Page 92 of Art of Sin

Epilogue

For the thousandthtime in the last hour, my gaze wanders over the crowd to the doors of the gallery. A beautiful, dark-haired woman steps inside, followed closely by a man with his hand on her back. They’re laughing, the intimate sound squeezing my gut.

It’s not her, of course.

She’s not coming.

I knew it the second I woke up this morning and she wasn’t there. Hell, I knew it last night when she told me she’d be here, that she wasn’t leaving yet. She’s a good liar, but I’ve always seen right through her.

And yet, and yet, despite knowing she’s not coming, accepting it has been an entirely different challenge.

Believing it.

Understanding it.

The longest distance in the world is the eighteen inches between the head and the heart, and my heart is a stubborn fucker that tells me she wouldn’t just cut and run. That she loves me. Needs me. That we belong to each other.

So I keep looking for her.

Hoping for the impossible.

“Hey, man, how are you holding up?”

With effort, I turn my gaze from the door to Finn. “I’m fine.”

The concern in his eyes makes me want to punch something. Possibly him. God, that would feel good right now. Last night wasn’t a mistake—my head has long since rejected that sort of binary thinking—but the memories are nevertheless fresh. His hands on her. His cock inside her. Nor can I help the slithering thought that what might be the last intimacy I ever share with Deirdre included someone else.

The room swims, and I feel like throwing up.

“What are you going to do?”

I focus on my friend. One of my oldest, unquestioningly my best. We’ve been through some serious shit together. Broken hearts, broken bones, broken dreams…

He knows me well enough not to offer excuses for her absence, like traffic. Fucking traffic. Up until an hour ago, I’d clung to that very idea. She was stuck on the 405. Got caught behind an accident. Someone rear-ended her.

And the reason her phone goes straight to voicemail? She forgot to charge it. Definitely not the more plausible explanation: she chucked it out of a car window going eighty miles per hour out of town. Or she simply threw it in the trash.

Yeah, she’s gone.

I lift my flute of expensive champagne and down it in two swallows.

“There’s nothing to do,” I finally answer Finn. “Deirdre is perfectly capable of making her own decisions. She wanted to leave, so she left. That’s the way it is.”

“You could go after her.”

Darkness coils in my gut, winds around my spine. Finn recognizes my expression and lifts his hands in surrender.

“I just think… I know she’s different than the women you’ve dated. You’re different with her. You match,Gid. She might be worth taking a risk for.”

Bitterness coats my tongue. “I’m not that guy. The one who runs after the girl to change her mind.”

He knows this. And he knows why—because I had a front row seat to my father ignoring my mother’s last wishes. She wanted to stay in the hospital. She was fragile. Scared to leave. But he convinced her with false promises, wooed her with a fantasy of a new life.

She caved. She died.

Can I convince Deirdre to come back? Maybe. But I can’t convince her to not be afraid.

Only she can do that.

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