Page 122 of How to Get Even

His jaw flickered in the light of the gallery bleeding onto the sidewalk, letting her know that it wasn’t an easy decision.

‘I… want to take some time,’ he explained. ‘Just find my feet with it again without the pressure or the weight of having to produce for exhibitions and shows and sales. I want to havefunwith it. And I would never have seen that without you,’ he explained, her heart easing, knowing that she’d done something for him. That she’d helped after hindering him so much.

‘You were willing to show me what I’d been hiding from, no matter what it cost you,’ he said, reaching for her hands and pulling her against his body. Her hands pressed against his chest, her palm against the racing of his heart.

‘You were willing to risk your job, and what we shared, to show me that, and I don’t know how to thank you. I’m not saying that my creative block has suddenly lifted and I can magically work again, but I want to try and work through it now. For me. To find what kind of artwork I want to donow.’

Pride and happiness shot right through her.

‘But you need to come back to the gallery.’

‘I’m not sure, Chase. What I did, it was unforgiveable. And Tej?—’

‘Tej knows. He wants to know how you got my password. I want to know how you did the salt,’ he said, leaning in with a smile, as he seemed to breathe her in with a satisfied sigh.

‘He knows? And he’s okay with that?’

‘As long as it doesn’t happen to the next gallery director, I think he’s going to be fine,’ Chase assured her.

‘Are you… going back to England?’ she asked, fearing that he’d return to his studio there.

‘Nope. I’m going to stay right here,’ he said, bringing her closer to him. ‘Where I can keep an eye on you. I’m going to work at the studio and stay in New York.’

She looked up at him, his lips barely an inch from hers.

‘Then—’

‘Fuck’s sake, Bella, can you stop asking me questions and let me kiss you now?’

She squeaked at his confession and he laughed.

‘I’m trying to tell you that I love you. That I made a monumental mistake letting you go. And that I’m devastated that I for one minute made you think that you were unwanted because you made a mistake. So together, perhaps we can make mistakes and learn from them and love each other despite them? Because Bella Carmichael, Good Bella, Bad Bella, whatever way you want to be, I am hopelessly, irrefutably, incontrovertibly in love with you.’

She gasped in shock and Chase took advantage and pulled her into a kiss that was sure to get them arrested for lewd conduct. After a heady two minutes, Chase pulled back, both of them a little breathless and a lot happy.

‘Well?’

‘Well, what?’ Bella asked. ‘You want marks out of ten?’ she asked with a laugh.

‘No, Carmichael, I want to hear that you love me too.’

‘Oh, yeah that. Maybe. We’ll have to see how that goes,’ she said, and pulled him in for the first of many, many millions of kisses to come.

EPILOGUE

THREE MONTHS LATER…

Bella looked down at the message from Chase on her phone as the cabbie turned a corner, his head, and improbably, an arm, half out the window to yell at a cyclist, a pedestrian and a child all in one go.

The summer heat was building hard and fast in New York and as a consequence everyone was out on the streets dressed in as few items of clothing as possible. A part of her yearned to head back Upstate, to feel the cool breeze and shaded trees of the forests by her parents’ house, knowing that Chase would love it up there, but work had kept them both in New York for the last few months.

Meet me at the studio?

She reread the message again. Chase had been… notsecretiveabout his work, but definitely private and she understood. It was so important that he be allowed to experiment and play with his creativity without the fear of any kind of critical eye. Not that hers would have been critical. But he’d needed to figure out what he liked and wanted from his art before he thought of anyone else. He deserved that.

And if she were honest, she’d been kept so busy by the new gallery director from Sweden, that she’d barely had time herself. The twelve-month placements for visiting artists to step into the lead role at the Nayak had been a great idea – and it still was – but it meant a lot of scrabbling to catch up, to adapt to different personalities and wants and needs. But it had cemented her and Maurice’s relationship more than anything else.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Chase had said, laughing whenever she’d complained about it, ‘you love every minute of it.’

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