Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(73)

“Woops!” I chirp, righting myself and pushing back from his chest a little.

“Tonight was incredible, just as you are incredible,” he says happily, his gray eyes sparkling.

“Gerard, thank you so much for this. I just can’t tell you—”

My words are cut off by the chilling sensation that someone is watching me. It makes no sense at all. I can only attribute it to the moved perfume bottle and a heaping dose of paranoia.

“What is it?” Gerard asks, concern showing on his face.

I realize immediately how unlikely it is that I’m being watched. No doubt Jasper sent me to a place he felt was safe, but try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that there are eyes on me. Dark, menacing eyes.

I glance around surreptitiously, but see nothing suspicious, nothing nefarious like a black sedan with a hooded figure in the driver’s seat or a man in a trench coat, smoking by the corner of a shadowed alley. Although I doubt anyone who could find me would be that sloppy in their surveillance.

Anyone who could find me . . .

Jasper.

Could he have found me? Would he have wanted to?

My heart leaps with a joyful relief at the brief thought that it could be him, that he might finally have come for me. But then rationale dashes those hopes. If Jasper did come for me, there’s no reason whatsoever for him to stalk me in Paris when he could just catch me at my small-town cottage.

No, it wouldn’t be Jasper. If he was watching me, I’d never know it. As much as I like to think I’d feel him, too, I doubt I would. He’s like an apparition. Invisible. Fleeting.

“Nothing. It’s just . . . nothing,” I add with a reassuring smile. “I’m just ready to go home and let all this sink in.”

He smiles brightly and loops his arm through mine as we start off toward the car. When Gerard opens the passenger door, I duck inside, searching the street and shadows for anything that appears out of the ordinary as I do. Nothing does, though. No stalker. No watcher.

No Jasper.

On the way back to our little village, my heart sinks with every mile we drive, every mile that brings me closer to my new existence. And farther from the man I love.

—

That brief, nonsensical thought that Jasper might’ve found me (and yet he hasn’t) heralds a darkness that creeps over my life, over my days and nights like a storm cloud. Longing turns into bitterness, melancholy turns into anger. My frustration with myself for falling in love with a man who is so deeply flawed and inaccessible gushes out in a spray of venom and animosity that has one target and one target alone—Jasper.

It’s easy to place all the blame on him. If it weren’t for him, at least I’d still be in the states, I’d still be me, living a life that was just “okay” as I waited for something wonderful to happen rather than this. This life is, at times, nearly unbearable. The loss of so much—my home, my father, my identity—was bad enough without Jasper. Falling for him was like getting hit by a missile filled with fireworks. It was brutally wonderful, gloriously explosive, but, in the end, short-lived and empty. Now I’m left with only wreckage. No sparks, no light, no beauty. Just the scorched wrappings of what was and is no more.

I pack up my easel and a fresh canvas, along with some brushes and watercolors, angrily tossing it all into the basket on the front of my bike and tearing off down the lane. I don’t even glance his way when the corner of my eye catches Gerard’s car pulling up. I keep right on going as though I didn’t see him at all. I’m not in the mood to deal with him, although I’ll have to eventually. He’s tried several times to talk to me since our dinner last week, but so far I’ve been successful in holding him off. I just don’t want to deal with it yet. If he has good news from the gallery owners, it means I have to move on. If he doesn’t, it means I might never be able to move on. I’m not sure I can deal with either path right now.

I travel the familiar road that leads to the river. Even though I’m hissing hostility like a busted radiator hisses steam, something in me yearns for the “homeyness” of the river. It’s the closest I can get to Jasper right now, and even though he’s the source of my current disgruntled state, I follow my instinct and go toward him anyway.

When I get to the river, I’m glad to see that the bank I like is empty except for a few birds. They fly when I wheel my bike to a stop in the grass.

I engage the kickstand and pull out my supplies from the basket, hauling it all to a sunny spot near the water’s edge. With the ease of someone who has done it dozens of times, I set up my easel and place my canvas before taking out brushes and digging out my tray of watercolors. When it’s all ready and a brush is gripped firmly between my fingers, I take one look at the bright, happy scene before me and I begin to paint.

Thoughts about my new life, about my old one as well, circle my mind like a predator, waiting to attack. I think about how I used to think I was happy. I think about the way I felt like I was flying when I was with Jasper. I think about how nothing else mattered when I was in his arms, drowning in his kiss. Not the world outside, not the people within it, not the past or the future, not right or wrong—nothing mattered except Jasper and me and the electricity that was between us. And I think about now, today, and how I’m one step closer to giving up. How I’m sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness and misery. It’s with all this swirling through me that I paint.