“Did you go to college?” he asked.
“No. After I graduated, I was too busy trying to figure out how to survive. I took waitressing jobs and worked at the bank as a cashier for a while, but I never felt truly alive unless I was creating something. I think that’s why I’m so disturbed by my inability to create something right now.”
“You’ll figure it out.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and wrapped it around her waist. As he pulled her closer, she leaned into him. “When did you quit to be a full-time artist?”
“Five years ago. I guess I was blessed with immediate success. I know artists usually struggle for several years before they’re able to sustain themselves. In a way, I wonder if it spoiled me.”
“Why would you think that?” he asked.
“I never really knew what it was like to fail until now,” she said. “I honestly didn’t think I’d ever run out of ideas.”
“It happens.”
“Not to me.”
“I think you’re stressing yourself out too much,” he said. “If you relax a bit, you’ll come up with something.”
“I’ve tried to calm down. I swear. Yoga. Meditation. I even listened to a few self-help books.” The level of tension in her voice rose. “Nothing’s working.”
“Hey.” He stopped and pulled her into his arms. When she didn’t meet his gaze, he tilted her chin up. “Inspiration will come to you when you least expect it. In the meantime, you need to get out of your head.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” she asked.
Her pouty bottom lip caught his attention. He knew exactly how he could make her relax, but he hesitated. If he started down this path with her, he’d have to go through the inevitable moment of disappointment when he left her for his next adventure. Her fragile state gave him pause.
“Any ideas?” Her husky voice sent a shiver of need down his spine.
“I can’t,” he said. “At the end of the week, I’m leaving for Bali. I don’t want to start something I have no intention of finishing.”
“What if I’m okay with that?” she asked.
He swallowed and looked away from her sultry gaze. “I don’t want to let you down.”
“I doubt you’ve ever let anyone down,” she said.
“I have.” He pulled back and shoved his hands back into his pockets.
“Who?” When he didn’t respond, she quickly added, “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal.”
“I let my family down,” he blurted. God, why was he telling her this? He’d never talked to anyone about his past, yet he couldn’t stop revealing little bits of the darkness in his soul to her.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“They blame me for killing my brother,” he said.
“In the plane crash?”
“Yes.” His jaw twitched as he balled his fists up. “Rationally, I know they’re wrong. But that doesn’t matter. They lost all ability to reason after my brother died. I was never enough for them. He was the golden child. He’d landed a full ride to Yale on an academic scholarship. He played every sport at school and had mastered most of them. He could do anything he set his mind to.”
“I’m sure you were just as smart and capable,” she said.
“No.” He shook his head. “Numbers were the only thing I was ever good at. I couldn’t throw a football to save my life. Basketballs refuse to go through a hoop for me. I couldn’t hit a baseball if it was thrown by a six-year-old.”
“There’s more to life than sports prowess,” she said.
“It was my fault that we were on that plane,” he confessed. “I made us late for the flight. I was in bed with the CFO of a company I was interested in investing in. I was using her to get inside information. If I hadn’t been trying to cheat the system, we wouldn’t have missed the flight, and we never would have been on the plane that crashed.”
His stomach churned with acid. A sharp pain zigzagged through his chest. As the weight of his mistake crashed over him, he hung his head.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “It was a cruel twist of fate that you ended up on that plane.”
“Tell that to my family.”
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. As she rested her cheek on his chest, he fought back a wave of unwanted emotion. He hated thinking about the accident and about his family’s reaction to it. But the more she held him, the less it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that it wasn’t my fault.”