Page 11 of Buying Time

“You sure about that? Because I recall you all making itveryclear to me last night what you thought about me seeing people like I want to.”

Ouch.Hard to argue, because she wasn’t wrong. “That’s different. Your father is someone who’s supposed to care about you, supposed to look out for you. The fact that yours didn’t says something terrible about him, not about you.”

“Maybe,” she whispered, her tone making it clear she didn’t quite agree. “Maybe it’s me that’s the problem.”

“How could that be you?”

She pursed her lips and blew out a long stream of air, the action jostling a strand of her dark hair that hung in her face. “Do you know the sort of people I’ve lived my life around? My mother, my father, my sister, the Quad. I’ve had so many people around me who are geniuses of all sorts. My mother was tough and smart, and my father might have been heartless, but he was an amazing tactician. Nem is like fire, able to survive and destroy anything in her way. Rune is so tough that few people could win in a fight against him, and Colton could take a shot from so far away it is amazing, and Dane could get anything out of anyone and there isn’t any computer system Bray couldn’t hack into. I feel like everyone moves around me like superheroes and here I am…normal.”

I stared at her, able to watch her because she looked down instead of at me. How could she not understand how amazing she was? How could she doubt herself so much?

“Maybe you are stupid.”

She jerked her gaze up, my words clearly startling her. Then again, statements like hers were usually met with platitudes, with reassurance. Her confused expression made me smirk.I love throwing her off balance.

“If you don’t see how special you are, then hell, you must be stupid.”

Kenz snorted, as if not amused by my statement. “You don’t understand. How could you? You’re Vance Moore.”

“And you’re Mackenzie Williams,” I pointed out. “Seems like we both grew up in the shadows of names we’re supposed to live up to.”

“Last I checked, you’re a famous artist. Seems you lived up to it just fine.”

“Then you don’t know much. My father’s a well-known politician and my older brother followed suit. It was expected that I’d follow that trend. In fact, my father liked to point out that with a face like mine, I could win votes easily. Instead of getting an angelic politician like he wanted, he got a man whore who doesn’t even produce any art anymore. Trust me, I’m not the golden child in my family, either.” Even as I admitted that, as I laughed as though it was funny, it sure as fuck didn’tfeelfunny.

Instead, I felt that cold look from my father, the way each time I’d come to dinner, he’d ask if I’d finally gotten over my little rebellious stage and was willing to come back into the fold.I recalled all the times I went to shows without family there.

Ah, disappointing parents seemed like my favorite pastime.

Or maybe it was just what I’d grown used to. I didn’t love it, but it was all I knew.

I moved my gaze from her painting to find her staring at me. How could she stare at me like that? Like I meant something?

Not like women usually did, the ones who only saw dollar signs above my head. Those women had looked at me as if they already saw a future, like I was a trophy for them to mount on the wall. They’d never given a damn about my feelings, about who I was at all. They’d catered to me, given me whatever I wanted, just because they’d thought it would get them something. Mainly, a future with me.

Kenz, however, didn’t see me that way. Instead, she saw parts of me that I’d shown no other person—or the parts that were missing, as it were.

“Well, if your father can’t see how amazingyouare, that’s his loss,” she said.

“Yeah, right. He’s really lucky to have a useless man whore for a son.”

Kenz laughed, even though I didn’t think anything I said was all that funny. “Well, I can’t deny you’re a man whore, but that aside, heislucky. You’re kinder than you realize, and you’ve created work that people love. You’ve created art that will stay around long after any of us are gone. I bet you anything that your name will be remembered well after his is forgotten, so yeah, he’s lucky.”

Her words took me so by surprise that I struggled to know how to answer. I’d expected her to say something stupid, to tell me I was a good person, that I was nice, that people cared about me. I would have rolled my eyes and written any of that off.

What did those things matter?

However, she’d hit the one spot that mattered to me, and the one that hurt the most. My art. The thing I had loved more than anything else, the thing I’d lost.

I stared down at my damaged hand, surprised when it wavered. I blinked rapidly, refusing to turn into some pussy who cried over something so stupid.

“Yeah, well, that’s all over, isn’t it?” I ran the fingers of my left hand over my right, feeling the difference between my skin and the firmness of the prosthesis.

Another hand touched mine, making me jump, only to find Kenz had reached out and grasped my damaged hand. She didn’t retreat, didn’t touch me as though it bothered her. How couldn’t it, though? The unnatural stiffness of the false fingers, the memory of the gnarled skin? It turned my stomach and I had to live with it. “Have you tried to learn with your other hand? Or what about other types of prostheses that give you more control?”

I forced a smile I didn’t feel. “I tried, especially at first. My left hand just can’t do the detail work, and the nerves were damaged in my right hand so badly that I don’t have full control even over the fingers I still have.”

She frowned for a moment. “The canvas in your room…”

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