Page 108 of Beautiful Lies
“Or…you could stay and get a ride home with Killian. Save you some money.”
I let out a frustrated breath. I wanted him to tell me that he wanted me to stay with him. He was just trying to save me money. Dammit. Why did everything have to be so difficult for us?
“I’m tired of waiting.” I wasn’t talking about waiting for a ride, but he didn’t try to stop me when I typed the information into my phone and ordered an Uber. “Five minutes,” I said, glancing at the people milling around the gallery. A couple approached him, recognizing him as the artist from the photo I’d uploaded onto social media that he’d known nothing about. He’d probably never checked the FB page for this gallery exhibit. It could have been the photo that had helped Keira find him. How long would he have kept that a secret if she hadn’t shown up?
“Hey, I need to go. It was great seeing you. Really. And your art…” I swallowed before the tears fell. “It’s amazing.”
“Thank you for coming. Let me walk you out—”
“No. Stay. Do your thing.”
“Ava—”
I retrieved my coat and walked out of the gallery into the cold and the snow flurries. A gray Prius pulled up to the curb and I checked that the plates matched the number on my phone before climbing into the backseat and closing the door behind me. I watched through the window as we pulled away from the gallery, half-expecting Connor to chase after me. He didn’t.
* * *
My buzzer rousedme from a half-sleep and I tripped over my discarded shoes in my haste to answer. “Hey,” I said into the intercom, without bothering to ask who it was because I knew. Iknewit was him.
“Hey, babe.”
Babe. I buzzed him in and opened my apartment door. Downstairs, I heard the door slam followed by a thud and a few choice curse words from Connor. “Watch it, Tate. This isn’t one of your junkers. Handle with care.”
Tate grumbled something, but I didn’t catch the words.
I leaned over the banister and looked down. “Do you guys need help?” I called down the stairwell, unable to wipe the smile off my face.
“We’ve got it. Tate’s not used to handling delicate objects.”
“Fuck you,” Tate growled. Connor laughed, and those butterflies were back now, invading my stomach and putting me into a tailspin. I knew what that delicate object was, and I was so happy my body could barely contain all this joy. When I’d come home earlier, I’d collapsed on the sofa, dejected. I’d been sad that he just let me go without a fight. No grand gesture. No chasing after my car in the snow. No proclamation about how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I’d felt deflated and even though he’d asked me to wait for him, I had still expected him to realize that we could do this together.
He appeared on the landing, a tentative smile on his face and I held the door open wide to let them inside. The painting was wrapped in bubble-wrap, but I could see the shades of the blue and purple and I knew it was the stardust painting.
“Where do you want this?” Tate asked.
“The bedroom,” Connor and I said in unison. I’d already decided it belonged on the wall across from my bed and obviously, Connor had come to the same conclusion.
“Thanks, Tate,” I said when they returned to the living room.
“No problem,” Tate said on his way out the door. A part of me was still scared that Connor would follow him. That he’d just come to drop off the painting. But he closed the door and turned to face me.
“I thought you sold that painting.”
“I couldn’t. It belongs to you.” He took a few steps closer. “You’re still wearing the dress.”
“Maybe I was hoping you’d stop by. Or maybe I fell asleep on the sofa.”
He smiled then crossed the room to my Christmas tree in front of the window. It wasn’t as grand as Eden’s, but I loved the sparkly lights and kitschy decorations I’d collected over the years from flea markets and antique shops. “I remember these,” he said, holding a crystal teardrop in his palm and running his thumb over it. We’d seen them in an antique shop the summer we were eighteen. We were told they’d come from a chandelier and Connor had gone back and bought them without my knowing it. One day, I came back to my dorm room and found them strung on fishing wire across my windows which he’d decorated with hundreds of fairy lights, turning my crappy dorm room into an enchanted place. I joined him by the tree. He hadn’t taken off his jacket yet.
“You said you’re tired of waiting. In the gallery,” he clarified. “It’s only been three weeks.”
“It feels like a lifetime.”
“I started seeing Killian’s shrink. I’ve still got a lot of shit to work out.”
I braced myself, waiting for him to tell me he was leaving again, that he needed more time. “If you’re not staying, walk yourself right out that door. I can’t keep doing this with you. I can’t keep losing you, Connor.”
“If you’ll take me as I am, a work in progress…I’m not going anywhere,” he said, his hand sliding up my neck and tangling in my hair as he pulled me closer. My arms wrapped around his neck and he lowered his head, his mouth covering mine. We kissed each other with everything we had and everything we were. Every teardrop and memory, secret and lie, every heartbreak and promise. We poured everything into this kiss. When our lips separated, our breathing was ragged.
