Page 91 of Crossed Wires: The Complete Series
She looked at the mashed-in face of the sculpture. What was this work about? Was her punching the sculpturepartof the work? Part of the work’s meaning? Or was she just being pathetic?
Brushing hair from her face with the back of her hand, she turned and glared at her studio sofa where Dylan had slept for four nights of his life with her. The sofa where he’d brought her to climax again and again with his fingers and mouth. It was a childish act to be angry at a piece of furniture she knew, but she had no more sculptures to destroy and she’d run out of clay.
“Oh for god’s sake, Monet. Stop being so ridiculous.”
She stormed away from the sofa and the beaten-up artwork. If artwasher therapy it was doing a fuck-all job. All she’d done since the night Dylan had flown out of JFK was draw sketch after sketch of the man and sculpt bust after bust. There was nothing in them but Dylan. No underlining meaning to the works, no subversive subtext. Just drawings of a laughing, sexy man in an Akubra hat. Just sculptures of a man she couldn’t bring herself to finish because it made her hurt too much.
Staring through the window at the snow-dusted city beyond, she blew out a wobbly sigh. She felt like shit. If this was how Annie felt every time she had her heart ripped out, Monet was going to drown her best friend in chocolate and suffocate her with hugs when she was back in New York.
But Annie wasn’t coming back. Not for at least another week. And now Dylan was heading back to Farpoint.
The reality struck Monet like a fist. Her chest grew tight. Annie and Dylan were going to be in the same country, face-to-face. What happened if they took one look at each other and realized they reallyweremeant to be?
“For fuck’s sake, stop it!”
Her shout echoed around her empty apartment.
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. Outside, snow continued to swirl and dance on the wind. It had begun Friday night, growing heavier with each hour Dylan’s plane flew farther away from New York. The rational part of her knew it was just weather patterns, winter coming a few days early. The drama queen inside her, the one all creative people lived with whether they wanted to admit it or not,knewit was symbolic. The man she loved had left her, and her world would forever be cold and bleak.
After his revelation in Central Park, they’d returned to her apartment. He’d called the airline and exchanged his ticket for the first flight back to Sydney, one that had a six-hour layover in Denver and a two-hour pit stop in Hawaii. One that departed JFK exactly four hours after Dylan made the call.
Which had given her no time at all to convince him to change his mind.
Why had she let him go? Why hadn’t she fought harder?
The memory of Dylan’s goodbye assaulted her. The touch of his lips as he kissed her at her apartment door, the kiss that tore out her heart. He wouldn’t let her go with him to the airport. He wouldn’t make love to her again.
“It will hurt too much, love,” he’d said, his hand cupping her cheek, his eyes—those laughing, mischievous green eyes—so cut with grief it was all she could do not to cry. “If I make love to you again, I’ll never leave.”
She’d taken his hand from her face and placed it fully on her breast. “Then make love to me. Now. I don’t want you to go.”
He’d smiled a slow, sad smile that sheared through her like a knife and removed his hand from her breast. “If I stay, we’ll only grow to hate each other, Monet. I don’t belong here. And I can’t ask you to move to Farpoint.”
Monet opened her eyes, watching the snow dance in the wind beyond the glass. Move to Farpoint. It was an insane idea. She was an artist. A New York artist. A damnsuccessfulNew York artist. She couldn’t move to a cattle station on the other side of the world.
Why not?
“Because…”
The rest of the answer didn’t come.
Heart thumping fast, she ran her gaze over the gray clouds hugging the buildings on the other side of Central Park. What was the sky like in Farpoint now? Was it blue? Cloudless? Was it hot there? Would she walk about the homestead, a place she felt she already knew thanks to Dylan’s descriptions, in shorts and a tank top? Would the sun warm her skin as much as Dylan’s arms and love warmed her heart?
Was that what she was trying to do with her art now? Capture that possibility?
She twisted a look over her shoulder at the abused bust of the Australian stockman. Until she’d smashed her fist into it, it had been more realistic than any sculpture she’d created. In fact, there was nothing in all the works she’d furiously sketched or sculpted even remotely distorted or abstract. They were nothing but pure, honest representations of a man in a hat who lived in a different world than hers.
What did that mean?
A sharp knock on her apartment door made her jump. She frowned, staring at it from across the room. Who the hell would be knocking on her door on a Sunday afternoon? And for that matter, why hadn’t Tommy buzzed the apartment?
Wiping her clay-crusted hands on her thighs, she crossed the room, refusing to look at mashed-in Dylan again. Even with his face punched in it was too damn painful.
Too damn confusing.
Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again. Harder this time. Sharper.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Monet muttered, releasing the locks and yanking the door open. “Keep your shirt?—”
