Nate shook his head and raised his chin, glad to be taller than this man. “No, Claude. I’m the one who must thank you,” he began and Claude cocked his head and raised a curious eyebrow. “You did me a great service by taking Joanna off my hands. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for fucking my wife and having her at your place all night long and into the morning. It was the best thing anyone ever did for me. Because you gave me my freedom from that woman. You, sir, are truly the prince.”

The color drained from Claude’s face. It was a priceless moment, and Nate flashed back on something Brent had said. Go out on a high note. Nate turned on his heels and walked out of the gallery and into the New York night. He wanted to pump his fist in victory. To savor the vindictive joy at having reeled off the right zinger at the right time.

Instead, the latent anger inside of him raged on, higher and faster. Gritting his teeth and breathing out hard through his nostrils, he desperately wished to feel nothing. Not a single thing. But every time he entered her orbit he was sucked under by his own anger and the residual shame. Those were nothing though compared to the utter self-loathing that welled up at having chosen the wrong fucking person to love. He was such a fool for having loved this woman. He was an idiot for marrying her. His radar had malfunctioned, and he hated that it was simply out of the question for him to ever trust again, to feel again, to love again.

There was a woman he desperately wanted to let into his heart, but he didn’t know how. Joanna had made it impossible for him to love.

And he hated her for it.

When he reached the red light at the crosswalk, all that anger coiled in his chest, rising up inside him. Tightening, like a hard metal spring with no give. He wanted to eradicate the side effects of Joanna, but he’d had no luck doing that. He didn’t know if he ever would.

He cocked his arm and slammed the streetlamp with his fist. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, reverberating into his bones. He cursed loudly.

“Are you okay?”

He swiveled around to see a young woman in running shorts and a T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, a look of concern on her face as she bounced on her sneakered feet.

“Fine. Sorry,” he muttered.

“Hope your night gets better,” she said, and picked up the pace, running across the street, returning to her evening jog.

“Me too,” he mumbled to himself as he shook out his hand, the pain still echoing in his knuckles.

He sounded empty when she’d called, his voice terribly hollow. The Joanna effect, she reasoned. Surely, it would dissipate soon. It had to. She waited outside his building, fidgeting with the silvery pendant she wore as she stood under the navy-blue awning. She ran her thumb over the smooth, stone surface. Worry flooded her nervous system—worry over him, over her, over them. Soon, she spotted him turning the corner onto his block. Her heart rose as the tiniest sliver of a smile formed on his face when he saw her, then it fell when he was close enough for her to see the scrapes on his hand.