Page 77 of Bargaining

I hid my face in my hands. “Oh God. The guinea pigs. Don’t make me cringe. That’s just what dads do. He was being nice.”

Cole stood. His voice was firm and uncompromising. “Roy believed in you, Charlotte. Your father wanted you to pursue your talent all the way. You need to know that.”

“I know that.”That was never the problem.

I set off walking. Cole fell in step alongside me as we rounded a corner to another expanse of ancient ruins. He stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“Why did you drop out of art school? What happened?”

I froze. I’d never told him that. “How do you know I dropped out?”

“At the wedding, Tiffany told me she hasn’t seen you pick up a paintbrush in years. You haven’t touched the equipment in that art studio apart from the pottery wheel. I’m curious why you don’t sketch anymore when you used to do it nonstop.”

The sun bore down unbearably on the top of my head. Sweat pooled along my spine beneath my sundress. I set off to find another shady area. “I need to get out of this bloody sun.”

Cole grabbed my arm again to stop me from stomping off. “Did something happen?”

“I just grew out of it, that’s all.” My ponytail clung to my neck, and I gave it an irritable flick out of the way. I pulled my arm free from his grip. “We’ve been having such a good day together. Can we not do this?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why does it make you so defensive?”

“Because you won’t drop it. If you must know, I dropped out to look after Dad. Then I didn’t have time for it anymore.”Not entirely true.But Cole didn’t need to know the truth. I set off again, marching toward shade. “What does it matter to you?”

“Because all you ever wanted was to go to art school. Tiffany said she’d offered to help with your dad’s care, but you took it all on yourself.”

My jaw clenched painfully. “Tiff shouldn’t be talking about me to you.”

“You didn’t like art school?”

What was going on here? Why was he pushing it? I threw out my arms. “No, I didn’t like it, if you must know. My father told me he had this awful disease, and my best friend had disappeared and wouldn’t reply to my messages. I was heartbroken, Cole. It was a terrible time in my life. I came home, and I couldn’t paint or draw. My art just ... evaporated. Is that what you want to hear?”

He paled. “You lost your spark because of me?”

Spark? What a pressure-laden word.If I had a spark, then life had long since extinguished it. It’s probably why I hadn’t been able to set foot in the Sistine Chapel. It was too painful to see something wonderful that had always inspired me. Almost like I didn’t deserve to be there anymore. Not this version of me.

I let out a humorless laugh. “Is that what you took from that? It wasn’t about you. It was all of it. I was young and naive. I didn’t fit in. My tutor had it in for me. He was constantly on my back, criticizing me. Nothing was ever right for him. He failed me on my portfolio. He told me I wasn’t good enough to be there. I got so in my head about it that I lost my confidence.”

He frowned and took a step back. “I need a name.”

“A name?”

“The tutor.” He pulled out his phone. “I need to know whose life I’m about to ruin.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It was more than a decade ago. It’s my fault anyway. I let it get under my skin, and then I couldn’t get over it. It doesn’t matter.” I blew out a breath. “Can we drop it now? Please.”

Cole ran a hand over the rough stones. “Your passion can’t just ... evaporate. It’s still there. It’s just buried.”

A pulse pounded in my temples. I should have worn a sun hat today. It was too hot out in the open like this. Light bounced off every surface, making me squint.

“I just want you to be happy. That was the deal. You’ve spent a lot of time looking after everyone else. This is your time to decide whatyouwant. To put yourself first. I assumed you’d want to paint. You can’t blame me for being curious about why you’ve abandoned your creative life?”

The words hit me like a punch in the chest. “Abandoned my creative life? Are you serious?Youwant to talk to me about abandonment?”

He swallowed. “The Charlotte I knew was happiest when she had a paintbrush in her hand, that’s all.”

“Neither of us is the person we once knew.” My words came out sharp.

Cole’s face froze, as if my words had stung. I hadn’t meant them. Not today, of all days. Today was the first day since he’d come back into my life that it felt like we wereexactlythe people we’d once known. This was Cole’s fault. He shouldn’t have kept pecking at a bruise I tried to ignore.