Page 66 of Finding New Dreams

I didn’t want to be those things anymore.

Wednesday night, a few weeks after his first class with Mrs. Q, I found him working in the studio.

He’d forgone the stool to stand in front of his large canvas. His black tank top hugged every curved muscle in his broad back and narrow waist. He’d tied back the top half of his hair, the studio lighting catching caramel highlights in the deep brown.

My cheeks warmed when my gaze dropped to his butt, fully on display without the stool.

Damn, what a view.

His deep voice made me jump. “You keep staring like that, and your eyeballs will get stuck that way.” He smirked at me over his shoulder. “At least that’s what my mom always said. Can’t say I’d be too upset to have your eyes glued to my ass all the time.”

I laughed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. I’m surprised you caught me, you seemed so deep in thought.”

He faced his canvas again, but I still heard him when he said, “I’m always aware of you, Rose.”

I swallowed hard. That sounded dangerously close to how I’d been feeling for weeks. Maybe this could work.

Ask him. Just ask him.

I stepped closer. “Are you working on your tree art?” Not that question, silly.

He tipped his head from side to side. “Sort of.” He moved back so I could see what he was working on.

I gasped.

It was the tree of courage painting he’d started two weeks ago. But different. So different. That painting, so child-like in its simplicity, had morphed into something only a truly gifted artist could have rendered.

Explosions of color swirled through the leaves and in the sky in a perfectly synchronized whirlwind. The tree itself was shades of brown but accented with a dozen shades of the rainbow glistening in the bark.

The brush techniques made the painting feel alive and three-dimensional. Like a tree of glass with leaves like jewels catching the sun and spreading their light to the world. He’d painted the world as a blue-green globe under a massive network of tree roots. The roots wrapped around it like a hug. Like one person’s tree of courage could embrace the world.

My throat ached, and tears prickled behind my eyes.

“What do you think?” he murmured.

With a strangled cry, I flung my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek to his pounding heart. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Flynn,” I whispered.

After a beat, his arms crushed me against him. His nose and lips rested on the top of my head. I thought he might have kissed me, but I wasn’t sure.

He said nothing. Just held me to his body so tightly it took my breath away.

His scent—woodsy spices mixed with paint—fogged my mind like body heat against wet windows.

Trying to distract myself, I whispered against his chest, “How did you do it?”

He must’ve heard the depth of my curiosity in that question because he answered, “I’ve been practicing my technique for weeks. Watching videos. Using little canvases to get the brushwork and the color palette just right.” He nuzzled my hair with a sigh. “I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Something about it captured me like…like…” He trailed off, and I held my breath, dying to know. But then he just continued. “But it wasn’t all about the picture. It was what lives beneath the paint. You know what I mean?”

“I do. And it’s a beautiful, heavenly thing when you feel it. The life, the feeling, the imagination behind the art.” Taking a deep breath of his scent, I backed out of his arms to look at the painting again. “That’s one of the things I love most about art. It’s like a dream. The best kind of dream that you can make true. Concrete, more like a memory instead of something that slips away when you open your eyes.

“It’s something you can point to and say, ‘I did that, and no one can take that away from me.’ Like that idea, the image and emotion of it, used to only live in my mind, and now it lives in someone else’s. Maybe many someones, if I’m lucky. And they can feel the same way that I did.” I smiled at him. “Like how you made me feel inspired and loved and hopeful just now when I saw this.”

Silence welled between us.

He stared at me with the oddest expression. Surprise? Yearning? Concern? Usually, I had no trouble deciphering expressions, but my own emotions were coloring my vision.

My smile faded as the silence wore on. Had I said the wrong thing? Too much? My mom and dad used to laugh about my enthusiastic gushing over something as simple as the first ladybug of spring landing on my finger.

“Did you need something from me?” he finally asked, his voice hoarse and low.

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