Page 48 of From the Ashes

With a final nod, he jams the key in the door, unlocks it, and swings it inside, gesturing for me to go in first.

What strikes me first are the enormous windows that stretch from the high ceiling down to the wooden work benches opposite me, letting in so much natural light. The floor is laminated, and the white walls have an industrial, slightly distressed finish to them that matches the silver lamps and exposed piping overhead where a fan is spinning, keeping the room cool.

I absorb all this in a second or two. After that, my brain latches on to what’s in the room…what it’s being used for.

My art.

At least a dozen of my paintings have been hung up, with more propped up on the floor against the walls and some standing in easels. I recognize my old stand from my teta’s conservatory when I used to work at her place, but the otherslook new. Maybe not brand new, but hardly used and certainly unfamiliar to me.

“How did you…? Where…?” I try and ask faintly, looking back at Colt.

He lets the door close behind him and moves to stand in front of me, pressing the key into my hand. “Your grandma kept all your important pieces,” he explains. “In a storage locker in town. The same place all my stuff used to be.”

I blink at him. “You’re telling me you did this with my teta?”

He nods bashfully. “We ran into each other and a plan just sort of formed. Well, more of a scheme, maybe. A mission. Where do you think all the potted plants came from?”

I was so stunned that I didn’t even notice. But now he’s pointed them out, there are at least half a dozen pots spotted around the place, from large leafy ones on the floor to pretty, colorful flowers on the windowsill. They make the place feel almost like a conservatory. I don’t know what its purpose was when this place was a factory, but this room is the most perfect, incredible art studio I could imagine. Even the view from the window overlooks one of the few patches of grass I saw in the area.

“You have a sink over there, see,” Colt says, continuing to give a tour from where we’re standing in the middle of the room. “I’m not sure I’d recommend drinking the water, but it’s good enough for cleaning brushes.” He chuckles, then directs my attention to some new looking drawers. “We stocked some things up in there, like paints, pencils, a couple of different thicknesses of papers, but we figured you’d probably want to pick your own stuff, so there’s plenty of space for that. And the brushes are all in those jars on that table there. Farah said that was the best way to store them. I, um, even installed Bluetooth speakers that you can connect your phone to if you want to listen to music or podcasts while you work.”

He blushes, perhaps because saying it out loud is making him realize just how enormous this gesture of his is. Of all the things I was expecting, they don’t even come close to the reality I’m looking around at now.

“Colt, I…” my voice is too weak to finish the sentence. “This can’t all be mine? It’s too much. I…”

He squeezes my hands tighter so I can feel the key pressing into my skin. “I paid five years rent upfront,” he says softly, as if that isn’t a breathtaking bombshell to drop. “If it’s not right or whatever, I have permission to sublet it. But I’d love nothing more than for it to be yours, so if there are things you want to change, we can do that. The landlady said you can even paint murals on the walls if you feel like it. She’d just probably have to cover them up if she needed to look for another tenant.”

This is so overwhelming. I can’t stop staring at it all. Colt didn’t just orchestrate this for me. He conspired with my grandma to do it. It makes me feel seen and important in a way I’ve never experienced before.

“The sofa?” I ask, because that’s apparently the level of vocabulary I’m capable of right now.

He juts his chin at the soft-looking ocean-blue couch. “In case you need a break. Or in case I want to come hang here with you while you work.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Really?”

He lets go of my hands to hug me, tucking my forehead against his neck. “Yeah, baby. I love watching you create magic. And I love being surrounded by your pieces. You, um, might notice there are a couple missing.”

He sounds guilty, and I glance around at all the canvases. I can’t see some of the ones that are propped up on the floor, but honestly, it’s been so long since I saw my old work that I’m not familiar with them anymore. “Did they get damaged?”

Colt laughs, but not unkindly. “No. Your grandma kept a couple to hang in her place, and I took a big one for mine. We agreed that if you wanted them back, of course you can do whatever you want with them. But seeing as you thought they’d been given away years ago, we thought you’d be okay if they lived with us instead.”

He’s right. I don’t need everything here. I’ve forgotten painting half this stuff. But the idea they liked something so much they wanted to hold onto it stirs pride within me. What’s the point of creating beauty if it’s not going to be appreciated, after all?

I think in the midst of my sadness, I forgot that. These pieces are so tied into mine and Colt’s relationship, I always felt I had to hide them when we were at school, like we hid ourselves.

But we’re not doing that anymore.

“Which ones did you guys keep?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“Farah has a couple that you did of her old garden,” Colt tells me, and that immediately makes me happy.

“That’s why I painted them,” I say with a small laugh. “I knew one day she’d move out of the big house, and she wouldn’t be able to take all the stunning landscaping work she’d done with her. I’m surprised she didn’t claim them before.”

“I don’t think she felt she was allowed to,” he says gently to me, and he probably has a point.

“And you?”

He looks slyly at me. “There was that huge one you got an A on, right before we graduated. It’s mostly black and white lines with splashes of blue and yellow.”

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