AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That warm, approving feeling? That was him. It wasn’t me. It was him watching. That’s what it feels like to be watched by him, and it makes me furious.
He returns my gaze without flinching. Emerson isn’t afraid to be caught. My eyes have adjusted enough to see the shadowed planes of his face. The dark doesn’t diminish his intensity. His obsession.
“I didn’t do this for you,” I say.
“I know.” Emerson straightens up. Every time he moves his body, I feel it reverberate in mine. Maybe that’s obsession.
“I won’t let you have it.” I turn back to my palette and collect black on the brush. Black like the spray paint he used to destroy what I hated. I’ll turn this to garbage, too. Forget painting it with white.
The tip of the brush is a breath away from the canvas when a hand catches my wrist.
It’s like he’s touched the beating heart of me. My foolish, resistant heart. I don’t love destruction, in general. I don’t actually want to destroy the painting. But emotion is a storm swell. I tried to keep it back, and I failed. Lightning and thunder. Anger and want. I’d rather ruin this than give it to Emerson. I’d rather let him hang it in his bedroom than ruin it.
“Let me see.”
I’m mortified at the way I accept it. Unthinking. I stop trying to reach past his grip on my wrist.
“You’ve been looking for a long time.”
“Not from this perspective.” Emerson plucks the brush out of my hand and lifts my fingers to the canvas. The paint’s still wet. Sticks to my fingertips. With both our fingers, he traces the curve of the darkest, angriest wave. “What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re lying, little painter.” It feels like magic, his hand on my wrist. A feral magic that’s utterly off-limits to a person like me. “This wave battles the sky. This cloud fights to cover the moon. You’re trying to hide yourself.”
“Only from you. I don’t want to be here.”
“Your body says otherwise.”
“I wish you wouldn’t watch me. I wish you would let me go. I wish you’d never look at me again.”
“Is that so?”
It’s not so, damn it. I haven’t even gathered the will to wrench my wrist away from him. I haven’t tried to push him away. Haven’t tried to run.
“Yes.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Emerson murmurs. Soft and even, like he’s describing the painting on some kind of kidnapped private tour.
“I wish it would happen.”
“Another game of yours,” he muses. “You can make requests, little painter. I’m not likely to deny them.”
“I’m not playing with you. I’m destroying this.”
“You gave me your brush.”
“You took it.”
He’s fast, bringing it like a slash in the night to the canvas. I’m the one who reaches out this time. Catches him before he can put that black tear in the center of the sky.
Emerson’s other hand is steady on mine. He’s waiting for a response. Watching.
I want to hate it.
I need it instead.
I don’t want to destroy this thing we have. I want it to become something else, but I don’t know how to get there without breaking free.
