Chapter Thirty-Seven
EVERETT
The villa staff lets me in without question.
That should probably bother me more than it does.
Instead, all I can think about is the fact that she's here. Somewhere in this house. Somewhere in this city. On this side of the world and not in Seattle and not at the estate and not waiting for me, because of course she isn't.
I step inside and stop just past the foyer.
There are signs of her everywhere.
A scarf thrown over the back of a chair.
A half-finished cup of tea on the kitchen island.
A pair of sandals by the open terrace doors.
Paint water clouded in a jar near the sink.
A sketchbook lying open on the dining table, turned facedown like she set it there absentmindedly and planned to come back in five minutes.
My chest tightens.
This should feel temporary. Instead it feels intimate. Like she's been living here. Like if I turned the corner fast enough, I'd catch her in one of Gabriel's shirts and lose what little is left of my mind.
Then I hear movement upstairs.
A door opening. Footsteps. The low scrape of a drawer closing.
And then she appears at the top of the stairs.
For one second I forget everything I planned to say.
She's barefoot, hair half-curled and falling over one shoulder, a garment bag draped over one arm and an earring in her hand. She stops dead when she sees me, and the look on her face is so purely disbelieving it would almost be funny if I weren't the reason for it.
"What are you doing here?"
There are a hundred answers.
Only one of them makes it out.
"You didn't sign the papers."
She stares at me.
Then lets out one sharp, incredulous laugh.
"You flew to France because I didn't sign papers?"
"I needed to talk to you."
"You could have called."
"You weren't answering."
"Neither were you."
Fair.
I start up the stairs anyway.
She doesn't move.
She just stands there above me, gorgeous and furious and obviously already late, which I don't notice until I get halfway up and see the rest of it.
The gold dress hanging on the bedroom door.
The makeup laid out on the vanity. The shoes waiting near the landing. She's not settling in for the night.
She's leaving.
And then I remember the invitation.
The showing.
Tonight.
Shit.
"You came here with annulment papers on the night of my opening?" she asks, voice rising now, hurt and fury braided so tightly together I can't pull them apart.
"I didn't bring them out to punish you."
"Really? Because it feels weirdly punitive from where I'm standing."
"Aria—"
"No." She drops the earring onto the hallway table with a clatter.
"Actually, no. I am already late. People are already gathering.
Gabriel is probably downstairs trying to figure out whether I've had a nervous breakdown or been murdered.
And instead of putting on shoes and pretending I'm normal for the next three hours, I'm standing in a villa in Cannes arguing with my husband about annulment papers. "
The word hits.
Husband.
Not ex-husband. Not Everett.
My husband.
I don't let myself sit with it.
"Then sign them," I say, because apparently crossing an ocean has done absolutely nothing to improve my instincts.
Her face goes still.
Not calm.
Worse.
The kind of stillness that means I've just stepped directly on the last nerve she had left.
"Are you insane?"
Probably.
"You could have mailed them," she says. "You had a week to call. Nine hours to warn me you were coming. And instead you show up here like some emotionally constipated Bond villain with legal paperwork."
That almost gets me.
Almost.
"I'm not here to ruin your opening."
"Then what, exactly, are you here to do?"
I open my mouth.
Nothing coherent comes out.
Her laugh is softer this time. More tired.
"That's what I thought." She brushes past me, close enough that the scent of her perfume and shampoo and something warmer underneath it catches in my throat. "I have to go."
"Aria."
She stops at the stairs but doesn't turn.
"We'll talk about this later," she says. "When I'm not walking out the door to open my own gallery show and you're not standing in my way with annulment papers."
Then she goes.
I stand there and listen to the front door shut behind her.
For a while, I don't move.
I just stand in the middle of the villa hallway trying to recover from the fact that I crossed an ocean to fix my marriage and somehow managed to come off as the least romantic man currently breathing in Europe.
The villa is too quiet with her gone.
I make it through three rooms before I realize I'm looking for her in all of them.
The signs of her are everywhere once I stop trying not to see them. Paint-streaked towels draped over the backs of terrace chairs. A stack of reference books on the coffee table. A row of brushes drying beside the sink. A linen drop cloth spread beneath a bank of windows facing the water.
