Free Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro by Kaitlin Maitland Page B

in my own bedroom . But I’m sick of sitting by the phone. So let’s just get it out there, shall we? I’m guessing this was a one-time thing? The two of you will go back to your happy-ass relationship without me getting in the middle and screwing things up?”
    Lars at least had the sense to look guilty. Owen was another story. For the span of two breaths, she thought he was going to cave. Sorrow lit his dark eyes before they shuttered completely. He could not have made things more clear had he physically shoved her away.
    How could she have been so wrong? Lars was just repeating history, but Owen had seemed so different! Her instincts had failed her this time. Hell, her soul had failed her. The same soul that was screaming inside her, wanting nothing more than to throw itself at their feet and beg them to at least try admitting they had feelings.
    Fortunately she had a little bit of pride.
    “Get the fuck out of my house!” Angry tears stung her eyes. “Both of you get out, and don’t come back!”
    She grabbed a pillow and gave a swing that was more frantic than accurate. Her pillow glanced off Lars’s shoulder. He didn’t even try to step away, though she knew he could have.
    “Mattie, I’m sorry.” He began backing toward her bedroom door. “Nothing has changed for me in the last five months.”
    “Nothing?” She screamed her frustration, willing him to understand how much he’d hurt her. “You have him! That’s what’s changed.”
    “No.”
    Owen’s quiet pronouncement took all the wind from her sails. The pillow fell from her lifeless fingers as she turned to stare at the man she’d known only a handful of hours. The one who’d rescued her, the one whose soul had felt as though it was a match for hers.
    Owen’s hard eyes were like shards of obsidian in his face. “Lars and I were done this morning. He knows it. So do I. He’ll go back to London in two weeks, and the three of us will move on with our lives.”
    Lars picked up the thread. “You’ll find someone else, Mattie. You’re too special not to. You’ll find a man who isn’t…damaged. One who can love you back with no strings attached. A guy who’ll give you a houseful of kids.”
    Owen’s brow knit briefly before he smoothed his face into an expressionless mask. Mattie was still trying to come to terms with what they were telling her. After sharing an experience that could not possibly have meant nothing—no matter what they wanted to believe—they planned to walk away?
    She couldn’t think anymore. Her heart hurt. Shoving her way past Lars into the hallway, she cast one look back over her shoulder. “Lock up on your way out. I’m done with this right now.”
    She shut herself in the bathroom and sank down to the cold linoleum floor. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she let the tears come. Sometimes that was the best way to make sense of something that was absolutely nonsensical.

Chapter Seven
    Lars felt dead inside by the time he pulled his car beneath the portico of the Aasen Brookline estate. All he wanted was a shower, a set of clean clothes, and maybe a few hours of sleep. Then it would be time to return to the real world of Aasen International and his useless personal life.
    “Thank God!” Selena burst through the front door and stood on the top step with her hands on her hips. “Don’t you ever answer your damn phone?”
    He shut his car door and took the front stairs one at a time without answering. He didn’t have an answer. Initially he’d been stupid enough to think it would be easier to talk to her face-to-face. Especially since he was going to read her the riot act for sending him out to Mattie’s when she damn well knew Owen was already there.
    “Is she okay?” Selena demanded.
    He considered the question. “Depends on your definition of okay, I suppose.”
    “I swear to God, Lars…”
    He held up a hand to shut her down before she got going. “She’s perfectly healthy after her run-in with the