subjected to intense heat and pressure, and then . . . this.” She laid her palm on his chest, over his expanding heart, her touch reverent. “Beauty.”
He’d bitten his lip, unable to respond directly to the implied praise without weeping. “Those veins in the rock aren’t actually gold, are they?”
“Nope.” She lifted a shoulder, the movement a bit jerky. “Pyrite. Fool’s gold. Sorry.”
Shit, she thought he was criticizing the gift, and nothing could be further from the truth.
“Gold couldn’t make this any more beautiful than it is.” Tipping up her chin, he kissed her with all the adoration one man’s overfull heart could contain. “Thank you. I love it.”
Maybe she hadn’t said the words, but he’d recognized the gravity of her offering. It wasn’t just a sphere of stone, but—
Her heart. It had felt like her laying her heart in his palm, despite all her fears.
When it came to bravery, April possessed more than her fair share.
When it was much too late, he’d been brave too. He’d told the truth, all of it. He’d exposed his heart to her without artifice or omission and told her, This part of me is pyrite, not gold.
And once she knew, she didn’t want him. He was a liar, valuable only to a fool who mistook him for something more.
And now that she was gone, he was no longer more to anyone. He was no longer a sphere of rich, speckled blue, polished and beautiful but substantial too. Weighty in his palm, then and now.
Now he was a speck of a man. One of the sunlit dust motes that sparkled and floated inside her car, glinting and aimless and adrift.
Yes, he was angry that she’d dismissed his concerns about his career with such blithe disregard. But he was angrier at himself. Still. Always.
He never learned. He never, ever learned.
His phone buzzed from the top of the dresser. Another text from Alex, who’d apparently received Marcus’s own message at long last.
Dude. I’m so sorry, read the bubble on the screen. I’m coming over.
Marcus exhaled. Thank fuck. He needed his best friend, and he needed something to both puncture the silence of his house and quiet the cacophony in his head.
Alex could do all of that easily, with a single rant about unrealistic judging expectations in televised baking competitions. Especially if he brought—
Another incoming message. I know it’s not your usual thing, but wanna get drunk? I can pick up booze on my way there.
Yes, Marcus wrote back. Please.
He didn’t unwrap the lapis sphere. Instead, he placed it, still swathed in newsprint, in the back corner of his closet, behind the shoe box containing a pair of hiking boots he’d never managed to break in.
There, it couldn’t taunt him with what he’d lost, and it couldn’t remind him of what he’d never truly had.
APRIL WAS DONE hiding. Which meant, unfortunately, that she was going to Con of the Gates tomorrow, less than a week after her breakup with Marcus. Public scrutiny and potential humiliation and her own misery be damned.
She didn’t fool herself. It wasn’t going to be comfortable. After all those tweets and blog posts and articles, too many people knew her face now. They knew her body. There would be no hiding in a crowd, and no hiding the fact that she and Marcus hadn’t attended the con together.
Cynics would roll their eyes and say they’d recognized a publicity stunt from the start. The unkind would laugh instead. So much for his white-knight ambitions, they’d crow. Even such a gifted actor couldn’t pretend to want a woman like that for long.
Whatever. If they judged her, fuck them.
And even if she’d wanted to hide, like hell she’d let her Lavinia costume—the product of hours of dedicated effort by Mel and Pablo—languish in a closet out of cowardice. And there was no way she’d ever, ever skip her long-awaited gathering with her closest Lavineas friends.
They’d notice her distance from Marcus and wonder, of course. Hopefully, they’d be kind enough not to ask. Or, failing that, smart enough to ask with a fresh tissue box nearby.
After tucking the last of her clothing and travel toiletries into her suitcase, she zipped it shut and rolled it just inside the apartment door. Afterward, she sat on her couch beneath a blanket and listened to a podcast.
She tried to pay attention, but she kept thinking Marcus would find the topic interesting. Not so much because he paid special attention to unsolved serial killings, but because he was as hungry for