Burn (Breathless #3)(91)

“I love you, Josie. That’s a fact. No manipulation. No hidden agenda. I. Love. You. Period.”

She closed her eyes and turned her face to the side. He cupped her cheek and thumbed away one of the silver trails.

“Just tell me why?” she whispered. “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you tell me? Why hide it from me?”

He sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I thought you’d react just like you have and I didn’t want that. I loved the paintings, Josie. It pisses me off that because you found out I bought them you think you have no talent and that no one wants your work. That’s bullshit.”

She tugged herself away from him and presented her back, her shoulders shaking.

“I’m too upset to have this conversation with you, Ash. Please, just let it go.”

“I’m not f**king letting it go when you just told me you moved your shit out of our apartment. You honestly expect me to just say okay, have a nice life? Fuck that. The only nice life I want to have is with you.”

She curled her arms around her waist, hugging herself. “I’m going back to my apartment. My stuff has already been moved. I can’t stay. I promised the movers I’d meet them there.”

Panic clawed at his throat. Helplessness gripped him. She was actually walking away. Over those goddamn paintings. He knew it was more than that. He understood why she was pissed. He’d never looked beyond the fact that he’d bought them to see how it would make her feel once she discovered it was all a lie. He got that. But how the f**k was he supposed to make it up to her, to make her realize how much she had to offer, if she was sleeping in another bed in another part of the city?

She started toward the door, him staring after her, utterly paralyzed, his heart in his stomach.

“Josie, stop. Please.”

At the “please” she stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Look at me, please,” he said softly.

Slowly she turned, her eyes awash with fresh tears. He cursed softly because he never wanted to be the reason for those tears.

“Swear to me you’ll think about it. And us,” he said in a choked voice. “I’ll give you tonight, baby. But if you think I’m going to give up and let you walk away then you don’t know me very well.”

She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll think about it, Ash. That’s all I can promise. I have a lot to sort out in my head. You pulled the rug out from under me. I have to figure out what I’m going to do from here. I knew when I entered this relationship with you that you promised to take care of me, to protect me, to provide for me. And I was okay with that because I didn’t need you to. Can you possibly understand the difference? I didn’t have to be with you. I wanted to be. If I’d had no other choice, no place to live, no money, then how could you ever be certain I wasn’t with you for your money? I never want that between us. It’s important to me to be independent and able to provide for myself even if that’s not what I end up doing. But I want that choice. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know that I have value. That I can support myself and make my own choices.”

He closed his eyes because so much of what she said made sense. It’s how he’d feel in her situation too. And he’d looked right past that. Never considered how it would make her feel for him to buy the paintings and hide that from her. He f**ked up. And now he could lose her because of that f**k-up.

“I get it,” he said hoarsely. “I do, baby. I’ll give you tonight. But I don’t have to f**king like it. And I’m not giving up on us, so prepare yourself for that. No way in hell I’m giving you up.”

She swallowed, her face still pale, her eyes still wounded. Then she turned and walked away, taking his heart and soul with her, leaving him standing there holding the collar she’d taken from around her neck.

Chapter thirty

Josie spent a miserable night tossing and turning before she finally gave up and immersed herself in her painting. For the first time, the vibrant colors didn’t come. There was nothing vivid about the scene she painted. It was dark, gray. There was a sadness to it that seeped onto the canvas without her realizing it was there.

At dawn, her shoulders sagged, stiff and sore from the hours she’d spent on the painting. When she took it in, she winced. It was a clear image of her mood. Miserable.

She nearly splattered paint on it to ruin it but held back, her hands trembling before she finally affixed her trademark J in the lower right-hand corner.

It was honest. It was also very good. It was just different from any of her other work. Perhaps this would be something more along the lines of what others wanted. Maybe people didn’t want bright, cheerful, sexy fun.

As she stared at the painting, the title came to her. Rain in Manhattan. Not particularly original, but it suited her mood, even if it was a perfect spring morning outside. The buildings in her painting were tall and gloomy, outlined by rain and overcast skies. She also realized that the building on the canvas was Ash’s.

She sighed and rose, stretching her stiff muscles. She stumbled into the kitchen to make herself coffee, thankful that she still had an old canister in the cabinet. She would have to restock her apartment. All of the perishables had been thrown out when she’d moved and only a few items remained. One of them being the coffee. She needed to bypass a mug and go straight for an IV infusion of caffeine.