Page 75 of Suits and Spark Plugs

“Right. He was all you could talk about that entire year, and for a few years afterwards too. Sure, it was all negative, but you’ve always been interested.”

I sat back up. “Fine, I admit it. What about you?”

“Eh, I only asked him out a few months ago because I was in a dry spell, and after all the years of talking about him and his bad boy ways I thought it might be fun to see what dating him was really like.”

“You’re such a schemer.”

“True.” She pulled a face and shifted directions. “Have you heard from him at all?” I shook my head. “Well, I haven’t seen much of him either. I’m not sure what’s going through his mind. I do know that you’ve been the focus of his attention these past couple of months. He may not be as indifferent to you as you think.”

“Can we go back to spreading rumors and gossip about him and pretend none of this ever happened?” My hand swept out to point to both portraits. “Life was easier before this.”

“Sure. If you’ll pull yourself up and leave the house, I’ll violently smear his name all over town.”

We both busted up over that, leaning forward and clutching our bellies until our throats felt raw and I felt ready to stand tall again.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The next day I was sitting cross-legged on my bed again after working the morning shift. My headphones were in, classical music blocking out all the sounds of life from Sadie’s dance team downstairs. I flipped through my anatomy book and tried like crazy to forget everything that had happened for, oh, I don’t know, the last several weeks. I was doing a pretty good job of it too, which is why I didn’t hear the knock on my bedroom door. In fact, I don’t know how long he stood there before I caught him in my peripheral vision.

When I did turn, I was too shocked to react. Connor was standing as still as a statue, looking across the room at my paintings. My paintings! His eyes were wide and frozen, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and his hair was slightly damp, as if he’d just showered.

I tore the headphones out of my ears, my heart thundering in my chest as I watched him take it all in. So many thoughts were running through my head that they got caught and jumbled up. What was he doing here? Why was he in my room? What was going through his mind? How could I possibly accept that this was happening?

“Connor,” I said his name as I clambered to my feet at last.

Instead of looking at me, he took more steps into my private world. One hand lifted, a finger pointing at the painting of a sunflower that Mom had put there to cheer me up. My stomach swooped as I checked to make sure the painting of him was out of sight. His fingers looked like they were trembling as they moved to gesture to the stack of canvases dotting the east wall of my bedroom.

“Liv,” he said at last in an awed tone, “what is all this?”

“Connor, please...” Please what? I tried again. “You have to...” Only I didn’t know what I wanted him to do, so I asked a question instead. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to talk with you because we have a lot to talk about, but we can get to all that in a minute. This—this is so much more important right now.” He moved across the room and ran a light finger over the top edge of a canvas. “You painted these?”

My mouth felt horribly dry, and I had to swallow and lick my lips in order to make sound come out. “No one knows.”

He finally looked at me and his eyes lit with understanding. “The paint I’ve seen on your fingers.” Confusion was next to appear. “Why doesn’t anyone know?”

I shook my head, helpless to try to put it into words, and reeling from the realization that my sanctuary had been shattered. “It’s for me, alone.”

He looked back at the paintings, and I watched helplessly as he soaked it all in. There were dozens of them, stacked up against each other, varying in size and theme. So much of my inner world was painted on those canvases. All of it was meant for my eyes only.

He turned back to face me and took a few steps to where my feet had frozen to the carpet. “Do you realize how talented you are?” It was a question he didn’t expect me to answer. He stopped within a foot of me, causing my hands to shake and my knees to feel wobbly. I tilted my head back to meet his intense gaze. “Why aren’t you sharing your work with others?”

I scrambled to think of a way to answer him without opening up a part of me that had stayed buried for most of my life. “I just, it’s a hobby, I guess.”

“This is more than just a hobby. I can practically feel the emotion you were experiencing when you painted each picture.”

I pulled a face, astonished at his insight. It prompted me to take a risk. “These paintings are kind of like my journal.” I breathed the words out on a shaky breath. His head cocked to the side and I pushed on, encouraged by the open curiosity in his expression. “It’s how I process the world. Painting, for me, is like putting a piece of myself on the canvas.” He nodded. “It would be like inviting people to read my diary, or to take a peek inside my heart.”

“It would be taking a risk,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you going to art school?”

That answer was easy. “Nursing is practical. I can support myself and it would be flexible if I had a family someday. Art is fickle. I can’t do fickle. I need steady.”

“Steady can’t be all that matters in life, Livy.” I felt weak in the knees over the way he breathed out his personal nickname for me as he turned to look at my work again. “How can you let these sit up here in your room and pretend you’re okay with nothing more?”

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