The studio isn't really a studio. More like a corner of the villa she claimed and turned into one through sheer stubbornness.
Canvases lean against the wall.
Some blank. Some half-finished. Some turned around so I only see the wooden stretchers and not whatever she decided still wasn't ready to be looked at.
I move closer before I can stop myself.
The paint is still tacky in places.
She's been working here. Not just staying. Not just hiding. Building something.
And there's something about the fact that Gabriel gave her this space that hits harder than I want it to.
There's a charcoal sketch on the floor beside one of the easels. I crouch to pick it up and then stop myself before I touch it.
Because whatever else I've done wrong, I'm not rifling through her work like I have some damn right to it.
I straighten and look around the room again.
This is what she does when she's hurt. She paints. She has always painted.
And now she's done it here. Without me.
I look at the clock on the wall, and then at my briefcase with the invitation still in it.
Five minutes later I'm back in the car pulling up to the gallery that is already crowded when I arrive.
People spill from room to room with champagne flutes and low voices and the sort of reverent excitement that means the show is working. French and English drift together beneath the music.
And then I see her.
She's standing in the center room beside Gabriel, one hand wrapped around the stem of a wineglass, the other gesturing toward a canvas while she talks to a couple I don't recognize. She's smiling. Animated. Bright in a way I haven't seen since before I ruined everything.
She looks like she belongs here.
No.
She looks like she made this room belong to her.
Gabriel is standing beside her with the relaxed confidence of a man who thinks he has every right to be there, listening to her speak with the kind of attention I've been too stupid to show when it mattered.
That should be my place.
The thought hits so fast I nearly laugh at myself. Because I had that place. And I walked away from it.
Then I look at the walls. At the paintings giving this place color.
They aren't dark like I thought they might have been.
I expected grief from her painting because of how this breakup feels in my gut… in my soul. Something to prove that she feels as miserable as I do.
Instead every canvas is heat. Anticipation. Light moving over skin and water and shadow and hands reaching and almost-touching and finally touching.
The title card near the entrance reads:
Falling in Love in Cannes
Fuck.
The whole damn room is a love story and Gabriel is standing in the middle of it beside her and I can't decide if I want to be sick or get on my knees.
I move before I can think better of it.
Gabriel sees me first, his expression changes, subtle but immediate, from polished host to something more alert. Then Aria turns.
Her gaze finds mine across the room and locks there.
The smile slips from her face. Not dramatically… it’s just gone.
She says something quick to the couple beside her, hands off her glass to Gabriel, and walks toward me. Every step makes my heart pound harder.
She stops three feet away.
"What are you doing here?"
"You didn't sign the papers."
Her eyes close briefly.
When they open again, they are full of murder.
"You flew all the way to Cannes to harass me about paperwork at my own opening?"
"I came because you left."
Her laugh is short and sharp. "You really picked tonight for this?"
"I didn't know what else to do."
"You could have mailed them if it was that important to you. And I’m sorry… I won’t agree to an annulment."
A few heads nearby are definitely turning now.
I don’t want the annulment either but it was part of the agreement. The trust wants to make us pay for this. They want to make an example of us so no one else tries to pay off something to marry them.
Gabriel appears at her shoulder, polite and controlled and very much in my space.
"Perhaps now is not the best moment," he says.
"He's right," Aria says tightly, though she's looking at me, not him. "Now is not the best moment."
I hold her gaze.
"Then when."
She exhales through her nose like she's counting to ten in a language I don't speak.
"Go back to the villa," she says. "I'll come after the opening."
"Aria—"
"Go."
Gabriel says nothing else. He doesn't need to. The entire gallery is listening now.
I look at her one beat longer, and then I leave.
By the time I get back to the villa, the panic is climbing again. Not the loud kind. The quieter, worse kind.
Tight chest. Wrong air. My own skin feeling too close. I don't bother fighting it by sitting down. I strip down to my boxers and get in the pool. Cold water closes over my shoulders.
For one second, everything goes quiet and I start swimming.
Lap after lap after lap. Anything to give my body something to do besides fall apart. I turn at one end. Then the other. Breathe. Pull. Kick. Again.