Eight Ways to Ecstasy (28 page)

“You ready for this?”

Rylan caught his sister's gaze in the mirror on the back of his office door. She was as well composed as she ever was, not a hair out of place, but he recognized the strain around her eyes.

He turned back to his reflection and recognized it in his own.

It had been a long week since he'd offered Kate his past and his whole goddamn life, and he had yet to hear a word from her. It was a cold stone sitting low in his gut, weighing him down with every step, but he hadn't let that keep him from moving forward.

Kate was the one who'd put paid to his fantasies of leaving it all behind. He was here. And he had work to do.

Straightening his tie, he gave a single sharp nod. “Ready as I'll ever be.”

It was just the two of them today, with Lexie's temp off taking care of something else, and that was for the best. It'd been the Bellamy children against the world for the longest time. He chuckled to himself beneath his breath. If only Evan were here, the picture would really be complete.

Rylan shook off that particular line of thought. Evan was pursuing his dreams on the other side of the country. Lexie was realizing hers here.

And Rylan…

Rylan was embracing the person he'd always been meant to be. The one he wanted to be.

For one last, long moment, he studied his reflection.

How many times had he looked at his own face and seen his father's stubborn cruelty and his mother's selfish faithlessness?

Today, he was choosing to see other things. Beneath the stubbornness lay strength. Beneath the urge to run away was the will to stay.

They may have dictated this life to him, but he alone could make it his own.

Turning away from the mirror, he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “We have the votes?”

“We should.”

They'd been scrambling the last couple of weeks, working around McConnell's machinations and shedding light on his plans. It had taken some work and more than a few promises of favors, but they had the support they needed.

He had the resolve.

“Let's do this.”

The focus his father had instilled in him took over, crowding out everything else around him. Adrenaline surged through his veins, and people parted for them as they made their way down the hall. The doors to the executive elevator swept open in front of them.

And all the energy and the power simmering in his bones suddenly boiled over.

“Hey.” Jordan stepped off the elevator and strode toward him. “Headed to the big meeting—?”

Before he'd even decided to do it, Rylan's fist was connecting with his face.

“What the—”

Behind him Lexie shrieked, but Rylan didn't hear it. Jordan came up clutching his jaw, a hell of a bruise already starting to bloom, and Rylan's knuckles stung, but the red tide over his vision didn't fade or recede. He curled a hand in the fabric of Jordan's shirt and got up in his face.

His voice came out dangerous and low. “You touch my sister again, and I will end you.”

“Rylan!”

He released Jordan and shoved him back, not breaking stride as he stepped into the elevator. Lexie rounded on him as the doors closed behind them.

“What the hell,” she sputtered.

He pinned her with his gaze. “You do whatever you want, with whoever you want. But someone hurts you and they have to take it up with me.”

He hadn't been kidding when he'd told his father his intentions. He was taking care of this family now. This company and all the people he was responsible for.

With a nod, he turned to the elevator operator who'd been studiously not looking at them this entire time.

“Ninety-fifth floor, Marcus.”

“Yes, sir.”

As they started to rise, Lexie stared at him. “You've really changed in the past year, haven't you?”

Rylan's heart panged.

He'd thought his father's crimes had been what had changed him. That the sting of betrayal had been what had given him the strength to leave it all behind.

But really, he'd always had one foot out the door. Resenting the choices he'd never gotten to make, he'd always been ready to run.

Whether or not Kate could ever love him—could ever trust him—what had really changed him had been wanting to be worthy of her.

He let out a long breath. “I'm certainly trying to.”

“I wasn't sure if I should bring chicken soup or whiskey, so I brought both.” Liam flashed Kate a hopeful half smile as he stood in her doorway, two brown paper packages clasped in his hands.

Kate chuckled and stepped aside to let him in. “Coffee would've been more appropriate, actually.”

“I don't know. Somebody doesn't show up to class for over a week and they're usually either dying of the plague or on a bender.” He stopped dead in his tracks about three feet in the door, and Kate's heart rose up into her throat. “Though I guess there's more than one kind of bender.”

