Page 81 of Art of Love
“Maybe, but I gave you the information to decide what you want to do with it. You can keep it to yourself, and of course, he wouldn’t know that the last element I want you to focus on is death. All of it is Impasso. The happiness I experienced as a child when I first sawLabyrinth. It sparked creativity and vision in my soul,and the thing that changed in me after my brother’s death. Happiness and loss, both are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but are a part of life. It’s the balance of good and bad. That is my vision as an artist. Those are the emotions I work with when I create something. Since we’re kind of similar, I expect to see a fabulous portfolio from you.” He smiled.
I sucked in a breath, trying to steady my heart when I thought of Hunter. I wasn’t wrong about Hunter being more talented than me. I knew I wasn’t, and suddenly, this felt like that situation where you had someone who would be fantastic at the job and deserved it, and on the other hand, there was someone who might be good at the job and they needed it.
The latter felt like me. I knew I was good, and this really was my dream, but I wasn’t fantastic. Not for Impasso. Maybe for my own thing, which would probably never happen. But I needed the job.
Hunter was fantastic.
“John...”
He shook his head. “I can’t help you with anything else, Jia.”
“Why?”
“Because only you can decide if your feelings for him are more valuable than what I’ve given you.” There was a twinkle in his eyes that told me he knew about Hunter and me. We’d tried to keep our relationship hidden, but maybe we didn’t try hard enough.
“You know?”
He chuckled. “My dear girl, you forget I’m married and completely obsessed with my wife. I know love when I see it.”
Love...
Wasn’t it funny how I thought about love earlier? In that moment, as I sat next to Hunter on the sofa and I realized I had the thing he was looking for, I saw how eager he was to find the answers to what we searched. It hit me like a bolt of lightning that I loved him.
“I’m old, and maybe from a different time, when things were a little more straight forward, but I see the way he looks at you. It’s love.” He chuckled.
Wait... he was talking about Hunter.
“I thought you were talking about me.”
“Unfortunately, that guard you put up to keep people out stops a person from reading you. I can see you like him, and now I see it’s more than that. The fact that we’re having this conversation tells me it’s more than that, but my dear, I was talking about him.”
“I don’t know what to do.” I shook my head and brought my hands up to my cheeks.
“Think of the info I gave you as an Easter egg in a game. LikeReady, Player One, which I loved by the way. Except this is different. You tell him, and you both present your portfolio to me in three weeks, and then I’ll have to choose. There’s still a chance I could choose you, but there’s a chance I won’t. I’ve helped you enough. Don’t make me choose between two artists I like, and don’t ask me why I can’ have the both of you. It’s just not the way I work.”
There was sadness in his eyes as he said that.
“I... understand.”
“You should also know that if did choose you, it wouldn’t be an internship. I’d want you to stay. Permanently. I don’t have to tell you how rare me doing that is.”
While I felt like my body had just slipped into some alternate dimension, he gave my hand a gentle squeeze.
I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. I really couldn’t believe it.
He’d want to keep me.
God, that just made this so much harder.
“Thank you, I... appreciate all you’ve done for me, and the talk.”
He gave me a curt nod and another squeeze to my hand.
Decisions, decisions, love and pain.... Loss.
But what would I lose this time?
