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One
I didn’t remember leaving the rooftop. I didn’t remember much of anything except Blake’s last words.
“You’re fired.”
My mind was still swirling. Incomprehension, shock, and the look on his face—I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was used to the stony near-android facial expressions when he was in the office. He held himself so rigidly, as if he was made from the same glass that had built his empire.
But tonight had been different.
Everything had been different.
The pure joy I’d caught a glimpse of, the way he held me, even the desperate way we’d gone at each other on the rooftop. We’d traveled from the highest high, veering into a spiraling crash ending in detonation within moments.
“I’ve known your name, longer than I’ve known my own.”
“You’re fired.”
I was halfway back to Marblehead before those words stopped echoing like a heavy metal drum solo at my temples. Nothing made sense. We’d only known each other a few weeks.
My reactions to him never made sense, but I’d just chalked it up to attraction. I understood that. The phenomenon was well documented, even if I’d never experienced it prior to Blake. But now that I was questioning everything, I had to wonder if it been a manipulation from the start. A game from the moment I’d walked into that glass fortress.
“I’ve known your name, longer than I’ve known my own.”
I slowed for a red light and drove my fingers into my hair, pulling until my scalp burned. The pain didn’t clear my head. What did that even mean?
The look in his eyes had been fleeting, but so confusing. Like I was so much more important than what we’d been to each other so far—then it was gone. Faster than a spark off flint. Bright and hot, but without any butane behind the flame, there was no fuel.
No us.
“I’ve known your name, longer than I’ve known my own.”
I slapped my hand on the steering wheel. Get out of my head!
Every problem I’d been running away from was still there. At the end of this very highway that was bringing me home.
No. God, not even that was mine.
Not my house, not even my grandmother’s house. Not anymore.
His house.
When the light switched to green, I gunned the engine. My car sounded like a dying moose, but it was still mine. The only thing I could actually call my own.
I’d lived inside my work for so many years, never allowing anything to change my course. He owned the first glimmer of happiness I’d found in more years than I could count. He’d snuffed it out as if it had never been.
Creating light from lies was the worst sort of idiocy. And there was no one to blame for that except myself.
A few weeks ago I thought I’d hit rock bottom, but I was so wrong. I’d gone to Blake hoping to find a way to keep my home, and I’d gotten lost along the way. Lost in the need to be needed, lost to the idea of friends, and lost to the heady sensations of being in Blake’s life—both as his assistant and lover.
All the things that could distract me from my reality.
My truly shitty situation would never be cured with a paycheck from the same man who was stealing my home.
I pulled up the gravel driveway and parked my old car behind the garage. Away from the prying eyes of the mailman, or the realtor who did random drive-bys. A small coastal town was full to the brim with busybodies.
Annabelle Stuart’s granddaughter with nowhere to go.
Is that what I’d be known for?
I’d been avoiding anyone and everyone since the funeral.
More avoiding. The rabbit hole of Blake Carson. The unending pleasure and frustration had swallowed me as effectively as any obsession. But now I had to choose me. Choose my work and find a way to let go.
I curled my fingers around the old lever door handle to the maid’s quarters. The hiss of ocean over my shoulder was alluring. It was freezing, but it never stopped me from digging my toes into the sand. The rocky coast was as comforting as flannel as far as I was concerned.
But I needed work.
I had to get Blake Carson out of my head and in my rearview mirror. Work was the only thing that mattered. The only thing that would save me.
“I’ve known your name, longer than I’ve known my own.”
“You’re fired.”
I flicked on lights and struggled out of my dress, hose, and his scent, leaving a trail of clothes from the front of my studio to my worktable. I pulled on my overalls, tucked my hair under the old golf hat with more singe marks than plaid lines, and clamped my wireless headphones over my ears.
I flicked on my stereo and blasted Frank Turner. An angry Brit would drown him out.
I pushed away all the bits of copper and glass until the angel sculpture was at the center of my table.
Work.
I had work to do.
I ripped off her wing and pulled down the smoky gold glass I’d been saving. She needed to be bigger. She needed to be more dynamic.
She needed to be more.
Just like me.
Two
My cheek had hit the pillow sometime around dawn. Since it was November that had to be more like seven in the morning, rather than five. I honestly didn’t remember falling onto the little twin bed I had stashed in the corner of my workroom.
I’d worked for three days straight on the angel. Deconstructing her in a frenzy, only to find myself in
