One To Watch (54 page)

Her membership entitled her to visit the museum anytime she liked, but she hadn’t been back since the show finished filming, for obvious reasons. Today, though, it seemed like the right thing to do. She pulled into the parking garage and snapped a selfie among the lanterns on her way in—she figured this was as good an opportunity as any to fulfill Olivia’s mandate of one Insta story per week.

Time for a one-on-one—just me and Monet!

She posted the photo and went inside.

The moment she walked through the doors, the memory of him was everywhere. The Rothkos and Picassos, the wide staircase they’d walked down side by side. The exhibit with the car and the music was already gone; if Bea wanted to relive that moment, she’d have to watch it on television. It had been real, hadn’t it? He had felt the same things she did, had cared for her as much as she cared for him?

Her memories of him were too vivid, too present here: the feel of his hands at her waist, the way he jerked away rather than kiss her. The release of giving in to her feelings for him in Ohio, his painstaking doubts in Morocco. The highs of visiting his home, meeting his children, sharing each other’s jagged secrets—then the devastating nothingness as he pulled back and back and back, leaving her alone with her nightmares in that big, romantic suite in Moustiers, and then, two days later, leaving her for good.

A liar, he called her. A cheat. He didn’t even have the courage or the decency to come back and face her, to tell her the truth about why he’d left, how he’d retreated into his own insecurities rather than reach for her hand. He just dumped it all on her shoulders and walked away.

She prowled the museum for hours, sweeping through one room after another, all of it bearing down, all of it too much, until finally her feet steered her of their own volition back to the impressionist gallery—the room where everything had started, where they’d truly seen each other for the very first time.

The gallery was empty as usual; late-afternoon sunlight flowed in, dusty and golden, and the only other person there was a man in navy chinos and a soft gray T-shirt gazing at one of the Monets. His back was facing Bea, but she was immediately drawn to his salt-and-pepper hair—no. Her eyes were playing tricks on her. There was no way …

But when her sandals clacked on the hardwood floor, he spun around—and God, he looked the same, his glasses and the crinkles around his eyes, his broad shoulders and sloping frame.

“Bea?” He wasn’t asking whether it was her. He was asking something else.

“How did you know where to find me?” she finally choked out.

“I was at the rental counter at LAX when I saw your story,” he explained. “Gwen put notifications for all of your posts on my phone.”

“Really?” Bea was taken aback. “Gwen did?”

Asher smiled. “She’s become one of your greatest proponents.”

He stepped toward her but she bristled, her whole body suddenly tense.

“I don’t understand why you came,” she said curtly.

“I—” He stopped short. “Isn’t it obvious? I flew across the country to see you.”

“And what?” Bea wanted to feel overjoyed, to run to him, but she couldn’t—her anger was churning. “That’s supposed to make up for what you did?”

“Wow.” Asher sniffed. “This is not how I thought you’d react.”

“What did you think, Asher? That I’ve just been mooning over you? Dreaming that you’d show up on my doorstep so I could beg you to take me back, even though you’re the one who ran out on me?”

“What are you doing here, then?” he demanded. “If you don’t miss me, why are you in this museum?”

“Because I love art!” Bea fumed. “Art isn’t about
you,
not everything is about you.”

His lips twitched with one of his infuriating smiles, but no—not this time—it wasn’t going to work.

“Oh stop it,” she spat, “stop smiling like you know everything. This was my place before you ever came along, okay? I’m not some powerless woman, my life didn’t begin the night I met you.”

“Bea, no.” He shook his head and started walking toward her again. “If anyone is powerless, it’s me, okay? You think I don’t know how colossally I screwed up in Amboise? You think I haven’t gone back to that morning every single day, wondering how I could have ruined something so good? These last six weeks have been a waking nightmare.”

“Then why?” Bea’s voice broke. “Why did you leave?”

He was close enough now to reach for her, but looking like he didn’t know whether he should.

“You know that being on the show was difficult for me,” he said, “but the truth is it was even worse than I let on. Imagining you with other men was such torture—my mind couldn’t parse the difference between you with Sam or Luc and seeing Vanessa cheat on me in broad daylight. It felt the same to me, like you were waving it in my face and I was just supposed to take it. That morning, knowing you had slept with Luc, yet you were still struggling to trust
me
? I felt insane, like I was reliving my past. Then Ray showed up, and that sealed it. In my mind, it was all the proof I needed that you were just another Vanessa, and that I was supposed to be the same old Asher, still reliable, letting you walk all over me, breaking my heart all over again. I couldn’t take it—I just snapped. My only choice was to leave.”

“Do you still feel that way?” Bea asked.

Asher sighed. “Bea, I didn’t even feel that way the next morning. When I got back to Vermont, I expected this rush of relief—but all I felt was regret. All these years, I’ve thought of myself as the person who gets left behind. Being the person who ran felt so much worse.”

“You could have called me,” Bea said softly. “You could have shown up for the reunion.”

Asher hung his head. “I was desperate to convince myself I’d done the right thing. If I could just believe I was better off without you, then that would mean I didn’t make the worst mistake of my life in France. When I saw your face on TV Monday night after they told you I wasn’t coming … I’ve never been so ashamed, Bea. Never.”

Bea closed her eyes. She wanted to believe him so badly. So why couldn’t she?

“Bea …” He took her hand, and he was shaking—they both were. “Do you remember what you told us in Vermont? What your stepdad said, about choosing your family?”

Bea nodded and met his eyes for the first time. Of course she remembered.

“I keep thinking,” he went on. “What if it’s supposed to be us?”

“All those years,” Bea said, her voice quivering, “telling myself I would end up with Ray, when he wouldn’t date me, when he didn’t live here, even when he proposed to someone else. I was running, Asher, just like you did in Amboise. It felt so much safer to hide from anyone who might actually want to see me.”

“And now?” Asher asked, his voice hoarse.

“Now, I think, you and I have seen the worst of each other.” Bea’s voice cracked, and she felt the first tears start to fall. “But I just want to keep looking at you every single day.”

“I should have done this the first time we were here,” he said gently, and then he leaned in and kissed her.

It was silent in the gallery—no orchestra, no fireworks, no whir of generators and cameras. The only sounds were her breath and his, just Bea and the man she loved. He wasn’t a fantasy, he wasn’t a dream, and he wasn’t a happy ending. He was warmth and wit and kindness, a certainty and a surprise. He was the person who could hurt her most in the world, and he was worth the risk.

“Hey,” Bea said quietly. “I choose you.”