speak to Sutton?”
“When I hired him to restore the library.”
“Restore. Restore? It’s not a goddamn painting in a museum. It’s a building that isn’t structurally sound. There’s no way you can get a contractor to work on it.”
My eyes narrow. “Wait a second. Did you talk to contractors about this building?”
“Of course I talked to them,” he says, his voice clipped. “I owned it.”
“You bastard.”
“The only thing to do is raze the building and start over.”
“You bastard. You blackballed me. Told the contractors not to do business with me. What did you offer them? Some of the money I paid for the library? God. You are unbelievable.”
“They’re welcome to accept any job they find suitable.”
“That’s the only reason you sold it to me, isn’t it? Because you knew I wouldn’t be able to restore it.” For two billion dollars. He sold me the library knowing I couldn’t fix it.
“You can rebuild. Make it look exactly like it did before, if you want.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“You’re damn right it won’t be the same. It will be structurally sound.”
“Well, the joke is on you, because Sutton already said he would help me. And in case you didn’t notice? People actually like him. They want to work with him, because he’s not an arrogant jerk face.”
Christopher looks around with fake curiosity. “Then where are the workers?”
“They’re coming,” I say through gritted teeth. There is a ball of fire inside me. It’s an entire sun, its rays struggling to find a path out of my body. He doesn’t give a fuck about me. About the library. So why is he so damn intent on ruining this?
“And in the meantime, you’re… what? Living here?”
“So what if I am? Maybe I camp out under the circulation desk with a sleeping bag. Maybe I use the antique books as kindling for more fire and eat roasted pigeons for dinner.”
“What about your mother?” He says it as a challenge, which only serves to piss me off.
“What do you care about her? You didn’t want her to have the treatment, and now she’s not having it. The hospital doesn’t get their expensive new butterfly garden. Happy now?”
“It’s not safe here,” he says flatly.
“Then why don’t you leave?”
He turns away from me, and for a moment I think I’m going to see the back of him. It feels momentous, that his broad shoulders might walk away from me one last time. I don’t know what my life would be like without his hard disdain. Without his censure. I long for the freedom as much as I ache for him to stay. One step. Two. He makes it six feet away before he stops.
I need him to hold me. To tell me everything will be okay.
“There’s no way I can convince you to go?” He asks the question without looking at me.
He does worry about me, in that terrible white-knight kind of way. Terrible because it’s how he keeps his distance. Like I’m someone he has to save instead of a woman he can hold. There’s no life raft in this particular ocean, though. There’s no saving me.
“Why did you come here?” I ask instead of answering.
Then he does face me. “I always come here. I can’t seem to stop. It’s the reason I bought this building, the reason why I planned to revitalize the west side.”
“If you love the carving, why did you want to tear it down?”
A slight smile. “It’s a bad habit of mine, destroying the things I love.”
The word love coming from his mouth falls on me like a ton of bricks. The library walls falling on top of me couldn’t hurt this much. My lungs burn from lack of air. Christopher Bardot has never loved anything. He’s controlled and owned and protected—but never loved. Has he? He never cared about anything beyond ambition. Beyond money.
“Please,” he murmurs, gentle as if he can sense my turmoil.
And Christopher Bardot has definitely never begged.
“I’m done for today,” I say, my voice uneven. It’s hard to breathe in the face of this new side of him, still protective, still controlling, but somehow more real. Less like a stylized carving. More like a man who hurts and feels and wants. It makes me want to wrap myself in his arms, but what if he turns back into stone?
I met Avery at Smith College, where she was the quintessential good student and I had a reputation as a wild child. It was easier to explain how I didn’t know about a