smile. “Well, it sucks.”
“I can only imagine.”
They walked for a while without speaking, her sneakers scuffing the leaves on the trail, his silent. They neared the old fire tower. She stopped. Dug a heel into the dirt. Gazed up at him. “Do you love her? Wren? Even a little?”
He looked past her into the woods, speaking slowly, choosing his words. “I care what happens to her.”
“But you don’t love her,” she said flatly.
“The kind of love you’re talking about isn’t possible for me.”
“Sure, it is.”
He shook his head, finally meeting her gaze. “No, Tess. I’m not like most people. I’m selfish. Big emotions get in the way of my work, and my work always comes first. That’s why I need my space.”
“Bianca must have been a real trial for you.” Something she already knew. He started to walk again, and she followed. “So you’ve never been in love?”
“I didn’t say that. There was the typical teenage stuff when I was at boarding school.”
“With a girl?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Yes. With a girl.”
She’d known from IHN4: A Rebel’s Story that his parents had stuck him in a boarding school half a continent away, but it still sounded strange when she contrasted it with how he must have looked when Bianca found him passed out in a doorway.
“The important relationships didn’t happen until I was in my mid-twenties,” he said, “and that’s when things went bad.”
“They broke your heart.” She delivered the right amount of mockery to keep him comfortable.
“No,” he said quietly. “I broke theirs. And neither of them deserved it.”
“Oh.” She tried to process what he’d told her. “You don’t strike me as a callous heartbreaker. You’re fairly decent. When you’re not being a jerk.”
“I appreciate the twisted compliment, but I have enough sins without adding to the list. No more breaking hearts.”
“Jeez. You’re not that irresistible.” As long as she discounted the macho that clung to him like woodsmoke. Or those rugged good looks . . . One of her hairpins dangled at her neck. She tucked it in the pocket of her cardigan. “So you’ve only been with hookers since?”
“Nice try.”
“Meaning you’ve had sex with real women?”
“Yes, Tess. Real women. Now could we talk about something else?”
“Not till I’m done processing. Sex with real women normally involves all kinds of biiiiig emotions. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“It doesn’t need to involve biiiig emotions if you find the right partners. It can just be fun.”
“Back to the hookers, right?”
“Now you’re really baiting me.”
She took a quick detour. “I thought love was supposed to make creative people more productive.”
“Some of them maybe. But not this one.”
“So what dire things happened to you when you fell in love?”
“I told you I’m a solitary creature. I stopped working. Prepare yourself for more mockery.”
“Because . . . ?”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Because my work is who I am. Melodramatic, I know, but there it is. I live a life of dedicated selfishness.”
“Not a fun way to live.”
“Maybe not to you, but great street art isn’t like other art forms. It’s rooted in anger, and it’s larger than the person creating it.”
“I’m not sure what distinguishes great street art from random gang tags.”
“You know it when you see it. Great street art isn’t about thugs spraying their initials on any surface they can find. There’s no thought behind that. Remember the guys in the California garage—Jobs and Wozniak?”
“The beginning of Apple.”
He nodded. “Power to the people. That was their motto, and it’s ours, too. We bring art to people who’ve never stepped in a museum. Art to entertain. Art with a social message. Art that exists only to be beautiful.”
“That’s what you do.”
“It sure didn’t start out that way. When I was a kid, every time I hit the nozzle on a can of Krylon it was a ‘fuck you’ to my father. That was therapy. The real art came later. Good street art should make you feel something—anger, curiosity, laughter, recognition.”
She pulled out another dangling hairpin. “A giant rat on the side of a building?”
“You’re talking about Banksy. What’s that rat feeding on? Why is it there? Is it the last survivor? Does it represent us or what we’ve lost? And how do you feel about having that giant rat looming over you?”
Any desire she’d had to mock him faded as she thought of her own all-consuming grief. “But how do you live life without those big emotions?”
“You just do.”
“By making sure you never care too