Love Triangle Six Books of Torn Desire - Willow Winters Page 0,109

I got caught for doing the painting in the gym even though I hadn’t signed my name. Besides, he’s right about one thing—I wouldn’t have let him kiss me if I hadn’t been delirious from lack of sleep. Does that make the kiss more real or less?

In the end he leaves me on the sidewalk in New York City, a heavy-lidded bellhop standing with the door open, steam rising from grates in the flush of an industrial dawn.

Chapter Eight

INCOMPARABLE

The studio loses their minds, chastising me over e-mail and talking about procedures way more than any place with the words “creative genius” in their Facebook bio should. Thankfully I sleep through most of that, and by the time I wake up at three p.m., Professor Mills has smoothed things over.

I’m wearing a forest velvet Givenchy dress with a wrapped bodice. The head curator seems a little drunk by the time Mom and I show up. “I should have had more faith in you,” the curator tells me, eyes bright with excitement and secret champagne. “The phone has been off the hook. Everyone wants a ticket, but we’re sold out.”

I give her a hug mostly because it looks like she needs one. “Thank you so much for giving me the chance to be here. I’m sorry if I stressed you out, but I just wanted to do a good job.”

She bursts into tears and ends up crying into my velvet-clad shoulder about how shitty the New York art scene is and how this might actually save her. Mostly I get through that encounter by telling myself that it’s not really happening, that I fell asleep slumped against Medusa last night and now I’m still sleeping under Christopher’s watch.

Professional art movers have already brought over the other pieces, which are being carefully hung beneath heavy spotlights. Caterers are setting up a table of hors d’oeuvre with cheese and olives and sesame-seed-covered pita chips to dip into truffle hummus.

Daddy shows up a half hour before the doors will open and squeezes me tight. “I’m so proud of you, Harper. And so glad I got to see this.”

The words strike me as odd, and I squeeze him back. “I’m sorry you had to cancel Japan… but also not sorry. It’s no 4.0, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“I don’t care about your GPA.”

That makes me roll my eyes. “Sure you don’t.”

He cups my face in his hands. “I’m serious. The world is a crazy place, but you already know that. That’s why you painted that gymnasium in the first place. I just want you to be safe and secure, and if that means making grades and doing what society expects, that’s the only reason I’ve ever wanted that for you.”

My heart squeezes tight, because I know that’s true. Maybe he wanted to understand me better. Maybe I would have liked to understand him better, but I always knew he wanted what was best for me. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“Now give me a tour of this show before the whole world wants a piece of you.”

So I show him around the paintings of Medusa’s life and death. Only when we get to the final piece do I find Mom standing there, staring at it as if transfixed.

“Hell,” Daddy breathes.

Mom turns back with a slight smile. Her dress is glimmering and couture, showing off a figure some twenty-year-olds would kill for. She’s always been a beautiful woman, but never a happy one. “Look at what our girl did.”

Daddy clears his throat. “She’s… incomparable.”

Only I don’t think he’s talking about me.

And for a moment, with both my parents in the same place, not fighting, not throwing anything, with Christopher in the same city and planning to come to my show, everything is perfect. After my childhood I should have known that perfection is only ever an illusion. A shine you put on things that are too broken to ever be fixed.

Chapter Nine

CAUTIONARY TALE

The room is packed by the time the curator drags me to the makeshift platform to give a little speech. I give a small wave to my professor, who looks so different in a black lace dress instead of the brown tweed suits she wears to class. Christopher leans against the back wall, looking impeccable in a suit but somehow distant from everyone.

Someone who should belong but doesn’t.

I’m not twenty-one yet, but Mom gave me a glass of champagne. It left my throat dry and scratchy, or at least that’s how it feels as I look out at