Chapter Eighteen #2
"The gallery owner met the artist only a few days ago," she continues, leaning slightly closer like she's sharing something confidential.
"She was painting by the water, and he knew immediately.
You can always tell, he says, when someone has real talent—the kind that's been buried rather than missing.
" She shakes her head with a small, admiring exhale.
"Between you and me, I wouldn't be surprised if she skyrockets.
She's incredibly gifted. And she doesn't even seem to know it yet. "
The words land one after another like blows I didn't see coming.
Buried rather than missing.
She doesn't even seem to know it yet.
I look back at the painting.
At myself.
At the man behind the glass who hired a woman with this much raw, devastating talent and put her to work scheduling meetings and fetching coffee. Who looked at her every day for months and saw an efficient assistant. A useful presence. A role to be filled.
Who never once asked what she'd given up to be there.
"Do you know the title?" I ask. My voice comes out flatter than I intended.
The woman brightens. "The Lonely Billionaire."
Three words.
They go through me like a blade.
Not cruelty.
Because they're true.
And because the woman who painted them—who saw through me clearly enough to render the shape of my isolation on canvas before she even understood what she was doing—is twenty feet away laughing with another man while I stand here realizing I kept her small.
Not on purpose.
Not with malice.
But kept her small all the same.
I step back from the window.
"Thank you," I say to the gallery assistant, though I'm not sure what I'm thanking her for. The information. The devastation. The confirmation that my wife is extraordinary and I am the last person who deserves to benefit from it.
She smiles like I've made her day.
I turn and leave before Aria can see me standing there, because if I stay another minute I'll either say something too revealing or not enough, and both would make me look worse than walking away.
By the time I get back to the villa, the inside of my skin feels too tight.
I try the study first.
Open laptop.
Read nothing.
Close it again.
I answer one email so badly Jeremy replies within two minutes asking if I meant to send the attachment without comments.
I ignore that too.
I pace the length of the villa once. Then twice. Then again because apparently I've become the kind of man who can't stand still after seeing his own loneliness framed and titled and hung in a gallery where strangers stop to admire the devastation of it.
Gabriel's hand on her arm.
Her laugh.
The look on her face when she realized she'd miss the museum.
The painting.
The title.
She's incredibly gifted. And she doesn't even seem to know it yet.
Buried rather than missing.
I go upstairs, pull on swim trunks, come back down, and head straight for the pool before thinking better of it.
Swimming has always done one thing well: it gives my mind something else to obey.
Today even that feels unreliable.
I cut through the water hard, turn too sharply, drive off the wall like I can outrun the image of that canvas if I just keep moving fast enough.
I don't hear her come back.
The terrace doors open and I hear her voice.
"Everett."
I keep swimming.
Another lap.
"Everett."
I hit the far edge, turn, and come up just in time to see her yank the sundress over her head.
For one stunned second, I just stare.
Aria, my wife, in only a lace bra and panties, bare legs, and hair wind-tossed from town. Sun on her skin.
Then she dives.
She surfaces with a splash and starts swimming toward me with determination that far exceeds her actual comfort in the water.
I stop dead, standing in the six foot deep end.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Getting your attention."
"You had it."
A wet strand of hair sticks to her cheek. She shoves it away with an irritated breath. "No. I had your silence."
She makes it a few more strokes and slows, treading water a little harder than she wants me to notice.
I move toward her.
Not enough to touch yet. Just enough to see the anger in her face.
"That was rude," she says.
"What was?"
"You know exactly what. You walked out."
"I left."
"Same thing."
"It isn't."
"It is when you don't say why."
We stare at each other, both breathing too hard for a conversation that's barely started.
Then I say, "What were you doing with him?"
Her mouth falls open. "Excuse me?"
"With Gabriel."
"Talking."
"You were laughing."
She blinks once, slow and disbelieving. "You are jealous."
The word lands between us like a slap.
I say nothing.
Her expression shifts when I don't deny it. Her chin lifts.
"Wow," she says quietly. "That's rich."
I cross my arms. "Is it?"
