“Hey!” She dropped her bag on the bed and skipped across the carpet. Rylan was at the little desk in the corner, his back to her. She tugged at the chair to spin it around. But when she saw his face, she paused, drawing her hand back. “Are you okay?”
There was something haunted to his eyes—a weariness she’d caught a glimpse of in the past, but not like this. Shadows under his cheekbones and a tightness to his jaw. A coiled anger, an old anger.
For the briefest fraction of a second, he reminded her of her dad.
She blinked and it was gone, but she was already backing away. He reached out, wrapping his hand around her wrist before she could retreat any more. With what looked like effort, he twitched the corners of his mouth upward, but it wasn’t a real smile. She knew what those looked like on him now.
“I’m fine,” he said. The sharpest edges of his expression bled away, but now that she’d seen them, the signs of his agitation were everywhere, in the corners of his eyes and the set of his lips. His thumb stroked across the bone of her wrist. “Sorry. Was just thinking about some things.”
“Things?” She arched her brows, but something inside her was shaking. She fought to push it down. To joke with him the way she normally would. “Like what? Torture?”
He laughed at that, and it made a little of the tension in her shoulders ease. “Close.”
Touching his face felt like a risk, like pushing past some kind of boundary. She did it anyway, wary, half expecting him to flinch. He did, a little bit, but allowed the contact. She swallowed to try to slake the sudden dryness in her throat. “Really, though. You okay?”
“Fine.”
She almost believed it.
He turned his neck, shifting to press a kiss to her palm, lips lingering there for a long moment. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they seemed clearer. He let go of her wrist to settle both hands on her hips. “How about you? How was your day? Get everything done you wanted to?”
She took a deep breath, the tremor inside of her melting away.
The dark look in his eyes might have echoed an expression she’d seen before, one that had haunted her for years. But it had only been an echo. Her father. Aaron. Any of them. Their bad moods didn’t end with them getting a hold of themselves and focusing on how she was doing.
She was safe here.
She slid her palm down past his neck and collarbone to rest against his heart. “It was good. I drew a lot.”
“Yeah? Can I see?”
A nervous flutter fired off behind her ribs, but she nodded.
Slipping out of his grasp, she headed over to the bed. She opened her bag and pulled out her book, planning to flip it to the work she’d done today, but before she could, he plucked it from her grasp. He sunk down to sit on the bed and opened to the very first page.
It wasn’t just nerves anymore, beating inside her chest. “There’s a lot of old crap in there.”
Old crap she’d put so much time and energy and dedication into, and letting them be seen like this . . . It was like letting him see all the unfinished edges of her. A work in progress, and he’d already witnessed her naïveté in other situations. In his bed and with her hands between her legs.
She fought the instinct to rip the book from his grip.
Oblivious to how she was churning up inside, he turned the pages slowly, gazing at each with an appraising set to his jaw. Her face went another shade warmer with every amateurish imitation of another artist’s style, every mistake in perspective. Every sketch that betrayed exactly what a mess she was and how little she knew.
“Really.” Her voice was rough. “Some of those are ancient.”
He lifted up a single finger and shook his head, asking her to be quiet without saying a word.
She resigned herself to her fate. Picking at her fingernails, she moved to sit beside him, close but not quite touching. He’d told her he liked the couple of drawings she’d shown him before, and he’d expressed such confidence in her ability to hack it in grad school. But he hadn’t really known, then, had he? He hadn’t seen enough to make that kind of statement, and the idea that he might take it back now, after having seen more, made her stomach clench. It hardened further about halfway through the book, when the quality of the images changed. That had been about when she’d started thinking about what she was going to do after college, a hundred futures spinning out in front of her. Grad school and office jobs. Huge risks and life sentences.
And then the image she’d drawn the day Professor Lin had pulled her aside. Told her that if she didn’t define herself, she’d never make it as an artist. That she’d never sell.
He paused, hand hovering at the corner of the page.
“You were angry,” he said. It was the first comment he had made.
“Scared,” she corrected.
“I can see that.”
He flipped past the pictures she had already shown him from the day she’d sketched outside of Notre Dame, and then he was looking at the first one she’d done today. His brow furrowed, and he turned his head to look at her. “You went back to Sacred Heart?”
“Yeah?” She didn’t mean it to come out like a question, but it did.
The way he was staring at her, it was as if he could see right through her. He didn’t look angry or exhausted anymore, not the way he had when she’d come through the door. But he didn’t look like the confident, oversexed guy she’d taken a chance on, either.
His gaze held for a moment that felt like it went on and on. Then he lifted a hand, the tip of it stained gray from the charcoal on the edges of her sketchbook. He cupped her cheek and leaned in. The kiss, when it came, was a simple, chaste press of lips on lips, but there was a weight to it. An unspoken moment of connection, of understanding. She’d seen what he’d seen on that hilltop. Had tucked it away and treasured it, and when she’d most needed to recapture some sort of inspiration, some impetus to make something with her hands . . .
That’s where she’d gone.
He let her go, drawing back, but the heat of his gaze lingered even as he returned his attention to the page. He flipped to the next and then the next, and she held her breath. This was the one she’d felt so good about, after her first set of false starts. The one she’d done with the memory of his presence flowing from her fingertips, imbuing every stroke and shade with life.
Ghosting his fingers over the dark, black marks, tracing without touching or smudging, he followed the swooping arcs she’d mapped onto the paper. For a long time, he stared at it.
Finally, he started moving through the pages again. She watched from over his shoulder, her breath coming more easily now. These pictures didn’t give her that cringing feeling she got looking at her own work sometimes. She was proud of these. When he reached the last one, he flicked back through them, stopping on the one she’d drawn from the top of the hill.
“These are incredible,” he said.
The urge to demur stole over her, even as she flushed with the praise. He’d believed in her before, and he believed in her now. It pushed away the doubt that always plagued her. Made the spark of her inspiration ignite. “I was just playing with something. An idea.” She pointed to the web of lines he’d been drawn to before. “Tying everything together.”
“It’s great. Really.” He shifted to look at her. “It’s really, really great.”
And what could she say to that?
He shook his head, as if he could sense her discomfort at taking a compliment. “I love the way you see things. And these . . . Not that the rest of your stuff wasn’t good, but the stuff you did today. It’s something different.”
Her lungs felt tight, a warmth and an excitement fit to burst behind her breast. These images had felt different. Still, it hadn’t just been her and her skill. “It’s the city. Paris. It’s beautiful.”