Her pale imitation of a laugh rose up into something higher. Definitely more unhinged.

“Truer words.”

A bender
wasn't a terrible way to describe her past week. Except instead of being drunk on booze she'd been high on paint and color. Lost to the sweeping arcs of brushstrokes over collarbones and shoulder blades. The dabs of cerulean in brilliant blue eyes.

“Jesus, Kate.” Liam turned to her. “Did you seriously do all of these this week?”

She scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “This isn't even all of it.”

There were drawings, too. Studies she'd done to prepare for taking a brush to canvas. Lines and planes sprawling out across paper as she'd fought to solve the puzzle of a single face and how it went together. How to
put
it together once she'd taken it apart.

“Did you sleep?”

“Occasionally.” Not enough. Not even close.

She hadn't been able to, was the thing. Deep into the night she'd been loading her palette up, startling awake from dreams about the shape of hips and the play of light across lips and hair.

Until the wee hours of this morning, when she'd put down her brushes and stepped away from the most ambitious piece of the series, and something in her chest had finally, finally relaxed.

Her gaze went to the canvas. To Rylan's face in close-up, blown to ten times life-size. The presence of it taking up the entire room.

She'd found space in his eyes and his ribs and the cleft of his chin. She'd found space in her
heart
.

A space he'd made.

She'd found her muse again, and of course it had been him.

This summer, he'd been in every drawing—even the ones he hadn't served as a model for. He'd been in her thoughts and her breath, and how could she not have seen it before?

How could she have walked away from him?

She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. How could she have let this thing between them sit in silence for so long? Now that she knew—now that she'd figured it all out—

Would he let her back in?

Unclenching her hands, she took a deep breath. Liam had set the soup and the whiskey both down, venturing farther into the room, leaning down to get a look at one of the paintings.

And she paused.

She'd been gripped by this strange conviction, this certainty all week. But now, a pang of doubt fired off behind her ribs.

“So what do you think?”

He jerked his head around to stare at her over his shoulder, brows raised, a twist of disbelief to his mouth. “What do I think?”

“It's a valid question.”

He straightened up and turned the rest of the way around.

And it was strange, because it wasn't as if he'd been all that tactile with her before. Little flirty touches here and there, maybe. Sometimes standing a bit too close.

But here, today, he kept a careful distance. He stood as far away as he could yet still reach out to briefly squeeze her arm.

“Kate, they're
incredible
.”

She just about sagged with the relief. Taking a couple of steps back, she let her spine hit the wall behind her so it could bear her weight.

Turning to the room full of paintings again, Liam asked, “How are you going to spin it?”

“For the artist's statement?” The piece of paper she had to assemble to explain her vision for the series.

“I assume this is your portfolio?”

It was. Her sacred spaces were the hollows of Rylan's body. They were the lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Honestly? I don't know. I don't care.”

They could flunk her for all she gave a damn. She shook her head at herself and fiddled with her nail. That wasn't right. She hoped they'd pass her and that they'd give her the fellowship she'd been so focused on.

But if they didn't, she'd survive. It wasn't her teachers' judgment she was worried about.

Her degree and her work—they weren't the most important things in her life.

Liam shot her a knowing look. “You'll figure it out.”

“Somehow or other.”

“So.” He ran a fingertip along the edge of one of the canvases, probably testing to see if the paint was still wet. Chances were it was. “We loading these up or what?”

“You brought your truck?” Not that it was the only reason she'd asked him to come by. She'd wanted an outside opinion, had needed a sanity check from somebody who wasn't in her head.

But a buddy with a pickup in this city was basically every art student's best friend.

“Sure did.”

A sudden surge of gratitude washed over her. “Thank you, Liam.”

His brow quirked up.

“For just…” How did she even put this into words? “For coming. For your truck and your feedback and—”

For being a good friend, even after everything.

