“Swear to me you’ll think about it. And us,” he said in a choked voice. “I’ll give you tonight, baby. But if you think I’m going to give up and let you walk away then you don’t know me very well.”
She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “I’ll think about it, Ash. That’s all I can promise. I have a lot to sort out in my head. You pulled the rug out from under me. I have to figure out what I’m going to do from here. I knew when I entered this relationship with you that you promised to take care of me, to protect me, to provide for me. And I was okay with that because I didn’t need you to. Can you possibly understand the difference? I didn’t have to be with you. I wanted to be. If I’d had no other choice, no place to live, no money, then how could you ever be certain I wasn’t with you for your money? I never want that between us. It’s important to me to be independent and able to provide for myself even if that’s not what I end up doing. But I want that choice. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know that I have value. That I can support myself and make my own choices.”
He closed his eyes because so much of what she said made sense. It’s how he’d feel in her situation too. And he’d looked right past that. Never considered how it would make her feel for him to buy the paintings and hide that from her. He fucked up. And now he could lose her because of that fuck-up.
“I get it,” he said hoarsely. “I do, baby. I’ll give you tonight. But I don’t have to fucking like it. And I’m not giving up on us, so prepare yourself for that. No way in hell I’m giving you up.”
She swallowed, her face still pale, her eyes still wounded. Then she turned and walked away, taking his heart and soul with her, leaving him standing there holding the collar she’d taken from around her neck.
chapter thirty
Josie spent a miserable night tossing and turning before she finally gave up and immersed herself in her painting. For the first time, the vibrant colors didn’t come. There was nothing vivid about the scene she painted. It was dark, gray. There was a sadness to it that seeped onto the canvas without her realizing it was there.
At dawn, her shoulders sagged, stiff and sore from the hours she’d spent on the painting. When she took it in, she winced. It was a clear image of her mood. Miserable.
She nearly splattered paint on it to ruin it but held back, her hands trembling before she finally affixed her trademark J in the lower right-hand corner.
It was honest. It was also very good. It was just different from any of her other work. Perhaps this would be something more along the lines of what others wanted. Maybe people didn’t want bright, cheerful, sexy fun.
As she stared at the painting, the title came to her. Rain in Manhattan. Not particularly original, but it suited her mood, even if it was a perfect spring morning outside. The buildings in her painting were tall and gloomy, outlined by rain and overcast skies. She also realized that the building on the canvas was Ash’s.
She sighed and rose, stretching her stiff muscles. She stumbled into the kitchen to make herself coffee, thankful that she still had an old canister in the cabinet. She would have to restock her apartment. All of the perishables had been thrown out when she’d moved and only a few items remained. One of them being the coffee. She needed to bypass a mug and go straight for an IV infusion of caffeine.
Holding the steaming cup in her hand, she went back into the living room and opened her blinds to let the early morning light in. Outside, the streets were quiet, only just now starting to come alive with the traffic of the day.