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Someone so capable, so honest, so wise, and with more years of life experiences than me had no business looking at me as if I’d somehow saved him, as if I held all the answers. And I had no business wanting to hunt every answer down to every asked question—even the unasked ones lingering behind his eyes—and lay them right at his feet.
You know better than this, Leland.
“I should go,” I said. Franky was two decades older than me, had adult kids, and his marital status was set to complicated. This had run-as-fast-as-you-can written all over it, and if I were smart, I’d tell him I couldn’t finish the mural and cut my losses.
A heavy palm landed on my arm, stopping my escape, its warmth burning past the heavy fabric of my sweater to scorch my bare skin. “It’s late, and it’s a long drive back to the city,” Franky said. “Why don’t you stay.”
“It’s not that late,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as winded as I felt.
“Okay, so maybe I don’t want to be alone,” he confessed, and why did his confessions have to affect me the way they did? I would’ve made a terrible priest, because no way could I have ever handed Franky’s problems over to God. As it stood, I wanted to be the one to absolve them all.
“There’s a mattress and clean sheets in the guest bedroom. Please, stay,” he begged, and begging had never sounded so good.
“Okay,” I whispered, even while knowing thatthiswould be the moment I lived to regret.
The moment I stayed.
Chapter 5
Franklin
“So where’d your love of art come from?” Leland asked with his feet kicked up on the Jeep’s dash, his face pointed toward the beam of sunlight streaming in from his window. His car wouldn’t start that morning, so I insisted on covering the cost to have it towed and driving him to his apartment for a change of clothes. It was my fault anyway. If he hadn’t pushed its limits by driving so far outside the city, it’d probably still be functioning well enough to get him around.
“Selene, actually. She’s a big supporter of the arts. One leg of her charity is devoted to funding art programs in schools throughout the inner city and shining a spotlight on up-and-coming talent who may normally be overlooked.”
“Okay. How many times have you been in love?” he fired off next.
“No more questions until you agree to let me pay you for the mural,” I said. Leland had been rather inquisitive today. By my count, we were on question number fifty. I’d spoken more in the short time we’d known each other than I had all my life.
Keeping my eyes on the road, I felt around the center console for my sunglasses before slipping them on.
“Like I told you before,” he said, making a sound of displeasure when the sun dipped behind a cluster of trees. “You overpaid for the other paintings. I’m not taking any more of your money.”
“And like I toldyou, I’d underpaid for them. Seattle is an expensive city. That money won’t get you far.” We’d spent the better part of the morning, in between his Spanish Inquisition, arguing over it.
“It’s already gone,” he said with a shrug. “Paid my rent for a full year.”
“You advanced your landlord? That wasn’t a good investment,” I said, trying my best not to come off as a chastising father.
“I know,” he said, and I waited for something more, but Leland kept his eyes closed and his face upturned in his reclined seat. I let it go. It wasn’t my job to lecture him about his life choices, especially when mine weren’t any better.
“Twice,” I said. “I’ve been in love twice.” I felt his gaze fan over me, and I risked looking at him before refocusing ahead. “Cole’s mother, Annabeth, was my first love. We met in college. Got married soon after, and she wanted to start a family right away.”
“And you didn’t?” he asked.
“I wanted to get Nexcom off the ground. I wanted to show my father I could make something of my own, something that could surpass the success of Kincaid Industries. I gave her what she wanted and ended up paying for it. She died during childbirth.”
“That couldn’t have been easy,” he said.
“I threw myself into my work for years instead of dealing with it, and it was hard to not see Cole as a reminder. I loved him, but I can admit to avoiding him too. He’d had his own version of Gloria after his mother died.” I’d spent years wanting to be better than my father. He was a tyrant, thought he knew what was best for me, and cared more about work and upholding a certain image than he ever cared about me. But in the process of trying to be better than him, I ended up proving that in many ways, we were one and the same. I’d failed my son, and he still bore the scars to prove it.
“And then I met Selene—”
“And you saw your opportunity to give Cole a mother. Someone to take care of him in a way you weren’t capable of,” Leland said.
I couldn’t deny that Selene was an excellent mother. I couldn’t say that the way her eyes lit up when she spoke about her son the day we met didn’t factor into how quickly I eventually fell for her. Who knew how Cole’s life would’ve turned out if Selene and Jasper hadn’t walked into it when they had, but it wasn’t the only reason I’d married her, even if it was the driving force behind my decision to. “I loved Selene,” I said. “Iloveher.”
Leland gestured for me to turn right at the approaching stop sign and then instructed me to turn left at the fourth light up ahead.