As if he heard the parts she couldn't seem to voice, he took a step toward her, and suddenly their whole, admittedly brief, history seemed to hover over them.

The tentative invitations and the night in the gallery and Rylan's possessiveness.

Then the warmth in his gaze shifted, the curve to his smile faltering. “You really love him, huh?”

Something inside her cracked. “Yeah,” she managed to choke out, her vision blurring over. “I really do.”

More than she had back when she'd barely known him, and even then she'd been in so deep.

And now it was time to go deeper still. To take a breath and take a plunge, and if he'd let her…if he still wanted her…

To let the water close over her head.

To trust him like the air inside her lungs.

It was finished.

Theodore Rylan Bellamy III was officially chief executive officer of Bellamy International. By this time tomorrow, the ink would be drying on the appointment of Alexis Claire Bellamy to head of North American and European operations. The family legacy was saved, his destiny fulfilled. It was his greatest triumph—everything his father had ever wanted for him. If perhaps not quite how he might have imagined him coming by it.

And yet, as Rylan made his way up his front steps, a hollowness settled over his shoulders. Lexie and the others were still toasting their victory, but drinks and too-loud music weren't the kind of celebration he had in mind.

He'd known well enough that it might come to this. But somehow he'd never really processed that he might be enjoying his success alone.

He let himself into the house, and the walls echoed.

Every day he hadn't heard from Kate, his hopes had diminished just that little bit more. What had he been thinking, telling her to take as much time as she needed? He should've asked her for something, anything. A date to call and at least check in or—

A dark laugh bubbled at the back of his throat.

He'd asked her for
everything
. For the rest of her life, if she'd have him.

A week of silence was one kind of answer, he supposed.

Taking off his overcoat, he flexed his jaw. There were three things he wanted right now, and two of them—a hot shower and a good night's sleep—were things he could have, so he'd focus on them. He opened up the closet in the hall—

—And froze.

Because there, beside the black and gray and navy of his usual outerwear, was a flash of vivid green. A little jacket that hadn't been there this morning, and his heart skipped a beat. It could be Lexie's, except she was still at the club.

Except there was a streak of charcoal on the cuff.

“Kate?” It came out barely a croak.

How did he even have the hope to put that name into the air? He was hallucinating, or maybe he was asleep, passed out on a velvet couch in a booming room. But he didn't typically dream about coats. Fingering the sleeve, he leaned back, glancing up the stairs and fighting the pounding of his heart.

Louder, he called, “Kate?”

And a voice floated down to him. “Rylan?”

His rib cage threatened to melt. He dropped his own coat to the ground, didn't even bother to close the closet door. In a handful of strides he was at the base of the stairs—her voice had come from the second floor, right?

Then it sounded out again. “Rylan, is that you?”

No. It was coming from the third.

He surged, his muscles and lungs coming alive for the first time in what felt like ages. Taking the steps two and three at a time, he thundered upward.

And there, halfway down the final flight, stood Kate.

Everything in him screamed to cross the distance, to catch her up in his arms and kiss her breathless. He'd scarcely touched her skin in weeks, and he wanted to drown in it. He wanted her under him and over him, naked and glorious and
his
.

But the tightness to her posture stopped him short. Still three steps away, he paused, stretching his arms out to the sides, grasping the banisters for something to hold on to. Forcing himself to slow down, he raked his gaze up and down the length of her. The soft drape of a gray sweater over her curves. Black jeans that hugged her legs, and the little purple shoes he'd met her in a lifetime ago. The dark fall of all that gorgeous hair, and her face—

His heart constricted as he met her eyes. She looked like how he'd felt a handful of minutes ago. Exhausted and heavy and—
shit
. This might not be the reunion he'd been yearning for.

But if it wasn't—if she had come to him to break his heart, would she have done it
here
of all places? On the doorstep to this room he'd always imagined was for her? Where he'd told her he loved her?

Would she have come to him at all?

