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.

My heart broke a thousand times every second that I looked at her.

I was going to go out there.

I didn’t even have control over it. My body had taken on some involuntary reflex in response to her sudden presence. The pull was so strong it felt like my very existence had just tipped in her direction and everything was sliding toward her. I took a step…

And then some fucking guy was opening her car door for her and helping her in with a hand on her back.

Chapter 44

Jason

? If I Get High | Nothing But Thieves

I don’t even know how I made it back to the venue in one piece.

I’d tempted Fate by going to the gallery, and Fate had called my bluff. I was fucking destroyed.

Seeing her with somebody else tore through my heart like a hot knife. It took the wind right out of my lungs.

Men had always looked at her, even when I held her hand. I went mad thinking of someone else touching her. Of her smiling at their jokes or cooking them dinner.

I’d been following the updates to The Huntsman’s Wife. I checked it every day. It was the only direct link I still had to her. She’d started posting regularly while she was living in Ely and she was cooking the game Dad had in the freezer. But a few weeks ago she’d posted a recipe for wild boar.

Dad didn’t hunt boar.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought maybe it was something old, from when Brandon was still alive, that she hadn’t gotten around to sharing. But now that I knew she was dating, my mind went crazy wondering if she was seeing someone who hunted, obsessing about who she cooked for, who she was spending time with.

I knew she hadn’t been ready to date when she met me, so I’d hoped, for my own selfish reasons, that she would stay single for a while, that maybe we had been a special circumstance. It was the only thing that had kept me halfway sane all these months. But she wasn’t waiting. She was seeing someone.

Nobody would ever love her like I would. She would never find the same devotion, even if she looked for a lifetime. I knew that with every cell of my being. She’d never know about it, but it would always be there. When she married someone else, had children, when she grew old, I would still be out there in the world, cherishing her in secret. If she ever needed anything, I’d make sure she had it. It would be my penance for the rest of my life for not being able to do it in person.