More than that, I’d had no idea that Cole was using me as a subject.
What the hell?
I thought about all the times I’d sunbathed on the roof of the condo with Angie. The times that Evan had taken all of us out on his boat.
Cole had been watching me?
And not just watching me, but studying me.
Restless, I moved around the room, realizing as I did that the canvas on the easel wasn’t the only image of me. Rough sketches littered a worktable, and as I looked down, I found myself staring back into my own eyes, taking in the curve of my own cheek, the swell of my own breasts.
Empirically, the work was exceptional. But that wasn’t what intrigued me.
Cole wanted me.
At the very least he was attracted to me, intrigued by me.
Obsessed with me.
That, apparently, was something we had in common.
So why the hell was he fighting so hard to stay away from me?
I drew in another breath and looked around this bright, airy room, seeing it this time as Cole might see it. It was filled with me. Or, at least, a version of me.
But the girl on the canvas and in those sketches was filled with light. She suggested purity and sweetness. There was nothing harsh or secretive about her.
She was me—and yet she wasn’t. And the pleasure I’d been feeling began to shift into something cold and unpleasant.
I don’t know who Cole saw when he looked at me, but he wasn’t seeing Katrina Laron, or any of the other names I’d used throughout the years.
He wasn’t even seeing Catalina Rhodes, the girl I’d started life as, but who had been erased long ago.
Had he not really been looking at me at all?
Or did he see something in me that I’d been hiding from everyone? Including myself?
six
I’d planned to go straight from the gallery to The Drake hotel, where I was meeting Sloane and Angie for a liquid lunch before Sloane and I branched off to discuss Angie’s bachelorette party. That would have been the smart thing to do, considering I could have walked between the two locations in under fifteen minutes, and the drive would take less than five.
But I was restless and out of sorts, and so I detoured from River North all the way to my soon-to-be new neighborhood of Roscoe Village, adding an hour to my travel time when you factored in the return trip and traffic. Not to mention the minutes that would tick by as I sat in the car and gazed at the second thing in my life I was obsessing about.
Like Cole, my house was going to need a lot of TLC. Unlike Cole, its curb appeal in its present state left a lot to be desired.
Then again, that was why I’d been able to get it cheap. Or relatively cheap. Considering the house consisted of less than one thousand square feet, had only one bathroom, and needed all new appliances, I wasn’t really sure that the six figures I was shelling out for the property could be considered “cheap” in anyone’s book.
But the place was about to be mine, and that made it worth any price to me.
Maybe that’s why I’d felt compelled to come here after seeing those drawings. They’d left me feeling edgy and unsure of who I was and what I wanted. And the fact that they had been so meticulously and lovingly created by Cole left me just as confused about what he wanted.
Considering all the canvases devoted to my image, you’d think he would’ve seized the opportunity to take me. But he’d walked away, and now my head was all but spinning.
The house soothed me. It was tangible. It was wood and brick and stone and nails.
With the house, what you saw was what you got.
With Cole, not so much.