Page 148 of The Heart Breaker

That gets my attention enough to drag my eyes off her and onto the canvas for about half a second before I look back at her. “Yeah?”

She nods, still staring ahead. “Museums mostly. Galleries too, if my mom could get us into one. I could stay in them forever.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “I used to walk around imagining what it’d be like if one of mine was hanging up there someday. Which was probably a little ambitious considering I was mostly drawing My Little Pony at the time.”

A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, and I grin as I follow her farther into the room, while she talks about the paintings that catch her eye. Most of what she says goes straight over my head, if I’m being honest. But I like hearing her say it anyway. I’d listen to her talk about things I don’t understand for hours if it meant I got to keep her beside me like this.

When she starts drifting to the right, my pulse kicks up and I reach for her arm.

She looks back at me, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing?”

“You’re going the wrong way.”

Her brows pull together. “What do you mean I’m going the wrong way? I haven’t even gone that way yet.”

“I think there’s something in here you’ll like more,” I say, steering her left instead, my hand sliding to her hip as I guide her.

She scoffs, but she lets me lead her anyway, her heels clicking softly against the floor. “You have absolutely no idea what I like in art.”

I glance down at her, my mouth starting to pull. “That so?”

“Yes,” she says, that automatic bite in her voice so completely her that it almost makes me laugh. “You don’t know what half this stuff even means, so how exactly would you know I’d like any?—”

The words die in her throat the second she steps into the room.

I’ve been thinking about this moment ever since they emailed me back, playing it out in my head a hundred different ways, but none of that does a damn thing to prepare me for the way she goes completely still beside me when she sees her painting hanging there on the wall.

She doesn’t move or even say anything at all. She just stands there staring at it, and I can feel my own pulse starting to kick up while I watch her take it in. After a few seconds, her eyes shift to the little card beside it, and I watch her read her own name.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Thought you’d recognize your own painting, Prescott.”

Her head turns toward me, her eyes widening. “Cole,” she says, looking at the painting, then back at me. “You did this?”

I keep my eyes on her, shove a hand into my pocket, and shrug.

She shakes her head, her lips parted in shock. “When?”

I drag a hand over the back of my neck. “Before we… ended.” I swallow. “I was gonna tell you that day. On our date.”

Her throat moves when she swallows, and her gaze drifts back to the painting. I don’t think I breathe while I watch her take it in.

Aurora finally drags her gaze away from the painting and looks at me. “I’ve wanted this since I was a kid,” she says. “I can’t believe you did this.”

I shake my head. “I’d do anything for you, Aurora,” I say, forcing myself to stop there before I say too much. Before I tell her I love her. Before I tell her she got under my skin so deep I don’t even remember who I was before her.

Her eyes search my face for a second before she looks away. “God, I wish that day had gone differently.”

Yeah.

Me too.

“I know why you did it,” she says before I can answer. “I know what happened with your sister. I understand it.” She swallows and drops her gaze for a second before looking back at me. “That doesn’t change the fact that you ripped out my heart.”

Her voice cracks and it fucking guts me.

I glance around the gallery, suddenly too aware of the people drifting past and the fact that we’re standing in the middle of all this with too much still sitting between us. Too much I haven’t said. Too much I need to say.

“You want to get out of here for a minute?” I ask.