Everything she’s saying is pointing in that direction, and suddenly, I’m the one who can’t breathe anymore. Please tell me she isn’t breaking up with me, not because of what that wanker Tim did to the gallery. We can fix this. I know it’ll never be the same, but Chiara did a wonderful job before. She’ll do it again. I know she will. Chiara is the most talented and hard-working person I know.
“I love you more than anything or anyone else, Leonard. You’re my other half. But I can’t do this. I cannot keep using your money to live off of, support my dream. I can’t do it. I won’t. We didn’t even have fucking insurance on the gallery yet, and I don’t want to imagine how much fixing all of this would cost,” she says and runs her hands through her hair. I’m about to step in when she lets out a laugh I know she doesn’t mean. “No, I can’t. I can’t do this. You invested in me, and I lost it all. This is my fault, and I can’t—Fuck, I’m so sorry, Leonard. I disappointed you. I’ve ruined everything,” she adds, and then her feet bring her further away from me. She’s going to run. Run from this disaster. Run from what she perceives as her failure. Run fromus.
“Chiara, don’t you dare leave right now,” I warn, but she repeats her apology a hundred times before running out of the room. I’m on my way to chase after her when my mum’s soft voice fills my ears.
“Leonard, darling?” I freeze because as much as I would love to chase after Chiara, Mum’s leg is still not a hundred percent, and she can’t see what’s happening. My first priority needs to be getting her home. Adrian points to himself to assure me he can take her where she needs to go.
“Mum, I have to go after Chiara. Would it be okay if Adrian took you home? He’s a good friend of mine,” I say, and her hand reaches out, waiting for me to take it. I do as she wants.
“It’ll be okay, Leonard. Chiara is overwhelmed and frightened, but she loves you. I think she has about as much desire to leave you as you have to leave her,” Mum says, but at this moment, it doesn’t feel that way. Chiaraliterallyran away from me.
“What the fuck happened here?” a very familiar voice asks, sending ice through my veins.
No, no, no, this is horrible timing.
I love Graham, but him being here while everything is going to shit solves nothing. If anything, it complicates the situation ten times more because no one’s fucking told him Chiara and I are dating. I’m in trouble.
“I can’t talk right now, Graham. I have to find Chiara,” I say, but his next words stop me dead in my tracks.
“Did you do this to her gallery?”Did I do this to her gallery?“I know you both didn’t always get along, but this is next level, Leonard. You invest in her dream just to take it away? That’s not right.”
He hasn’t seen Chiara and me together over the last few months. He didn’t see the way we became everything to each other. He never got to watch me embrace how in love with her I am. At least that’s what I keep telling myself, so I don’t lose it.
“Graham, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m not upset with you for the bullshit that just came out of your mouth but do me one favour. Don’t disappear for months and then come back thinking you still know what the hell is going on between Starling and me. As a matter of fact, just don’t think, alright? It’s not entirely your fault you’re out of the loop, but it is partially, so don’t come here with shitty assumptions about horrible things I’d do to the woman I love.” Shit, I should have probably kept that last bit to myself, but I’m a bit angry about what he said if I’m being honest with myself.
“Are you dating my best friend?” he asks instead of addressing anything else I’ve just said. I let my head drop for a fraction of a second because every moment I spend here, the further Chiara can get without me there to comfort her. Fuck. I hope she needs my comfort, wants it even.
“No, Graham, I’m dating the love of my life.”
Then I leave him standing there with Mum and Adrian, hoping more than anything I can find Chiara as soon as possible.
* * *
I have looked everywhere,for hours. Quinn brought Benz home an hour ago, and I’ve been sitting in Chiara’s and my apartment since then, hoping she will come back to me. Meanwhile, I’ve already called a company that will do the repairs, called the police to report the vandalism, and contacted Starling’s Mamma to ask her if she knows where Chiara might have gone. Unfortunately, she hasn’t responded to me yet.
