Page 39 of Finding New Dreams

Dawn spilled over the treeline like molten gold, and I found Rose sitting on the park bench in front of her gallery. She hadn’t seen me because she had her eyes closed and her face tilted toward the warming sun. A peaceful smile teased the corners of her mouth, and the diamond in her nose flashed like fire.

The scene didn’t just hit me in the chest—it seized my heart in a chokehold, robbing me of breath.

So this was what true beauty looked like.

I blinked a few times, the image of her basking in the dawn burned into my retinas. Similar to our first night, I had the strongest urge to paint her. Or at least paint how she made me feel. Capture that feeling forever, like we had with our shared canvas.

Her eyes suddenly opened and found me staring from a few feet away. “Oh, good morning!” she chirped.

“Only when you’re a part of it,” I said with an easy smile. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody, you know.”

Flirting helped calm my twisting heart. But her pink cheeks still begged for my fingers to stroke them. I quickly busied them with my bracelet.

She shook her head with a little laugh. “Not a morning person, huh? Maybe I can change your mind.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the plethora of things she could do to accomplish that to myself.

Hefting a small backpack over her shoulder, she led me across the street to Bud’s Fishing Shack. It was still closed, like most of the businesses, but we walked around the back.

“Bud has a couple kayaks and a boat he lets people use from time to time if he’s not using them,” she explained.

And sure enough, two one-person kayaks, one red and one yellow, lay on the bank, complete with life vests and paddles.

“Chloe told me she’s planning on offering a larger variety of rentals at Pine Grove when the cabins are finished,” I said, pushing the yellow kayak into the cool, lapping water with a grunt.

“Yeah, I think tourists will love that,” Rose said as she clambered in and shoved off with her paddle. “This area’s perfect for paddling with the two rivers merging at a slower spot.”

I ditched my flip-flops and tugged the red kayak into the river, the gritty mud oozing between my toes. Then I tossed in my backpack, hopped in after it, and started paddling.

“I know,” I said with a grin over at Rose. “I used to paddle here all the time. It was one of my favorite things to do in Tangled River.”

She smiled back. “Is there anywhere to kayak out in Los Angeles?”

“Not like this. But I have done a lot of paddleboarding in the ocean.”

Rose wrinkled her nose and paddled a few strokes. “I never liked the ocean much. But maybe the Pacific is different than the Atlantic.”

I steered my kayak to bump up alongside hers. “Atlantic? You an East Coaster originally?”

“I’m from the D.C. area, but I went to art school in New York.”

“Do you still have family in D.C.?”

Her eyes shifted away from me, and she bit her lip.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I don’t mean to pry. I’m just curious about how somebody would end up here if they hadn’t lived here before.”

Trailing her fingers in the water, Rose glanced back at me. “It’s okay. It’s just not something I talk about very often. But yes, my parents live there. After they adopted me, I finished high school in D.C. before moving to New York for a few years then to here.”

Oh…oh.

I gripped my paddle tighter, barely noticing the thick forest and underbrush scrolling behind Rose as I bent toward her over the water between us.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Rose,” I said, just loud enough to be heard over the river. “There are plenty of things about my past I don’t like discussing either.”

She shrugged. “It’s really okay. My parents and I got to choose our family, and we’ve loved each other ever since.” She smiled, and I instantly believed her. “My biological parents died in a car crash, and I had no living relatives, so I ended up in foster care. It was…hard for me. I thought I’d never find a real family to love and keep me forever. And then one day, I did.”

I couldn’t help myself. I caught up the hand she dangled in the water and squeezed it. Her fingertips were cold and wet, so I tried to massage some warmth back into them.

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