Then she shifted, crossing her arms over her chest, biting down on the plush pout of her bottom lip. A little crinkle appearing in the space between her eyes. And a glimmer of memory tickled in the back of Rylan's mind. Recognition.

He'd seen this look on her before. The fatigue and weight and sheer nervousness.

Just like that, he was naked in a hotel room in Paris. She'd just drawn him all spread out and achingly vulnerable on their bed, and she was staring up at him with so much feeling in her eyes, offering to let him look at what she'd made…

All the words evaporated from his head. All except one.

“Kate…”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and God, what was she apologizing for? “I hope you don't mind I let myself in.”

“Never.” It came out too fervent by half, but he could scarcely breathe for the depth of love and need rising beneath his skin.

Her voice trembled. “I have something to show you.”

He would've followed her anywhere. It was nothing to take those half dozen steps, to trail after her into the space he'd tried to give her in his home.

He got as far as the threshold before his feet refused to move.

“Jesus.” His throat blocked up before he could say any more.

There had to be a dozen paintings propped against all the boxes and the walls. They were gorgeous, glowing with color and rich with shadows. She'd lit the room with the little fairy lights she'd strung up around the windows and with the soft heat of candles. All that warm, flickering light bounced off the planes of the canvases, making them shine with…

With love.

This space he'd given her…

She'd filled it with
him
.

Fractions and pieces of him, extreme close-ups of musculature and portraits of his face in profile. Vignettes that showed only the arch of a spine or the crest of a hip, but he saw himself in every one.

He saw the man he'd always wanted to be—the one he'd been trying so hard these last few weeks to become. The very best version of himself. The one she trusted.

He turned to her, and the points of brightness in the room were the glow of her soft, brown eyes. Were the fledgling hints of her smile.

Were a spark going off in his chest—in his
soul
.

And he was alight.

Why on earth had Kate been so afraid of this?

Opening herself up to Rylan, giving him these pieces of herself, these glimpses into the most carefully hidden places in her heart—it was always worth it. He'd treated each and every one of them with respect and care.

She'd offered him her body, and in return he'd taken her to heights she'd never known. She'd told him about her father and her former lovers and her dreams, and without fail he'd met her with tender hands and a warmth that chased away the chill.

And her art.

It was a lilting vertigo, an impossible rush as she watched him take in this impromptu gallery she'd created for him.

Her art was one of the very first things she'd let him see. He'd paged through her sketchbook with open eyes, with concentration and consideration.

Only once had he ever failed to grasp what she was showing him.

That first time, after she'd drawn him. When he'd stared at her sketches without the barest hint of comprehension, completely missing the feeling she'd bled onto the page. Too caught up in his own conception of himself, perhaps, he'd somehow let his gaze skate past how much she'd loved him, even then. Even when she'd scarcely begun to get to the bottom of him.

Before he'd let her.

This time, he didn't miss a thing.

Those sharp, bright eyes went softer with each canvas he surveyed, some of the stiff set to his shoulders, the reserve within him, bleeding away.

Until he came to face her again, and the last of the defenses he'd erected were demolished. Blown clean away, until there was nothing left to his expression but naked hope.

And the anxious terror that had lived within her breast the whole way over here, the entire time she had waited here in the silence for him, surrounded by her own visions of his eyes and mouth and flesh…it faded away, too.

And yet she couldn't bring herself to bridge the space. She was barely holding herself together, her disparate pieces bound with spit and glue. If he touched her, she'd fly apart, and she was so close to being ready for that. But not quite.

“It's funny.” She raked a shivering hand through her hair. “This whole time, ever since Paris, I haven't been able to get anything right.”

All her canvases and all her drawings had been pale imitations of the quick sketches she'd put together that summer. Her hands had wrapped around charcoals and brushes, and only ash had shaken out.

Tucking her hair behind her ear, she grasped the back of her neck and dug her fingers in hard. “I was supposed to be painting ‘sacred spaces,' and it was all just empty.”

He took a step toward her, and she took an unconscious step back. Stopping, he held out a hand, but she shook her head.

