AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Who does it make me, if I stay?
Emotions pile up until I return to the canvas. I paint out all my worry for Leo and the guilt that I didn’t tell Eva about Emerson. The sea grinds itself into foam. I don’t need to picture the ocean. It’s there, waiting for me outside Emerson’s house. The real ocean outside isn’t as choppy as what I have on the canvas. Not as violent. But it could be.
My body gives itself over to the rhythm of painting. My headache dissolves. Stoke by stroke, it pulls back like a receding wave. No more pressure at my temples. No more pounding heart. I’m aware on some level of the changes in my body as I reorient to the canvas, again and again. Different corners. Different angles.
I paint all the way around the canvas.
All across the edges.
They’ll be hidden by a frame, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll go to the ends of the earth. The far reaches of the canvas. I’ll take it as far as it can go.
The moon travels across the sky, but I don’t keep track. A glance now and then to see how the light changes on the ocean outside. Swells rise and rise and rise. They fall. No storm tonight. Frigid winter and cold, dark sea under a midnight sky.
And me in my little pocket of light.
It feels good to be here.
I didn’t want to admit that to Emerson. I’ll never tell him he was right. I’ll let him think I didn’t want to paint. I’ll cover all my work in layers of white. He’ll never know the difference. If he keeps me here for the rest of my life, I’ll paint every night and cover it each morning.
The final product isn’t the point.
Fine. Maybe this is a compulsion. What does it matter, anyway? I need this.
And here, in the silence, in the middle of the night…
I’ll admit that his house is lovely. It’s comfortable here, not icy like the beach, not cramped like my apartment. An ideal temperature. He’s a criminal, a kidnapper, but Emerson sees me for who I am. Not as a Morelli, but as an artist.
He made me this studio, after all.
The air behind me presses in like a gentle hand propelling me toward the canvas. Keeping me here. Approving. It takes more work than people think to paint. If I do it long enough, my calves ache. I have to bend my knees and bounce on the balls of my feet to stay standing. I don’t mind sitting now and then, but the movement comes from the ground up. I’m less hemmed in when I’m upright.
Ha, ha. I’m a prisoner finding scraps of freedom in Emerson’s gallery. I wanted it to be some kind of sex game. Some harmless dirty talk. I don’t think it is.
I wanted to hate it.
I don’t think I do.
I want it to happen again, but I can’t want that. I can’t.
Waves and sky. Clouds and moon. It doesn’t hurt as much to see it this way.
My heart on the canvas. All the wrong parts. The broken parts. The fearful parts. There in the deepest blue and the darkest black. The white that tempers everything else. The half-yellow glow of the moon. The pinpricks of stars.
It’s not easy, but it’s better than sitting in my room alone. Better than wishing Emerson would come stand at the side of my bed. Better than wondering if he was sleeping.
Another glance at the ocean outside.
My reflection is dim in the window.
It’s also different.
A shadow at the door.
I whirl around, adrenaline a sharp pull in my veins, and find Emerson in the threshold. He leans against the doorframe. Tall and lean and gorgeous in his sleep pants and t-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest.
He’s been watching me.
For longer than I realized.
