Page 41 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

She goes through it slowly. Not flipping and barely glancing like most people do with my book at the shop. But actually looking. Giving each page the kind of attention that makes the back of my neck start getting a little hot.

I have bookcases full of sketchpads, but in this one I was trying to get down ideas that could actually be finished pieces, besides the occasional thought noodles and sketches of Owen that wouldn’t leave my head until I got them down on paper.

The early pages are my harder stuff. Demons and serpents and gargoyles. Imagery that’s been in my head since I was a teenager who had a lot of feelings and zero other outlet for them. Dr. Delaney encourages me to work out my feelings through art, so I go with it.

I’m a little worried it will freak Lennon out, but she doesn’t flinch. She just gives each piece that deep attention. Sometimes she does a little inhale of surprise and I have to bite back grilling her on what she’s reacting to in the image.

She turns a page. Then turns another, never hurrying.

Which is when I realize she’s getting close to the back.

Oh no.

She’s three pages away from the sketch I did approximately thirty-six hours ago at eleven o’clock at night when I couldn’t sleep and Owen was passed out in the next room, snoring his little boy snores?—

I drew something I shouldn’t have put down on pencil and paper in the sketchpad I carry everywhere. It was late and I was tired and it was just a drawing?—

She turns another page.

Oh shit.

“Yeah so that’s my sketchbook.” I reach over and snatch the sketchpad back. Not smoothly, either. The pages flutter asI pull it from her hands and I catch a glimpse of her face in that half-second—her eyes tracking the fluttering pages, landing somewhere near the back?—

I don’t know how much she saw.

“That’s all there is,” I say.

A pause.

“Oh,” she says, a little breathless.

She’s looking at her hands now, not at me.

I die on the inside.

She saw it.

Or she saw enough of the intricate full drawing of an angel that mighta kinda sorta have her face.

Hands off, says every functional part of my brain.

She is Jake’s wife and you drew her face, in detail even though she was just a memory, on an angel in your sketchbook at eleven o’clock at night two days after sleeping with her.

And she just saw it.

Walk to the RV.

Walk directly to the RV.

“Hey,” she says, posture changing again like she’s decided something. “Just because I’m locked out of my old business doesn’t mean I can’t start a new one. Like, take on new clients.”

I look at her.

“Texas is a community property state,” she says. “I’m going to get half of everything…eventually. But in the meantime I need income, plus I need something to do or I’m going to lose my mind, so.” She tilts her head. “Do you want more exposure for your shop?”

I hear myself laugh. “What? What do you mean?”

“I do marketing. Like for independent artists and influencers.” Her whole face lights up, actually, which is not a thing I expected from marketing as a topic. But then most things about her are not what I expected.