So I shoved my dream away.
Or more accurately, reality did a good job of shoving my dream away, brutally and painfully.
Instead I made a sensible investment with a good mortgage rate, and had slowly been renovating my apartment above a small art gallery for the past ten years.
I gave myself exactly three seconds to look in past the glass of that gallery, feast on the paintings, the brush strokes, the pure adventure of the paintings. I gave myself two seconds to entertain other paintings hanging on the wall. Ones with familiar brush strokes, a little less adventure, more the longing for it.
And then I snapped my gaze back to my front door and forced my aching body up the stairs to my apartment. It was open plan as soon as you entered. The kitchen was straight ahead, in a corner where the windows faced away from the ocean, over the parking lot and then the town beyond. I had the back wall covered in pure white subway tiles with light polished floating wooden shelves displaying glasses and bowls on different levels with matte-black fastenings.
My fridge was my only little rebellion, my pop of personality. It was a vintage baby blue Smeg that sat at the end of my counter, by the window. The rest of my back wall had the same polished tiles, with matte-black racks hanging my matching tea cups at the perfect grabbing level. In front of that was a large square kitchen island with a huge deep white sink, matching the tiles behind it, and two black barstools tucked underneath the front of the island. There was always a vase of fresh flowers on the restored wooden coffee cart on the left of the island, and the shelves below were artfully stacked with all my favorite recipe books.
The kitchen itself was tucked away in kind of a nook, where exposed brick closed it off somewhat to the rest of the apartment, which was to the left of the stairs.
I had the original hardwood floors polished so they were gleaming and the whole space painted white, which gave my apartment a light and airy feel thanks to all of the windows. It was important to me, that openness. That brightness. I didn’t do small spaces very well. Not… after.
My living area encompassed the whole room, and it had taken me years—almost a decade, to be exact—to get it how it was. I was picky with furniture, and my budget only allowed me to purchase sporadically. But it was my absolute sanctuary. The espresso leather sofas were domed and perfectly worn, with light fluffy blue afghans thrown over both. The cushions were white and fluffy, hideously expensive but worth it. A large white patterned area rug sat underneath my matte-black coffee table, another vase of fresh flowers set perfectly in the middle.
A bookcase spanned almost the entire wall behind my sofas. It was stuffed with books I’d accumulated over the years, but there was still plenty of empty space I’d filled with photos and various knickknacks, spaced as not to look cluttered.
I threw my purse on one of the sofas, kicked off my shoes—not putting them in the wooden cubby I’d set beside the stairs for once—and padded over to my favorite area in my whole apartment.
My floor-to-ceiling windows boasted an unobstructed view of the ocean beyond, a well-worn leather chair with a fluffy white ottoman in front of it. Another afghan rested on the back of the chair. The small wooden table beside it always stored whatever book I was reading at the time.
My fingers trailed over the cover of The Sword of Truth—I was a fantasy junkie. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to focus enough to read, I sank into the warm chair and let my eyes drift to the waves.
My mind wandered.
To eyes that were almost the same color as that ocean. Almost as wild. As unpredictable.
As dangerous.
A shrill ringing made me jump out of my thoughts before I drowned in them. It was somewhat of an effort—a painful one at that—to extract myself from the chair that was designed to swallow me up. I managed by gritting my teeth and rushing to the counter beside my sofa, where my landline—I was almost the only person left under fifty-five who still had one—was ringing.
“Hello, Lauren speaking,” I gritted through my teeth.
“Lauren? It’s Troy,” a smooth masculine voice replied.
I walked back over to the windows, standing in the path of the sun’s warm rays streaming through the glass and gazing out at the ocean once more.
“Oh, hey, Troy,” I said. “You’ve got news about my car, then?”
Troy was one of the deputies at the Amber Police Department. We’d been in the same grade in high school, but he barely knew who I was—I was surprised he knew my name—since we didn’t exactly hang in the same crowds.