"Yes, it is." She kicks harder to stay afloat. "You don't get to disappear behind those office doors for three days and then show up jealous because I had coffee with someone who actually asked me questions."
I step closer. "He touched you."
"It was my arm, Everett, not a marriage proposal."
Her kick slips.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that her mouth dips into the water and she takes on a gulp of water she hadn’t planned.
I cross the last bit of distance and get an arm around her back before she can keep pretending she's fully steady.
She gasps as I pull her against me and start walking her to the shallow end and towards the edge of the pool.
Her arms slide around my neck and her legs wrap around my waist on instinct, and suddenly this conversation becomes something far more dangerous than either of us intended.
"What are you doing?" she asks as if I didn’t just watch her take on water.
"I can't watch you drown, Aria. I’m taking you to where you can at least stand up while you yell at me."
"I was not drowning."
"You were getting there."
"And I wasn’t yelling… you were ignoring me."
She glares at me from inches away, wet hair slicked against her shoulders, chest rising and falling hard enough that her breasts brush my ribs every time she breathes.
"Why did you come find me?"
There’s no answer that makes this thing between us easier.
Because I wanted to see you. Because Jeremy called with the trust breathing down my neck and all I wanted after that was you. Because I've spent three days pretending that distance is discipline and I'm tired of the lie.
Instead I say, "You left."
"That isn't an answer."
"No," I admit. "It isn't."
She studies me and doesn't let it go. "Why did you leave after you got there?"
I tighten my hold on her.
"I saw the painting."
Something flickers across her face. Not guilt. Just the raw awareness of being caught in something she hadn't meant to show me.
"What about it?"
As I reach the edge of the pool, I lift her and sit her on the cement edge, her legs still around my waist, her hands resting on my shoulders with the space now between us.
"That's how you see me," I tell her.
She looks away for one beat, then back. "I didn't mean to paint you."
"But you did."
"Yes." Her voice drops. "I did."
"Why?"
She wets her lips. "I don't know."
"Don't lie to me. Not right now."
"I'm not lying." Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. "I was painting and it just... happened."
"You titled it as The Lonely Billionaire. You think I’m lonely."
Her expression softens, but only slightly. "Because you are."
I laugh once, low and humorless. "You know enough about me to decide that?"
"Yes." Her answer comes faster now, stronger. "I do."
She keeps going. Maybe because now that we’re eye to eye and I no longer have the height difference, she’s become brave.
"You stand behind those glass doors and think that because I can see you, you're there. You're not. You watch me. You leave food. You make coffee. You do all these small, careful things and then pull away the second they might mean something."
My hand spreads wider over her back.
Her breath catches.
"You don't get to be jealous and absent at the same time," she says.
That line goes straight through me.
Because it's true.
Because I have wanted her and withheld myself as if that counted as discipline instead of fear.
Because she sees that too.
I back her into the pool wall.
Her spine meets stone. Her hands slide higher on my shoulders.
"He touched you," I say again, because apparently I'm not done being petty.
"And you left."
"I wanted to hit him."
That startles her enough that I almost smile.
Instead she stares at me for one long second and says, very quietly, "You should have kissed me instead."
That's it.
That's the break.
I kiss her hard enough that she loses the next breath.
Her mouth opens under mine instantly, and whatever control I had left goes under with us. Three days of distance. Three days of discipline. Three days of telling myself that wanting her and keeping her safe were the same thing.
All of it collapses in the space between one breath and the next.
My hand fists in her hair. Hers catches at my jaw. My body pins hers to the wall, water rocking around us, my thigh forcing her legs apart just enough that she gasps into my mouth when she feels how hard I am against her.
She kisses me back just as hard.
Bites my lower lip.
Drags her nails over my shoulders like she wants to leave evidence.
My hand slides down her body—her ribs, her waist, her hip—and finds the wet edge of her underwear. I don't bother being careful. I press my fingers against her through the thin, soaked fabric and feel how swollen she already is. How hot. How ready.
My chest cracks wide.
Because this is real.
This isn't proximity or performance or a contractual obligation. This is her body responding to mine, and mine responding to hers, and three days of denial snapping at the weakest point.