Page 73 of Forever Never
Remi was diabolical enough to thoroughly ignore the man in his own house. She absolutely could have done the watercolor at the cottage. But just becauseshewas forgetting abouthimdidn’t mean he should enjoy the same luxury.
Which was alsowhy she’d ordered the big jerk a new snowmobile. A fancy one with a heated seat and handlebars, balance control, and a crapload of other high tech features that his ancient, now deceased sled had lacked.
He’d think of her every time he rode it. Which would make him feel like crap, andthatmade her feel pretty damn good.
With a dramatic sweep of sap green that bled and swirled into the purple, she decided that she’d be okay with earning “the one that got away” status. Thinking about him moping around, regretting his callus rejections made her cheerful enough to nudge the volume higher on Macklemore, just in case he had managed to distract himself from the fact that she was under his roof.
Her phone vibrated on the table next to her. The name on the screen had her groaning and turning off the music. “What do you want?”
“Hello to you, too. Are you PMS-ing or something?” Rajesh asked. “Most of my clients love talking to me.”
“I doubt that. What’s up?” she asked, transferring fat drops of water to the center of the amorphous blobs of color on the paper. Video tutorial be damned.
“Got a rando who reached out and asked if yourHarvest Moonis for sale.”
She opened her mouth to say “hell no,” then shut it again. Fresh out of art school, surviving on $1 cheeseburgers and cereal straight from the box, and desperately homesick, she’d been feeling particularly low after another gallery curator had said her work in landscapes and still life was “pedestrian” and “boardwalk quality.”
She’d lugged her portfolio back to her tiny apartment, opened a cheap bottle of wine, and painted to the Neil Young tune. It was the song she’d managed to talk Brick into slow dancing to at Kimber’s wedding. Every time she heard it, she was instantly transported back to that dance floor on the lush green lawn of the Grand Hotel. Back into Brick’s strong arms encased in a dress shirt. His broad palms warming the skin on her back. The dizzying rush of champagne on an empty stomach. The sparkle of stars in the night sky high above them.
It was also the night he’d arrested her. Butthatwas another story.
HerHarvest Moonpiece was an elementary attempt on a tiny canvas. Her craft had grown by leaps and bounds since that painting. To anyone else, it was practically worthless. Professionally, the amateur attempt to capture music in color was embarrassing. But to her, the painting meant Brick. So she’d kept it close.
“How’d they even know about it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Something about seeing it in the background of some interview photoshoot you did a hundred years ago. It’s just sitting there on your nightstand catching dust.”
“Stop yard-saling my apartment, dick!”
“If you’d get off your broken-armed ass and start producing real paintings again while the attention is on like this, I wouldn’t have to snoop through your place for Alessandra originals.”
“I really regret giving you a spare key to my place.”
“Hey, if you don’t come back, can I have your apartment? It’s bigger than mine, and the natural light highlights my glorious brown skin.”
“I’m coming back,” she insisted. She had unfinished business to take care of.
“Whatever. Can I sell the painting or what, bro?”
Remi bit back a groan and dug out her resolve. She didn’t need to cling to something she’d kept only because it reminded her of Brick. Not anymore. “Yeah. It’s fine.”
“Awesome. Also, where do you get this fabric softener? I dig it.”
“Are you doing yourlaundryat my place?”
“My washer broke. I needed somewhere to wash my delicates.”
“I should fire you,” she mused.
“I might fireyouif you don’t start producing again. How long does it take bones to heal anyway? And can you at least send me some pics of you pretending to work wherever the hell you are? This whole social media silence isn’t looking good.”
“Whatever. Don’t leave your underwear hanging all over my place,” she said before disconnecting.
Looking down at the watery mess she’d made on paper, she decided she wasn’t in the mood to paint anymore. Instead of a soft, full heart floating on puffy clouds, hers was a sharp, mottled one, split down the middle with colors bleeding under it as if the contents were swirling down a drain. After a quick clean-up, she let herself out the French doors into the bracing chill of the backyard before skirting the house to leave through the gate.
Squinting against the sun that bounced off the world of white, she stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and produced two brand-new, insulated gloves in hot pink that she definitely hadn’t put there.Brick. She didn’t know how or when, but the protective gesture had his annoying name all over them. On principal, she refused to put them on in case he was watching from a window. So it was with ice-cold fingers that she picked up the package leaning against the cottage gate.
She hurried inside to the coffeemaker. While it burbled to life, she used a steak knife to cut through the tape. Hoping for some of the art supplies she’d ordered, Remi’s eyes narrowed when she lifted the lid to reveal a newspaper clipping sitting on top of some kind of shredded material.
