Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75481 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75481 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Okay.” I could hear the smile in his voice.
After I made up our food, I pushed some boxes off the couch and the coffee table and sat down. He came out in sweats and all disheveled-looking, but I liked him this way—maybe most of all. Like he was actually human and not made out of marble. All soft lines and sleepy eyes, and endearing. The guy didn’t even know how loveable he was.
We ate and chatted about the appearances tomorrow, and I didn’t give two shits about the clothing we pulled for Kendall, but I knew when all was said and done, I’d miss this. This quiet camaraderie where Rowan forgot to keep his walls up. Like we were in our own little bubble where time stood still and we were on common ground.
When he gathered our empty plates and walked them to the sink, I thought about the condition I’d found him in. “I can’t believe all the white noise you use to sleep, by the way—the fans and the music.”
“I’ve always had a hard time with sleep.” He returned to the couch and tucked his legs under his body, which made him look young and boyish.
“Is that why you came into work looking like you did today? Because you couldn’t sleep?” I held my breath, wondering if he’d brush me off again.
Instead, he shook his head. “My therapist says I haven’t properly grieved my father. That I have to sit in my sorrow and cry and even scream if I need to, but I never allowed myself to do it.”
This time I kept my mouth firmly shut as he gathered more of his thoughts.
“The night he died, Brett wasn’t there for me. I couldn’t even reach him. Of course, he was with someone else. Because somehow, he couldn’t get his needs met by me. No matter how much I tried to make it work between us.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I felt so alone—outside of Lorenzo, but he was surrounded by family and friends and grieving in his own way.”
“Brett is such a bastard,” I said under my breath, imagining what that must have felt like. To not be able to reach the person you love during the worst time in your life, only to learn later that they were in the act of betraying you. So now both of those memories were entwined, and the bitterness he must’ve felt…God. But he was in therapy, so he was working toward something. Maybe that was how he was able to be civil with the man when they shared the same space.
“Anyway, that was the night I realized I couldn’t count on anyone but myself. That might sound callous or sad or whatever, but it had become the soundest advice I’d given to myself time and again.”
That made all the sense in the world, given what he’d just shared. And maybe that was how he felt about me too? Like I’d abandoned him?
Goddamn it.
“Thank you…for helping me understand.”
He untucked his legs and fiddled with the cord on his sweats. “Having dinner with Lorenzo at the penthouse was difficult. I haven’t visited their place since the funeral, and it was like everything was stuck in time. Like my father was simply away on a trip, and that turned me inside out.”
I reached for his hand, and he let me. In fact, he twisted our fingers together as he told me about their lives outside of design, about the expensive artwork in their home, and how his father was a collector. It was obvious his father and Lorenzo enjoyed the finer things in life, and so did Rowan, but to a lesser degree.
“Anyway, Lorenzo handed me a box of things my father wanted me to keep, mostly stuff from when I was a kid that I didn’t even know he’d hung on to.” He motioned to a wooden box on the dining table that I wouldn’t have noticed under the clutter of fabric swatches. “He also told me some things I needed to hear, like how proud my father was of me that I’d made a career all my own. Or maybe he said it because my father never could.”
I squeezed his fingers. “Maybe he said it because it’s the truth, and he knew him best.”
“Maybe,” he murmured, but I saw it then, how the emotions were sitting right there under the surface. His bottom lip trembled as he cleared his throat and looked away.
“How do you feel now?”
“Raw. Like there’s a lump in my stomach. An ache in my chest.”
As soon as he rubbed at a spot on his chest, the tears came. He swiped relentlessly at his cheeks, but they just kept sneaking out, and I could see the mortification setting in that I was witnessing him in this state. That he was losing it right in front of me.