AllFreeNovel
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I take the green and push the drawer shut.
I have what I need.
I take everything back to the easel with me, balance the palate and the bushes on the stool, and consider the canvas. The rest of the room falls away into shadow. I’m half-shadow, too, in this circle of light.
This—this is the right place. In front of my easel. Emerson’s easel, I guess. I’ve stood in front of many easels in my life. The relief stays the same. I’ve done this hundreds of times. Thousands of times, maybe.
Low light. Just me. The canvas. The paint.
I wash the whole thing in white.
The first touch of brush to canvas feels like letting out a long-held breath. It’s only preparation for the rest. Nothing fancy. Nothing artistic. But my heart responds. There’s nowhere else for my thoughts to go. Nowhere else my emotions are palatable.
I could stop. Leave it white. Leave my work invisible.
But I’m pulled to the colors the way I was pulled to the studio itself. The way I was pulled to Emerson. Painting is the oldest, deepest habit of my life. My muscles take over. My mind becomes fingertips, becomes brush, becomes color and shape and form.
It’s not thinking, really. Only feeling. The horrible ache in my chest becomes the rise of a wave. Anger becomes water droplets breaking free from one another, hurling themselves against the sky. I’ve been betrayed. By Emerson. By myself. That betrayal becomes a turn of the wrist. A swipe of the brush.
The piece takes shape. Ocean with a corresponding sky. I don’t always paint the sky, but this time it’s moon-soaked, shafts of light spearing the clouds. Fighting through. Bright, undeniable moonlight in the sliver of sky. It’s angry, this ocean. Dark. Powerful. That’s how I feel at the canvas. Dark and powerful.
I lose track of time.
Waves ripple and grow. This belongs to me, at least. This world on the canvas.
A swell surges up from the rest of the ocean like it could touch the moon. I don’t let it. The moon holds itself away. It doesn’t want to be obscured by dark water, but the moon doesn’t always have a choice.
I don’t want to think about choices.
A few of them come out onto the canvas anyway. The stark edges of waves. Moon on water. My choices were driven by an urge to be this person I’m not.
Or maybe I was trying to be the person that I am.
Either way, I’m here because I made a decision. I sent a text. No one held a gun to my head. No one forced me into Emerson’s car. I felt like it was inevitable for him to come for me, but maybe it wasn’t.
It was, whispers the paint on the canvas. I cover it with blue-black water. It refuses to be submerged.
Naturally.
I’m here, in the end. Alone with him. There are no more bodyguards. No more brothers and sisters. It’s not what I wanted. Being separated from them like this—forcibly, against my will—is like forgetting how to paint. Like something essential has been stripped from me.
I didn’t want to give you up, I paint into the sky around the moon. I just wanted to be something more. I wanted to be brilliant and free, the way you are.
An illusion, though. My siblings have secrets. All of them. A person doesn’t simply shake those off, Leo least of all.
I don’t want to be caged here. I add this to the black depths at the bottom of the canvas. But part of me thinks maybe I do.
This confusion is in silvery cracks in the waves. They give the impression of movement, of fierce, tidal movement. People think of the ocean deep as peaceful, but I don’t necessarily agree. It’s hiding more than people realize. I don’t add blood this time, though my heart thunders.
If I’d chosen this, if I chose to stay here, in this studio with my muse outside the window, would it feel different to paint this scene?
I don’t think it would.
That’s what scares me more than anything.
That maybe it’s not rage, or grief, but exhilaration.
What if I chose to stay? Would I do this forever? I can’t say that this isn’t my dream. A lifetime to paint. Endless supplies. I always wanted my own studio. I wanted to sell paintings for the amount of money that Emerson can pay.
