(Etienne's Point Of View)
I should've left.
Should've walked out of the gallery, gone home, and accepted that she'd chosen Julien.
But I couldn't.
Because she was laughing. With him. With Claude fucking Beaumont, who was standing too close and touching her arm like he had any right to.
My jaw hurt from clenching it; the taste of copper crept up my tongue. Around us the gallery breathed — soft laughter, the clink of glasses, the low hiss of conversation under the spotlights that made the paint on the canvases gleam. A faint varnish smell lingered, sharp and almost antiseptic, as if art itself was being sterilized by wealth.
"Jealousy doesn't suit you," a woman beside me said. One of the gallery organizers.
"I'm not jealous."
"Of course not." She sipped her wine, the glass flashing in the light. "That's why you just spent a hundred thousand euros on a painting."
