I had no choice but to turn.
Standing there, in a black-and-white suit with a black tie, shined black dress shoes, and golden cuff links was none other than Cassius Vale.
The man who had once called me his. The man who haunted my dreams and smiled in my nightmares. The man who would never escape my mind.
“Hello, Mr. Vale.”
A part of me was desperate to pretend that I was still Sasha Carter. Foolish. Just foolish! But maybe Cassius really had forgotten me. Maybe?—
“How was your drive from Phoenix, Sasha Carter?” he said, smirking when he mentioned my name.
It had been beyond foolish to think Cassius had forgotten who I was. How many years had passed, and he still remembered me. That was equal parts terrifying and curious. But only one part overwhelmed how I perceived the moment.
“Easy enough,” I said, my mouth growing dryer by the second. “Thank you, uh, for this opportunity to show my work. I really?—”
“The market will decide if my manager made a good decision,” Cassius said, cutting me off with nary an apology. Cassius rarely apologized for much of anything. That didn’t mean he was cruel or evil, but it did mean he always saw his path forward and never saw a reason to be sorry for it. “Tell me about your work, Sasha. It evokes certain… memories. Certain feelings I had from long ago.”
Did I want to blow up the whole facade? Just admit that I was Sarah Carpenter?
No, not yet at least. Cassius would have liked that. And even though he all but had me under his spell, I would not succumb to giving him everything so quickly. He would have to earn it.
Even if only with his presence and his stare.
“This one,” I said, pointing to a painting I had made of a woman sitting by a window at sunset, “reflects a woman mourning what could have been. She’s thinking about her past, the mistakes she’s made, and how it still stays with her.”
I waited for Cassius to say something. Anything. Just “interesting” or “hmm.”
Nothing.
Cassius only revealed what he wanted to reveal. And even then, he often did it in coded language, like how he kept calling me Sasha. He knew better. He just didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of admitting he knew better.
“And this one,” I said, moving to the next one, “shows a man at a cliff at sunrise. I wanted to capture the complexity of a man who sees the world as his, as the start of something special. Like, a new day has just begun, and it’s his show now.”
“My show, indeed,” Cassius said quietly. “You sound like a woman who has been through a lot, Sasha Carter?”
It was a question that all but demanded an honest answer. Cassius’ intensity never allowed anything but the full and unvarnished truth.
“Yes, I, I have done some things I regret, have had to run from situations I know I shouldn’t have, but, yeah, haven’t we all?”
Again, Cassius said nothing. I swallowed and searched for the words to fill the silence. Even stumbling over my speech was better than nothing at all.
“Do you, uh, have anything, Cassius? Mr. Vale?”
I didn’t know why I threw in that “Mr. Vale” at the end. He was not my teacher, not my superior. He had been my lover once, and I’d never called him that. I supposed it was just his presence. Or something.
“Do I?” Cassius said with a dark chuckle. “Oh, I do. And let me tell you something, Sasha.”
His chuckle turned into a smirk, but his eyes never changed. I about collapsed under the weight of those eyes as he bore into me, examining me as if trying to find if I was hiding something.
“I remembereverything.”
3
CASSIUS
Sarah Carpenter looked even more beautiful up close than she did in the photos.
True, some of it was the physical. Her eyes seemed to glow with the kind of intensity that only an artist truly committed to their craft could have. The curves on her body were accentuated by the black cocktail dress she had on, seductive enough to charm potential buyers but not so outrageous that she was a better fit in a nightclub. Standing in her mere presence was enough to arouse me, and if I had less control, it might have shown.
