Page 7 of Everything We Left Behind

“May I give you a word of advice?”

The warm sand under my feet and the alcohol I’d consumed were turning my body to liquid. I swayed as I stared at him. He didn’t say anything, just tilted his head and lifted both brows, waiting. I sighed, circling my hand.Come on, man, spit it out.I needed to move on.

“Talk to him,” Ian advised.

“For real?” I scoffed, and started to turn away again.

“Then go beat the crap out of him. Trust me, you’ll both feel better.”

“I don’t want to see him,” I said around a thick tongue. Maybe I shouldn’t have another drink. I didn’t need Imelda to cart my ass home.

“Suit yourself.” Ian made the briefest eye contact before touching his brow and giving me a two-fingered salute in the direction he started walking. He was probably going to go pack for his flight back to the States. Back to Aimee.

“You love her,” I said when he reached the bottom steps where the hotel’s patio kissed the sandy beach.

He swung around and leveled his gaze with mine. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

“Treat her well. Apparently, I didn’t do such a great job.”

He gave me a brief nod and jogged up the steps, taking them two at a time.

My phone buzzed. A text message from Natalya.

Will you be home for dinner?

I wiped the sweat from my eyes and texted back.

No. Not tonight.

I didn’t want to show up drunk. Not before the boys went to sleep. They didn’t need to see how messed up their father was. But Natalya ...

Wait up for me.

Please.

She pinged back within seconds.

I will. Be careful.

I worried her. She told me as much when I laid out my tragic story like a freshly caught fish split open, skinned, and deboned. I felt like that fish out of water. Flapping around and gasping. Floundering as I tried to make sense of it all. The lies, the deceit. The abandonment. My family had left me here, like a discarded flip-flop lost in the sand. Natalya had stared at me, her eyes the size of the full moon outside my bedroom door, her jaw unhinged. Then she cried and tried to comfort me. I didn’t want her sympathy, and I especially didn’t want her pity. I punched the wall instead and went for a run. I ran hard, and fast, and for miles. Because if I stayed with her she’d see me cry, too.

Slipping the phone back into my pocket, I looked at the ocean and debated where to go next. Beside me was the beach bar. Behind me was the hotel. Ian had disappeared into the lobby and Thomas was somewhere inside. Most likely the lobby bar.You’re just like him.Ian’s words returned like waves that kept on coming. Forget the tequila. I needed to paint.

I flipped through my prefugue paintings, the ones Thomas had shipped here under the guise they were mine. I studied them as though seeing them for the first time. These were his. I mean, mine.

James’s.

Whatever.

I snapped through the canvases, leaning one after the other against my shins. Paintings of landscapes I could only assume I’d once seen. A forest of oaks in the evening light. A meadow at sunset. An ocean cast in the hues of slate and stone. Where were these places? What meaning had they held for him?

Not him. Me,I corrected. What meaning had they held forme?

Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

I slammed the paintings back against the wall and shoved open the window. The evening breeze, heavy with salt from the ocean and smoke from the grills parked on the sidewalks below, exploded into the room. I sucked in the pungent air and a palette knife of pain sliced through my skull as though my brain were a glob of acrylic paint. I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. Tomorrow’s hangover would be nasty.

In the far corner of my private studio, paintings of Aimee’s likeness mocked me. I’d been painting her for over a year, the woman I reached for in my dreams. Her image morphed painting after painting until it had become almost an exact replica of the woman I’d found crying outside my studio.

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