I set the wooden spoon on the coffee table but keep the bra in my other hand as I cross the room.
Zain Carson looks back at me. My grumpy, ridiculously handsome next-door neighbor.
Well, an unfinished version of Zain does.
The portrait is only half complete. I have painted the shape of his face and the darkness of his hair, worked layers of shadow into the rough stubble along his jaw, and spent an embarrassing amount of time on one eye because I could not capture the exact way he looks at people.
I stand in front of the canvas.
“You are becoming a problem.”
Painted Zain remains silent.
That part is extremely accurate.
Zain has the kind of face that makes an artist greedy. Strong bones. Dark hair. Rough stubble. A mouth that seems permanently caught between irritation and silence. Hisexpressions shift so little that every tiny change matters, and I have caught myself trying to memorize them more than once.
The slight tightening around his eyes when he is tired.
The rare softness when he talks to children.
The way his whole body changes when a siren sounds somewhere in town.
I saw that happen a few weeks after I moved in. He had been standing beside his truck with a grocery bag tucked against one hip when a siren started somewhere beyond Main Street. His head lifted immediately, and something in him changed before he even reached for his phone.
I had sketched him from memory that night.
Then I sketched his profile.
Then his hands.
Then the broad line of his shoulders.
The black sketchbook tucked inside the bottom drawer of my desk contains enough evidence to make moving again a reasonable option.
My gaze lowers to the unfinished shoulder on the canvas.
I have not painted his scars.
I saw them last month when he was working behind his cabin without a shirt, which should frankly require some kind of neighborhood warning system. I had gone into my kitchen for water, glanced through the window, and forgotten why hydration mattered.
Black ink curved over the side of his ribs. Burn scars crossed one shoulder and disappeared over his upper back.
I only saw them for a few seconds before guilt made me look away, but they stayed with me. The marks made me wonder about all the things he never says, which is probably why I have not been able to paint that part of him yet.
I lift my free hand toward the canvas, then stop.
“No. I am supposed to be folding laundry.”
This time, I do not wait for Ivy’s opinion.
I turn away from the portrait just as headlights sweep across my living room wall.
My pulse changes immediately.
The low rumble of an engine reaches me through the open windows, then cuts off.
I stand very still.
