Trust Me (Rough Love #3) by Annabel Joseph Read Free Book Online Page B

capitalize on your filthy urges.”
    “ My filthy urges?” I feigned outrage. “You suggested anal.”
    “Silence, filthy little slave.”
    He prevented further outbursts by sticking his tongue in my mouth and kissing me into submission. By the end of our make out session, I felt so blissed out and content I could have fallen back to sleep, but he wouldn’t allow that. After a shower and an elegant breakfast in the restaurant downstairs, I headed out into Paris determined to wring all the inspiration I could from the City of Love. While Price attended his conference, I was to spend my day exploring the Louvre.
    Honestly, I could have spent a month at the Louvre absorbing everything I wanted to see. I made a list of each exhibit I visited, because I knew Price would ask me about them when he returned to the hotel. I took a break at lunchtime and basked in the sun at an outdoor cafe. So many people, some locals, some tourists. It struck me that they all had a story, perhaps as complicated and disjointed as my own. As traumatic as my own.
    No, I didn’t want to think about that here, in the sun and loveliness of Paris. My past was my past. I knew that, but it still haunted me sometimes. Here in Paris, the past felt very close. I couldn’t help remembering the time I’d come here with Simon, and walked with him through the Louvre until we found his newly installed painting. Heart-Lust. I could close my eyes and see it, or…
    Well, I was here at the Louvre. I could go see it for real.
    But I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. After our run in with Simon at Andrew’s art show, Price had forbidden me to have anything to do with my ex. He’d actually forbidden it two years earlier, when he’d bought me an apartment on the condition that Simon never set foot inside.
    Still, the painting wasn’t Simon. It wasn’t like I was drifting toward the Modern Impressionists area of the museum so I could see Simon.
    It’s your history with him , my conscience whispered. It’s practically the same.
    I tried to get engrossed in other things, but I kept thinking of Heart-Lust as Simon had worked on it, as it had hung on his studio wall in our loft. He’d done other paintings inspired by me, but that was the first one, the one that changed my life.
    I thought of how he’d stood me in front of it and pointed out all the things I couldn’t see in the whirls and swirls of scarlet paint. I thought of the poem Simon had given me. Her heart breaks in a smile, and she is lust. It was the same E.E. Cummings poem that Price had given me years later when my life—and my relationship with Simon—was falling apart. In that way, Heart-Lust joined all of our histories, and I was here in Paris, so why shouldn’t I see it while I had the chance?
    Because Price wouldn’t want you to…
    I silenced the warning in my head and found my way to the correct gallery. I tried to go by memory, but in the end I had to consult a map. Funny how we forget things we should remember so intensely, or perhaps the museum itself had changed.
    But when I found the right place and walked into the large atrium where the painting was lit and mounted, I was shaken by a recognition so strong and so poignant that my eyes filled with tears.
    Heart-Lust. It was a beautiful mess, just like Simon had been before he got sober, just like I was before I met Price. The massive, rough-edged canvas was red and angry and sweet and lyrical at once.
    I was over Simon, I was absolutely over him, but the sadness of our ten-year failed relationship would always be there, just like this painting would always be on display in the world. On the back, where no one could see, he’d painted my name over and over, Chere Chere Chere Chere Chere. I couldn’t see that now. I couldn’t touch it the way I once had, with Simon’s permission. I couldn’t run my fingers over the textures, not with the surly museum docent standing in the corner. But I did it once , I thought. I traced those million