“Make him understand.” Kate rubbed her arm some more. “Explain it to him.”
“No.” Gen pushed herself up off the sofa and started to pace. “No. I’m not going to explain it. I shouldn’t have to explain it. The bottom line is, he thought I wouldn’t be able to do the things I wanted to do without his help. He thought I was incapable on my own. Isn’t that cute, Gen trying to be this New York art big shot. Isn’t it adorable? I’d better rush in with my giant phallic checkbook and save the goddamned day.” She picked up a throw pillow from one of Kate’s chairs and hurled it to the ground.
“When you put it like that, it really does sound bad,” Rose conceded.
“It sounds bad because it is.” Gen came to rest in front of her friends. “If that’s what he thinks of me, if that’s how little he respects me, then how can we have a relationship? What future could we possibly have?”
“I still think he deserves a chance to learn from his idiot mistake,” Lacy said. “I’ve known him a long time. He’s a good guy.”
“God. I thought … I thought …”
“You thought he was the one,” Kate said.
“I really did. Is that stupid? Was I stupid?”
“No, honey. Just in love,” Lacy said.
“Well, it’s the same goddamned thing.”
“It probably is,” Rose agreed. “If you’re not going to finish that ice cream, you mind if I do?”
Ryan tried to call Gen, but she didn’t pick up, and then his calls went to voicemail. He tried to text her, but she didn’t answer. He went over to her place, but she wouldn’t answer the door. If she’d acknowledged him in any way—if she’d yelled through the door for him to go away, even—then he’d have been able to make his case and maybe get her to talk to him. But as it was, he was left standing there feeling like a jerk.
His mother had told him to give her time, but he’d been too impatient, and he’d started in right away with the calls and the banging on her door. Maybe his mother was right.
Dispirited, he went home and sulked.
He felt misunderstood—surely if she thought about it she could see his good intentions—but he also felt like a goddamned imbecile. He should have known that conspiring with Bellini behind her back, no matter what his intentions, would backfire on him if she ever found out. And that was the problem with lies and secrets. People always found out. His dad had taught him to live his life in such a way that he wouldn’t need to hide anything, because his actions would be above reproach. When had he forgotten that?
Restless, he went out to the old barn to check on a heifer that had been showing some early signs of BVD. He’d checked on her earlier, and he didn’t really need to go out there again for a while, but he needed to do something to get his mind off Gen.
He checked on the calf, then tried Gen again on his cell phone. She didn’t answer. He put his phone back in his pocket, paced a little bit, and then retrieved the phone again.
“You told me to write the check, and now Gen won’t speak to me,” Ryan said when Daniel answered the phone.
“I didn’t tell you to write the check. I told you that she really wanted to go to New York.”
“How is that different?” Ryan demanded. He came to rest in front of an empty stall and leaned against the railing.
“It’s different because when I call her, she picks up,” Daniel said.
It wasn’t a bad point.
Gen had no choice but to get on with things. She was miserable and lonely, and she couldn’t sleep without missing the feeling of Ryan’s body next to hers. But that didn’t mean she could just sit on her ass and cry. She had a gallery to run. And she had an artist-in-residence program to organize.
Gordon was set to go home in a week or two, and it was time to figure out who would take his place. She hadn’t even set up a formal application process, but all of the publicity Gordon had received—and the attention she’d received as an extension of that—meant that artists were contacting her on a daily basis wanting information on the residency. She hadn’t originally intended for it to be an ongoing program, so she had some catching up to do. And obviously, the artist she chose would not be staying at the ranch. It would be too awkward if she and Ryan weren’t together anymore. She needed to find a new place.
“You could just forgive Ryan,” Alex suggested when Gen assigned him to start looking for rental properties that would work.
She could. God knew she thought about it every day. Forgiving him would be easy. What wouldn’t be easy would be living with the fact that he didn’t think enough of her to believe that she could achieve her goals without his help. What wouldn’t be easy—or even possible—would be trying to be her own person while living under the shadow of his wealth.
So she contacted artists, looked at the rental places Alex picked out, and worked on an application process for the residency. The McCabes had only agreed to sponsor the program for one five-month period, and when she approached them about continuing it indefinitely, they’d balked. So she drafted a letter to David Walker, reminding him of Kendrick’s astounding progress during the residency and asking him to sponsor the program so that other emerging artists might have the same opportunity.
The work helped her.
Keeping busy helped her.
If she hadn’t been busy, she’d have spent all of her time thinking of Ryan and how she felt when he looked at her with those limitless eyes. If she hadn’t been constantly in motion, she’d have spent a lot of time crying and feeling sorry for herself. As it was, she felt a dull ache in her middle every day, as though she were suffering from some sort of virus. She felt as though her world had been skewed off center, so that everything looked wrong and seemed off-balance. Thank God for her friends and her job. If she hadn’t had them, she’d have risked vanishing into her grief.
Ryan couldn’t eat.
He was getting through his day-to-day life okay, except that the very sight of food made him feel sick, so that he picked at his meals and then shoved back from the table with some excuse about being tired or having work to do.
It wasn’t good, a man with a job as physical as his going hungry, but there was nothing for it. Eating was what you did when you had hope and optimism. Eating was what you did when you wanted to be well and thrive, and he just honestly didn’t give a shit about that anymore. He wanted to, but he couldn’t seem to do it.
It hurt that she wouldn’t even talk to him.
The fact that she couldn’t even try to see his side of things made him wonder if he’d misjudged her. But it didn’t matter if he had. No matter what she did, no matter what she was, he loved her with a desperate certainty that couldn’t be undone. His feelings for her were unmanageable, uncontainable, vast like that endless Cambria sky that held the stars, the moon, and all of the unthinkable galaxies beyond.
His side didn’t matter.