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At last he came to Reese’s easel, and his eyes landed on the photograph of the two of them that he’d given her in the box of paints. His heart tugged at the sight.
“She put it there this morning. But she’s not here now.”
Jocelyn’s voice startled him, and he turned to see Reese’s best friend standing behind him with her shoulders and chin set in a strong manner and a serious look in her eyes. Trent knew how close Jocelyn and Reese were and that they’d always shared everything with each other. By the way she was scrutinizing him, he guessed she knew he and Reese had made love last night.
“I’m not going to hurt her again, Jocelyn. Hurting Reese any more than I already have is the very last thing I want to do.”
“Look, I can see that you’re still in love with her,” Jocelyn said flat-out, “but you’ve been gone a long time, Trent. She’s not a kid anymore. She has a life here on the island. A good life, with friends and her gallery. She’s happy. And it took her a really long time to get there. She’s incredibly strong, but she’s also—”
“Sensitive.” Trent turned to look over a few of Reese’s darker paintings before looking back at Jocelyn. “I know how complex and wonderful Reese is, and I know you want to protect her. I do, too.” He held her gaze. “You’re right. I’m still in love with her. More in love than ever before. I know I screwed up, and I have a hell of a lot to make up for. But I swear to you, this time I’m going to be the man she needs me to be. And I’m going to make her happier than she ever knew she could be.”
As he spoke, Jocelyn searched his eyes, but he wasn’t worried about what she’d see. The love he had in his heart for Reese would overshadow all else.
Jocelyn finally smiled at him, as if he’d just passed a test. A really big one. “She’s at home, in her studio.”
“Thank you. Not just for telling me where she is, but for always being there for her. Especially when I wasn’t.”
Chapter Seventeen
MUSIC PLAYED SOFTLY in Reese’s backyard studio. It was a small studio, no bigger than a shed, but it was the perfect size to paint in, with plenty of windows to let in as much natural light as possible. The combination of the studio and the close proximity to her parents’ house were the two things that had sold her on the cozy cottage, and since moving in a few years earlier, she’d planted lovely gardens and decorated both the cottage and the studio in her own unique and colorful style.
She wore a pair of her painting overalls and was already covered with streaks of paint from pouring all of her emotions into the old canvas she’d pulled out of the back of the closet in her studio. She’d started the painting when she and Trent had first started dating, and then she’d gotten so caught up in their relationship that she’d set it aside. She’d tried to find her muse after moving back to the island, but while it came easily for other paintings, this one hadn’t spoken to her. It had remained unfinished for all this time, a raw mess of emotions shoved into the back of her closet.
But when she’d come into her studio this afternoon, she’d been immediately drawn to the painting. And now it was finally coming together, bursting with passion and color.
Reese rarely picked favorites among her work because each piece was so different that it was nearly impossible to choose. But the painting she was currently working on spoke to her far louder than all the rest. She felt as if it were rooted so deeply in her heart that she could finish it with her eyes closed.
She held the paintbrush in one hand and took a step back to study it. Lipstick red rounded out two chins, contoured with wide strokes of black, which faded into pink and fluorescent-green bows of two mouths. Aqua blue, pink, and more black streaked over contours of misshapen cheeks and over the ridge of two equally misshapen noses. Four eyes gazed out at her, a mix of blues and greens and peppered with amber. Two bodies twisted like tornado funnels, swirling together, drawing strength and sharing heartache as they created energy that soared up toward the sky in bright starbursts and jagged lines.
To a stranger it might look like two faces had been put into a bottle, shaken up, and splattered onto a canvas, with two bodies that had also been stretched and twisted and bound together, then coiled beneath the whirlwind of emotions on the faces. But to Reese the images weren’t tangled at all. They were as real and as raw as the explosive emotions inside of her. And just as Jocelyn had said, the more she painted, the better she felt.
