Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(56)

“It’s the Mona Lisa.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he murmurs, acting as unimpressed as he had earlier. “Where do you want to go tomorrow?”

The elevator opens and our hands automatically meld together, as they have all day. “Back here,” I say. “I love this place.

There’s so much I haven’t seen yet, I could spend days here.”

“It’s a special place, and if you want to come back, then we’ll come back.”

I glance up at him, and my stomach lutters. The man has utterly charmed me today with his desire to be just another tourist, not the famous artist he is. Of course, it didn’t work.

People know him far too well in the Paris art community.

The Porsche 911 comes into view, and Chris has just clicked the locks open when his cell phone rings. He stops and digs it from his pocket, glancing at the number, and tension rolls across his features.

He answers the call. “Is he there?” he asks without pre-amble, and listens before saying, “I’ll be there in ifteen minutes.

Make sure he doesn’t leave.” He grimaces at whatever is said to him, and adds, “You’re resourceful. Figure it out.” Hanging up, he stufs his phone in his pocket.

“Neuville?” I ask immediately.

“Yes. Take the car home and I’ll meet you in an hour.” He tries to hand me the keys.

I refuse to take them. “I’m going with you.”

“Forget it, Sara.”

“I can’t drive in Paris traic. And even if I did, I can’t sit around at home and wait for answers,” I argue, pressing my hand to his chest. “I’ll go insane. You know I will. Besides, I’ll know things about Ella you won’t. I’ll catch lies you can’t.”

His lips thin. “Sara—”

“It’s not like this will put me on his radar, Chris. I’m already on it. I’ll be with you. I’ll be safe.”

He stares down at me for several intense seconds, his expression impassive while I hold my breath and wait for his reply.

Finally he scrubs a hand down his face and studies the ceiling above me. “You do exactly what I say, when I say it. It won’t be for no reason.”

Relief washes over me. “Yes. I’ll do whatever you say.”

He studies me, his eyes glinting steel. “You never do whatever I say.”

“I will this time.” And I really try to mean it.

Not far from the Louvre, we pull up to a parking meter on a street that looks like any other side street I’ve seen in Paris. The same white, concrete, stucco-looking buildings lined up side by side. The same intimate sidewalks line narrow two-way roads paved with oversized bricks.



I don’t see any retail shops or restaurants, but there seems to be a valet parking cars at a building across the street from us.

“Where are we?”

“A private dinner club,” he says. “We’re avoiding the valet because we need to talk before we go inside.”

My stomach lutters. “About what?”

“Isabel and I have a history.”

Despite expecting it, the announcement still rattles me.

“What does that mean?”

“It means she’s good with a whip and at one point in my life I spent far too much time appreciating that skill.” His tone is steady, unemotional.

I feel myself go pale. This is what I’d sensed when he’d been talking to her on the phone. It wasn’t the existence of Isabel herself that had bothered me, but something in Chris’s reaction to her. I desperately try to cut through the shadows, to read his expression, but fail. Finally, I say, “What does ‘far too much time’

mean?”

“It means it was an addiction and she was my drug dealer.”

Acid burns in my throat and I remember him once telling me there had been a time when the beatings were all that got him from one day to the next day. “You say that so non-chalantly.”



“Because it doesn’t matter, Sara, and neither does she. She was just the person holding the whip.”

“How often did you see her?” How often had she beaten him?

“It’s the past.”

But it’s not the past or Dylan wouldn’t have driven him to Mark’s club to get whipped again. “How often?”

“Too often and for about ive years. After that, I made the mistake of going back to her during my bad moments.” He leans close to me and his expression softens, and his voice turns tender. “Sara.” He runs a hand over my cheek and lets it fall away. “She didn’t do anything to me I didn’t ask her to do.”

And yet he’d called her his drug dealer. I don’t believe he’d call the random woman in Mark’s club who’d used a whip on him the same thing.

“We have to go inside before Neuville leaves. Isabel will try to push your buttons. I need to know you won’t let her.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because I had an afair with the whip, not her. When I didn’t need it anymore, I didn’t need her.”

I try to control my reaction, afraid Chris will take it wrong.

Afraid he will regret how he is sharing this part of himself with me, when he hasn’t always, but anger burns through my body.