I didn’t ask him where he’d been or why he didn’t call me back. I decided to just leave it alone. “Hey.”
All I got was a look.
I ran my fingers through my hair, then moved in to him to kiss him. I rose on my tiptoes and kissed his mouth, feeling the stubble from his chin. He hadn’t shaved in the past few days, so his chin was coarser than it usually was. I kissed him, but his embrace wasn’t particularly affectionate. “Long day?” I asked.
“Something like that.” He stepped away from me the second I let go, like he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
It stung. “You want to have dinner in here? Or on the terrace?”
“I already ate.” He opened the drawer to his dresser and pulled out workout clothes.
I couldn’t remember a time when we didn’t eat together, except when I first came to live with him. Once our relationship had changed, we shared all our meals at the same time, especially dinner. “Conway, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He grabbed his headphones and changed into his shorts and a fresh t-shirt. “I’m just not hungry.”
I wanted to be patient with him, but now I wasn’t buying these lies. “Conway.”
He left his jeans on the floor and dropped his phone into his pocket. Like I hadn’t said his name at all, he kept going.
“What happened with your family?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
My eyebrows almost shot off my face in shock. He gave me a backhand without actually touching me. “Why are you being such an ass?”
He finally looked at me, his gaze ice-cold. “Because I’m an ass. I’ve always been an ass, and I’ll always be an ass. I’m a fucking asshole that only wants good sex and peace and quiet. It’s not my fault that you ever expected me to be anything more than what I am.” He shoved his earphones into his canals and stormed off.
I was in such shock that I didn’t stop him. I watched him walk away, watched this man I hardly knew leave the bedroom. He looked like Conway and sounded like Conway…but he wasn’t the man that I knew. Something had set him off, and now he wasn’t a person I recognized.
Even at our worst, he’d never spoken to me that way.
He’d never treated me that way.
Conway never came back. He went on his run and disappeared.
I had dinner alone in the bedroom and waited for him like a wife waiting for her cheating husband to walk through the door.
But he never came.
If he was on the property, there was only one place he would be. His studio was his safe zone, the place where he produced beautiful pieces he was proud of. It was late, so he would normally be in bed right now, but if he wasn’t in the bedroom with me, that’s where he would be.
Unless he went out instead.
The door was shut, but light escaped through the crack underneath. Dante would never leave that light on by accident, so I knew it was occupied. I opened the door and let myself inside. Just as I expected, he was sitting at the table with his sketchbook in front of him.
He didn’t look up.
I slowly approached the table, examining the sweat lines on his t-shirt. He’d worked out hard but didn’t shower afterward. That was unlike him. Standing beside him, I waited for something to happen.
He kept sketching, making a simple black corset that wasn’t memorable.
“Conway.”
His hand stilled, but he still didn’t look at me.
“Talk to me.”
He finally set the pencil down and looked at me, but his fierce expression showed his rage. “What, Sapphire? What do you want to talk about?”
Like he’d backhanded me again, I was nearly knocked off my feet. He could say the coldest things to me, but nothing was more insulting than calling me by my first name. He hadn’t done that since he’d first learned it. I hardly identified with the name anymore. Muse was my name now. It was my identity.
And he took it away.
“Don’t call me that,” I whispered.
He wasn’t the same handsome man he used to be. Now he looked different, hostile. “It’s your name.”
“Muse is my name.”
He held my gaze, his shoulders rigid and hard. His body was tighter than usual, like he was ready for a fight to break out. He was strung tighter than I’d ever seen him, as though he could snap like a rubber band if he were stretched any further. “What do you want? I’m working.”
“What do I want?” I asked in shock. “I want you to stop being an ass and just tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong,” he snapped. “I don’t have to spend every waking minute with you if I don’t want to. You aren’t the center of my world, Sapphire. You aren’t—”
I slapped him across the face. “Don’t call me that.”