She had to get through this.

“I was trying so damn hard to find meaning in these things that were
supposed
to be meaningful, you know?”

She'd been listening to everybody except herself. Her professors with their naysaying and her mother with her fear. The voices of her father and Aaron in her head telling her she'd never be good enough, and even if she was, a ghost of her former self was in there, too, whispering at every dip in the road that it wasn't worth it. Trusting someone only led to heartache, and Rylan's own sins of omission had reinforced those mantras in her ears.

“You were right.” Her voice kept threatening to break, the torrent of tears behind her eyes to overflow. “I was so damn scared. You
terrify
me.”

“I don't—”

But she cut him off. “The things I feel for you…”

All she'd ever wanted was the kind of love you read about, the beautiful kind, but the only sort she'd ever seen had been ugly and wrong. It was what people used to control you or drag you down. To make you think you were less than you were.

Rylan's had never been like that. He'd held her while she cried, had told her she deserved the world, and had made her believe it. He'd looked at her with so much awe and touched her as if her body were the heaven he'd been waiting for. As if she were the one saving him.

“So I kept finding excuses
not
to trust you.” She'd hooked into the very first sign that he wasn't what he'd said he was. That she could disregard the things she hadn't been ready to hear or feel. “I pretended you were the one who wouldn't let me in.”

When really, it had been her. She'd been the one with a foot out the door. The one ready to run.

Her eyes burned, a single hot tear spilling from the corner, but she didn't wipe it away. She let it fall. She let herself feel.

“And then you brought me here.” She gestured around the room. The life he'd dug up still surrounded them, spilling out of box after box, and he'd opened them all for her. Finally, she met his gaze. “You showed me all these things, and then I developed those pictures.”

Black-and-white photographs, bare glimpses into this intimacy they'd built without her even realizing. Still frames of a life in motion. And they'd been
beautiful
.

Not controlling, but freeing. Instead of filling her with dread and self-doubt, they'd filled her with light.

Her throat caught, her cheeks soaked now, but she had to get this out. “I stopped looking everywhere else in the world, and I started painting you.”

And the art had flowed from her fingertips.

The days had floated away, lost to the high of creation. Shades of gray had bloomed into vivid color as she'd filled her palette and emptied it again and again. The only time she'd left her apartment had been when she'd run out of canvases, and so she'd had to make new ones, and then she'd covered them, too.

In the sharpness of his jaw, she'd found the tender places inside her bones. In the shadows between his ribs, she'd found his heart. She'd found her own.

“You weren't keeping me out,” she managed to choke out, and for all that the words tore at her throat, they healed a wound inside of her she hadn't even known had still been bleeding. Flinging a hand to the side, she pointed at the canvases. “You were letting me in.”

“Every way I knew how,” he said, and his eyes were as glassy as hers felt. An echo of a laugh tumbled out, beautiful and broken. “I learned some new ones. For you, I—I would've done anything.”

She finally stopped fighting the pull between them, and it was like magnets as her feet carried her forward.

“Love doesn't have to be a weakness. It doesn't make you less than you are.”

It gave people the power to hurt you. But if you trusted the right person…If you let the right person in…

It could make you better than you were.

With Rylan, it could make her strong.

He took an echoing step toward her, and the depths to his gaze could've taken her to her knees. “Not everyone will throw your love away,” he said.

Like his father had. Like she had when she'd run.

She bit down on the inside of her lip. Worked her jaw. “I don't want to push you away again.”

“Then don't.”

And then he was on her, pulling her into the strongest, most giving arms she'd ever known.

“I trust you.” She spoke the words into his neck, and he forced the air from her lungs, crushing her to his chest.

“I'll never give you a reason not to again.”

“And I won't go looking for them.”

Because that was love, wasn't it? It was lowering your guard. It was giving a man your heart and resting in the knowledge he would keep it safe.

She pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes, and his face was so beautiful, for all that it was blurred. Her ribs cracked open, but she let them. She refused to be afraid.