Page 128 of These Summer Storms

“He brought it with him when he came at the start of the summer.”

“But he didn’t hang it here,” she said.

“No.”

“I hate that he bought it,” she said, the words coming on a whisper, like a confession. “That night—I can remember every minute of it.”

“Tell me,” he said, like he really wanted to hear.

“It was just all so perfect—the golden light coming through the windows of my bedroom while I got ready, the taste of the champagne Gabi and Roxanne brought over to pregame. Griffin was—” He hadn’t been there. He’d been busy with something more important, not realizing that, for Alice, that night had been the pinnacle of importance. She pushed the thought away. “I remember we even had luck with the subway…the trains came immediately. No waiting.”

“No car?”

She slid him a look. “From Brooklyn on a Friday night at rush hour?”

“I don’t live in Brooklyn.” The realization that she didn’t know where he lived was strange—it felt like it violated some kind of rule that should exist: If you’ve had sex in your childhood home with someone, you should know where they live. But also, it was impossible to imagine Jack at home. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who haddowntime. If he were a character in a novel, he’d be one of those eccentric mystery men who lived out of hotel rooms. Nothing but high-quality menswear and a toothbrush to survive.

Except—he didn’t seem like that kind of person now. Not while they were cloaked in the quiet of the island, his sleeves rolled up like he might have a book to read. Or a woman to kiss.

A zing of pleasure shot through Alice at the thought.Pick me.

She held it together. “Where do you live?”

“Flatiron.”

“Weird.”

“I can walk to work.”

She shook her head. “I say again, it’s really no wonder my dad loved you.”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to one of her knuckles. “You were telling me about the night of the gallery show.” Another kiss, and another, in a row, as she talked.

“It was incredible. One of those perfect fall days, sunny and sixty degrees in the day, with that bite in the air that makes you want to put on your long coat and pretend you’re in a rom-com.”

His brows went up.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to pretend you’re in a rom-com?” she teased.

“I can’t say I have, no. My life doesn’t exactly lend itself to the genre.”

“Mine, either,” she allowed, though the knuckle-kissing was nice. “As you might have noticed. Anyway, the show was packed and wine was flowing and there were all my paintings hanging in this gallery and no one knew I wasAliceStorm,they just thought I was Alice Foss, the painter, and it felt…”

“Good?”

“Amazing. And that was before my agent told me someone had boughtIn Progress.” She waved a hand in the direction of the piece. “The largest of the paintings, and the one that had taken the most time—different from all the others. Bigger in scope and terrifying, because what if no one liked it? I’d asked my agent to deliberatelyoverprice it, because then I could convince myself that if no one bought it, it wasn’t a referendum on me. No one would possibly take a risk like that on a young, untried artist. An art teacher from Brooklyn.”

She paused, thinking, then gave voice to her disappointment. “And it turned out no one did. He couldn’t even give me that. One night of success, all to myself. He had to be involved. Had to control it.” She looked to Jack.

“I know.”

“You’re not going to try to convince me that I’m wrong? That he bought it because he loved it?”

“No. But I don’t think he bought it because he didn’t love you.”

“Maybe,” she said, looking to the painting. “I guess we’ll never know.”

To his credit, Jack looked like he wanted to say about a dozen things she might not like. Instead, he asked, “Have you painted all your life?”