“Why? Are you going into hiding? You’re not some sort of spy, are you?”

“Obviously, it’s nothing like that.”

“Wait…” Alex sat back, sliding her hand out of mine. “Are you breaking up with me? Not that we’re really—”

“No. Of course not.” You don’t understand. I’m trying to keep you safe! “I’m just going back to Paris for a while—to see my friend—and do some business.”

She asked what sort of business, and when I said it was too soon to say, she accused me of being mysterious again, her tone gone cold. So I told her we were thinking of opening a gallery together, could almost taste the lie, acidic and bitter. I hated pushing her away when all I wanted was to hold her close.

“When,” she asked, “and where?”

I compounded the lie, said my friend had a place in the south, so probably there where it would be cheaper. “I’ll be going back and forth for a while. That’s why—”

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

No, she didn’t see. How could she? I sounded suspicious even to myself. “I’ll be back at some point.”

“Some point?”

I wanted to explain it, to tell her everything, but knowing could put her in danger. I watched her fold into herself, retreating, pulling away. I wanted to shout, No, you don’t understand—I think I love you! Instead I said, “I don’t want to lose you,” quietly, though I meant it.

A montage of emotions played across her face—resentment, sadness, and something else I couldn’t read.

“Fine,” she said with calculated indifference. “We hardly know each other. What happened between us just…happened.”

“I’m not sorry it happened.”

“No, I suppose you’re not,” she said, “now that you’re leaving.” Angry now, followed by another look I couldn’t read, something roiling beneath the placid surface, but then she sighed and it sounded almost like relief. Relief? That I was going away, leaving her? “Something is obviously going on that you won’t tell me,” she said, “and that’s fine. When you’re ready, if you’re ready, call me”—she stood, buttoning her coat—“or don’t.”

I got hold of her arm, fumbled for the right words. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

“You mean at some point?” She tugged free, and I saw it again, anger traded for a kind of acceptance. But why? And which emotion was real?

She stared at me a moment longer as if deciding whether or not to say something, then turned and without another word headed out the door.

67

Alex refilled her wineglass and took a sip, the taste bitter, or was it all the lies she had told that had left the bad taste in her mouth? She looked around her “charming” apartment but hated it, hated everything about being here, but most of all hated herself. She dumped the wine in the sink, disgusted with everything she had done, thought about the conversation with Luke: busy…away…opening an art gallery with my friend.

She was pretty sure he was lying, knew when she was being dumped. And she deserved it, didn’t she?