the pressure off this date was at least something. My eyelid took mercy on me and relented and I gave him a weak smile. “Okay.”
He nodded toward the stairs. “Ladies first.”
We started walking. “You know, I have to be honest,” he said, holding the door to the stairwell for me. “Your pictures don’t do you justice.”
I scoffed. “Let me guess, Coachella?”
“Uh, no, actually.” He jogged down the steps behind me. “Headgear?”
I pushed the door to the sidewalk open, laughing.
Kristen and Josh were parked a few feet away. Adrian ran ahead and opened my car door for me. He put a hand to my back as I got in. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any man touching me who wasn’t Jason.
Jason would never touch me again.
It was like I could feel him in the air now that he was here in California. He was all around me, like the sun on my face. It actually made me peer out the window, looking for him.
I let out a long breath, trying to release him from my mind.
It didn’t work.
Chapter 43
Jason
? Somebody Else | The 1975
It wasn’t hard to find the ones that were Sloan’s. I just looked for the paintings that looked like photographs.
Three hung in the gallery, and they all had sold signs on them, marked by red dots. I stood there, staring, studying every inch of the artwork, making out almost-invisible brushstrokes.
She touched these. Her hands had created them, her eyes had looked on every inch of canvas, and the art had sprung from her beautiful mind.
Pride filled me. I took a deep breath. I missed her. I missed her every second.
The click of heels on wood turned me to the approaching gallery curator, a polished gray-haired woman in glasses and red lipstick. “You must be the gentleman who called.”
I looked back at the paintings. “Yes. You said you had a Sloan Monroe available?”
“It’s in the back. Your timing is excellent. It was just dropped off. These don’t stick around for long.”
My heart swelled. I couldn’t take my eyes from the wall. “She’s very talented,” I breathed.
I hoped she had used the gift card I’d given her to buy the supplies to make these. I wanted to be a part of this. I wanted to be a part of it all.
It wasn’t over. It would never be over. At least not for me.
It had been ninety-four days since I’d last seen her, and I was nothing but a husk of myself now. My world was dim. All was faded. And the more time that passed, the darker it got. Life without her was a sensory deprivation of my soul.
My tour had brought me back to California. I’d been braced for how hard it would be to breathe the same air as her. Look at the same sky. But then it was hard everywhere, wasn’t it?
I hadn’t told anyone where I was going when I left the hotel. I’d had to sneak out a service exit by the dumpsters in a hat and sunglasses, evading Zane like a zoo animal that had escaped its keeper. She and Ernie would have advised against it. But I’d had to come see these.
I’d told Ernie if the paintings didn’t sell within the first week of going up to buy them for me—without Sloan knowing, of course. But they’d sold. She was gifted. She didn’t need a guardian angel.
I’d been busy too. Besides the tour, I’d actually been able to write. I’d composed six songs during my three weeks in Ely while my hand was healing. And they were good.
They were good because they were about her.
Nobody would ever hear any of them. If I put these on an album, Sloan would know they were about her, and I could never let her know how destroyed I was. Those songs were just for me.
No, the next new thing I recorded would be some pop garbage written by a hired gun my label picked. And I couldn’t even muster up the passion to give a shit.
The clicking heels led me to the back room and when the woman went to remove the brown paper from the canvas to show it to me, I put up a hand. “I’ll take it. I don’t need to see it.”
I couldn’t spare the extra minutes it would take to wrap it back up. Every second I was here was playing with fire.
Sloan lived in the loft upstairs. Ernie had told me. He was the one who’d told me