So, I’m sitting on the bloody floor, close to bloody tears, wishing she’d never walked away from me in the first place. There are a lot of things I can handle in this world. Failure. Poverty. Two broken legs at the same time—it happened to me when I was a teenager, and I couldn’t race for nearly six months—but this? Not knowing whether or not Chiara wants things to be over? It’s killing me from the inside like heart failure would.
Benz lets out a little whining noise, walking to the front door and sitting down behind it as she waits for her Mamma to come home. The sight causes my feelings to run down my face, but I fight back the sob trying to slip past my lips. I’m not someone who gives up easily, and I haven’t yet, but the uncertainty of her location combined with the way she left things is making an unbearable pain course through my system. I know Chiara is overwhelmed. I know she blames herself for what happened at the gallery, even though no part of me thinks it was her fault, but I wish she wouldn’t. This guilt, her concept of my money isn’t hers when I would give it all to her if it meant she was happy, upsets me.
Can’t she see I’d sell my soul to make her smile?
I call Benz to me, but she remains in front of the door, waiting for the person she loves most in the world to get back. I move over to where she is, wiping my tears before pulling her onto my lap and staring at the door like that would make it open any sooner. This might be the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, but I don’t give a single shit.
This is Chiara after all, and I’d wait naked in a blazing snowstorm for her if I had to.
CHAPTERFORTY-THREE
chiara
My body is numb. There is a cut on my hand from when I picked up a shard of glass earlier, but I can’t feel any pain. It’s bleeding pretty badly, so I press a tissue to the split skin, wishing for anything to register in my brain. Hurt, pain, sadness, anything. Instead, I can't even sense the warm summer wind as it wraps around my body. Tears keep streaming down my face, but I don’t feel the wetness either. It’s as if every nerve in my body was murdered by the sight of my dreams in ruins. Because of Tim, which means it was because of me. It was my fault. All of Leonard’s money and faith in me poured down the drain. One of my biggest fears was disappointing him, and I did. Even if he says I didn’t, I know better. The gallery hasn’t even been opened yet and it’s already a disaster.
I settle down on the bench near the Thames where I like to go at night sometimes, a spot I haven’t even shared with Leonard yet. Things have been so busy lately, I haven’t had a chance to get away for a little. Right now, this is the one place I know no one will come looking for me while I do something I haven’t done in a long time. I’m going to feel weird doing it, but I need this. I need to speak to him.
The piece of bread in my hand feels heavy, but I sit on the bench and wait for the little starling bird. I know it will find me. It’s the only connection I have to him, even if some people might find it strange. I don’t.What kind of bird follows a person around the country if it wasn’t sent by their dead father?Okay, maybe it is strange, but I don’t care. I miss my Papa, even if I never knew him. He’s been watching over me my entire life, and part of me likes to believe he brought me to the Tick family so I could find both my best friend and my other half.
A low, trembling breath slips past my lips as I wait a bit longer, peeling off a piece of bread and watching the steady stream of the water. I do my best to stop crying, but it seems impossible as the images of my shattered gallery replay in my head. Then, Leonard’s disappointed face reappears in my mind, and I cry even harder than before. I don’t think he blames me.What am I thinking?Of course he doesn’t blame me. Leonard loves me more than anything else, he’s told me so repeatedly, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I’ve failed him.
After months of depending on him for a job and a place to live, even for my happiness in some ways, I thought this gallery would finally allow me to feel more independent again. I love him and how things are between us, but I went from working four jobs and taking care of myself for years todependency. It wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t, but Leonard never made me feel like I had to be ashamed to take a breather and let him take care of me for a while. I was still working, taking care of Benz, so I didn’t feel the lack of self-sufficiency until I saw my gallery torn to shreds today. I don’t even have a car anymore, for fuck’s sake. Leonard was driving me everywhere or I had to take his car. And even if my dependency on Leonard’s money wasn’t that big of a deal, disappointing him is.
