresh. Forget what happened. Put it behind us and build on the connection we had in the short time we spent together.

I’ve told him I can’t.

The problem is, I can’t walk away either.

If ads affect your reading experience, click here to remove ads on this page.