“I’m glad I have you alone for a minute,” Adrian said from behind me as I bolted the lock. “I actually wanted to talk to you before we went down.”
“Okay.” I turned to him.
My eyelid was having a seizure. I squeezed it shut and stood there looking up at him with one eye. I was positive I looked insane. My face was bright red and I had to cross my arms and tuck my hands into my armpits to keep them from visibly shaking.
But he smiled at me anyway. “I heard some of Kristen’s phone call with you earlier. I know you just broke up with someone and this date’s a little jarring for you.”
Oh God. I shook my head. “It’s not—”
He put up a hand. “It’s fine.” He gave me a smile. “I’m only in town for a few days and I’m just grateful for the opportunity to have dinner in Los Angeles with a beautiful California woman—even if she is unavailable. I just wanted to let you know that this is a zero-expectation situation. I’ve already been told that if I even so much as shake your hand tonight without your express consent, I’ll be punched in the forehead.”
I snorted, my face going soft, and I tucked my hair behind my ear. “Josh is really protective of me.”
“It wasn’t Josh.” He gave me an arched eyebrow. “So does Kristen hit hard, or…”
He actually managed to draw a laugh from me.
Adrian dipped his head to look me in the eye. “Look, let’s just have a good time,” he said. “Let me buy you some drinks and see if I can’t make you have some fun. Deal?”
He waited patiently for my reply. I relaxed a little. Taking the pressure off this date was at least something. My eyelid took mercy on me and relented and I gave him a weak smile. “Okay.”
He nodded toward the stairs. “Ladies first.”
We started walking. “You know, I have to be honest,” he said, holding the door to the stairwell for me. “Your pictures don’t do you justice.”
I scoffed. “Let me guess, Coachella?”
“Uh, no, actually.” He jogged down the steps behind me. “Headgear?”
I pushed the door to the sidewalk open, laughing.
Kristen and Josh were parked a few feet away. Adrian ran ahead and opened my car door for me. He put a hand to my back as I got in. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any man touching me who wasn’t Jason.
Jason would never touch me again.
It was like I could feel him in the air now that he was here in California. He was all around me, like the sun on my face. It actually made me peer out the window, looking for him.
I let out a long breath, trying to release him from my mind.
It didn’t work.
Chapter 43
Jason
♪ Somebody Else | The 1975
It wasn’t hard to find the ones that were Sloan’s. I just looked for the paintings that looked like photographs.
Three hung in the gallery, and they all had sold signs on them, marked by red dots. I stood there, staring, studying every inch of the artwork, making out almost-invisible brushstrokes.
She touched these. Her hands had created them, her eyes had looked on every inch of canvas, and the art had sprung from her beautiful mind.
Pride filled me. I took a deep breath. I missed her. I missed her every second.
The click of heels on wood turned me to the approaching gallery curator, a polished gray-haired woman in glasses and red lipstick. “You must be the gentleman who called.”
I looked back at the paintings. “Yes. You said you had a Sloan Monroe available?”
“It’s in the back. Your timing is excellent. It was just dropped off. These don’t stick around for long.”
My heart swelled. I couldn’t take my eyes from the wall. “She’s very talented,” I breathed.
I hoped she had used the gift card I’d given her to buy the supplies to make these. I wanted to be a part of this. I wanted to be a part of it all.
It wasn’t over. It would never be over. At least not for me.
It had been ninety-four days since I’d last seen her, and I was nothing but a husk of myself now. My world was dim. All was faded. And the more time that passed, the darker it got. Life without her was a sensory deprivation of my soul.
My tour had brought me back to California. I’d been braced for how hard it would be to breathe the same air as her. Look at the same sky. But then it was hard everywhere, wasn’t it?
I hadn’t told anyone where I was going when I left the hotel. I’d had to sneak out a service exit by the dumpsters in a hat and sunglasses, evading Zane like a zoo animal that had escaped its keeper. She and Ernie would have advised against it. But I’d had to come see these.
I’d told Ernie if the paintings didn’t sell within the first week of going up to buy them for me—without Sloan knowing, of course. But they’d sold. She was gifted. She didn’t need a guardian angel.
I’d been busy too. Besides the tour, I’d actually been able to write. I’d composed six songs during my three weeks in Ely while my hand was healing. And they were good.
They were good because they were about her.
Nobody would ever hear any of them. If I put these on an album, Sloan would know they were about her, and I could never let her know how destroyed I was. Those songs were just for me.
No, the next new thing I recorded would be some pop garbage written by a hired gun my label picked. And I couldn’t even muster up the passion to give a shit.
The clicking heels led me to the back room and when the woman went to remove the brown paper from the canvas to show it to me, I put up a hand. “I’ll take it. I don’t need to see it.”
I couldn’t spare the extra minutes it would take to wrap it back up. Every second I was here was playing with fire.
Sloan lived in the loft upstairs. Ernie had told me. He was the one who’d told me where to find her artwork too. I’d asked him to take care of her once she was back in LA, and he had.
He also told me she hated me. That she couldn’t stand to even hear my name.
I’d accomplished everything I’d set out to do. She rued the day she met me, just like I’d needed her to. And my success was my greatest regret.
I finished my purchase. With any luck I could sneak back into my room without Zane ever knowing I’d been gone. I was walking to the door with the painting under my arm when I froze.
Kristen and Josh were parked in a black Honda just outside the gallery.
I darted behind a sculpture in the entry—and just in time.
She came out of nowhere, like the sun peeking through the clouds. If I’d been two seconds faster, I would have crashed right into her on the sidewalk.
Sloan.
Everything slowed.
She was just twenty feet away. We were separated by nothing but a sheet of glass.
My heart was a thumping bass in my rib cage.
I stared out at her from my blind. She looked even more beautiful than I remembered. She had on a red dress with bright-red lipstick. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she was tan. She looked healthy, like she was taking care of herself like I’d hoped she would.
She was smiling at someone behind her, out of my line of sight. A beaming, radiant smile like the ones she used to give me when I’d sing to her.