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“This is my studio.”
“Your studio,” she echoed, the words taking a moment to fully sink in.
He nodded, looking more nervous than she’d ever seen before.
Dumbfounded, she gaped at him. “These are yours? All of them?”
Suddenly, she flashed back to the morning at Ian’s soccer game a couple months ago, and the orange paint on his neck. She sought out the color in the paintings along the wall and as she looked from one to the next, she noticed the distinct abstract feel to each one, no matter the subject matter.
“How come you never told me you paint?”
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“Why would you keep this a secret?”
“It’s not something I share with people.”
“Why in the world not?” She walked over to flip through a few of the paintings, each equally as impressive as the one in front of it. “You should be showing these to everyone. Better yet, sell them and make a living from them instead of washing dust off walls and picking up building scraps.”
He came and stood beside her. “You really think they’re good enough for that?”
The insecurity in his voice shocked her. She twisted to face him. “Yes. I really think so. You have to know how good they are, Merit. You can’t paint like this and not know.”
But she could see he didn’t. How could that be?
“Surely your family has said something.” She couldn’t imagine them not supporting his talent.
“They don’t know.”
Her jaw slackened in amazement. “How could they not?”
He shrugged slightly while reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “I told you, I don’t share this with people.”
“They’re your family.”
“Yeah, and you know, when I had an art class in high school, my mom always said the things moms are expected to say, but my dad never looked twice at anything other than my drawings, and only those because they tied into what I was going to go to college for. He’s told me for years I should be more like my brothers and sisters, there’s no way he’d respect this.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Of course I do. He didn’t take Asher seriously until he started booking shoots. Real photo shoots that paid money.”
“Then you should have a show.”
He looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “I’m not having a show.”
“Why not? You have enough paintings.”
“Because I’m not.”
She turned to slowly flip through a second stack next to a door she assumed led to the second smaller room he’d mentioned. “Is it that you don’t want to sell them?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
A sideways glance caught the tick of a muscle in his clenched jaw, and she let the paintings rest back in place so she could face him. When she took his hand, his gaze met hers. The combination of uncertainty and vulnerability in his brown eyes took her breath away.
The full implication of his earlier words hit her in that moment. He hadn’t told anyone about his art. Hadn’t shown anyone what he could do, yet here she stood, in the midst of all his talent. Her heart swelled as she realized what it meant that he’d shared this with her.
