Page 30 of From West, With Regret

“What do you think I should pay you?” He raises his brows, eyes widening with playfulness.

I scrunch my nose. “I don’t know. Feels kind of weird since we’re sort of family.”

“Are we?” He cocks his head. “Is that how you think of me?”

I don’t take offense to it. I never considered myself a part of the Hall family. I think back to West’s pool confession and remember he isn’t a Hall, either. There’s more to his story. The divide between Heath and West is massive. One that gives our feelings about the Halls credence.

My sense of never fitting in with them is as justified as West’s.

“I guess not,” I admit.

He pushes off the bar and walks around the end, crossing back over to my side. He stands beside the stool he was sitting in earlier and grips the edge. Lifting his gaze from my portfolio, he flicks his eyes to mine, staring intomy soul. “Now that we have that settled…” His voice deepens. “Before we get to the matter of payment, I want to make somethingvery,veryclear.”

A chill prickles down the back of my neck. My lips part as a sharp breath passes through them. West’s scent is stronger, and the heat from his body wraps around me. I squeeze my thighs together.

“Heath wasnevermy brother.”

His stare is unwavering, and he may as well have cut me open. I’m vulnerable, and one would think I would bolt in the opposite direction.

But one truth remains.

I’ve never felt safer than I do with West. I’ve never felt more myself than around him. Like he sees a part of me I didn’t know existed. Or one that I forgot existed.

It’s impossible. But is it?

I lean into the feeling, reading between the lines of West’s very pointed statement.

Heath wasneverhis brother.

Just like my marriage to Heath wasn’t a real marriage. Heath didn’t love me. He didn’t worship the ground I walked on. He didn’t cherish me.

Not the way I deserved. And truthfully, it wasn’t just me. It was West, too.

NINE

LONDON

We never settled on the matter of payment. I plan on bringing it up to West today, as soon as I show him my first completed piece for the bar.

I carry my weathered portfolio with me as I race down the stairs of Selene’s apartment, then to the subway that takes me to the other side of the city to The Veiled Door.

Living here in New York has been an adjustment from Boston. The air is different. The people are different. The feel of it. The smell of it. Even the sounds. All overwhelming but growing on me. As if there’s an invisible pull this city has had on me and it’s satisfied, knowing this is where I was meant to be all along. Like my heart belongs here.

Selene was right. There was nothing and no one left for me in Boston, and the longer I stay here in New York, the further my marriage to Heath and my abusive past fades into the distance.

As usual, I show up to the bar right after the bartender unlocks the door for opening. West introduced me to the bar manager Piper and a few of the other bartenders during my first week here. Most work the same shifts, and sometimes I onlyever see a handful of them more than the others, including Lewis, the one I see the most. But Piper is the one opening today.

She stops me before I make it to the base of the stairs, telling me all about the man who sat next to her wearing a hot dog costume on the subway. I laugh and nod along, aching to get upstairs to start working. She’s sweet and kind, but ever since I’ve started working on these pieces for this bar, my motivation to begin my new life here in New York has been at an all-time high.

Once she’s finished, I leave Piper to slice her lemons in peace and race upstairs.

The boards creak under my feet. The quiet music of the bar below my studio fades in the distance, muffled by floors that have probably been around for at least a century. I push my shoulder into the door of my studio. Once a storeroom for all the bar’s supplies, West has done his best to make it my own. He’s reorganized the liquor and cleaning supplies, stacking them on one side of the room. The other side is mine, filled with bits of charcoal and a fresh stack of sketchbooks. Even a few brushes and palettes of watercolor if the mood strikes. All of it set up just for me. There are probably a million other places in the city I could work, but I like it here. It’s private, quiet, and though I know West has other bars to run, the chances of seeing him while here are better than if I were anywhere else.

The room is more like a closet. If I were to estimate it’s size, I’d say probably only about six by six feet, but I’ve done my best to put the lack of space out of my mind. Normally tight spaces are a trigger for me, but they haven’t been here.

Although there are boxes piled on one side of the room, blocking half the filled shelves, I decide to work on the floor today. Sometimes I can get a different perspective on a piece when I’m lookingdown on it.

Dropping to me knees, I place my portfolio on the wooden floorboards in front of me and open it up. I slip out a piece of charcoal and the piece I’ve been working on the past several weeks. I ignore the sheets tucked in the back, the ones more personal to me.

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