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Ambri stared back, his mouth agape. “No…”
“You said yourself we all live more than one lifetime. She’s been watching over both of us.” I smiled, wiped my cheek. “Our guardian angel.”
Ambri put an arm around me. “We’re a blessed pair, Cole Matheson.”
“You can say that again.”
I dropped the diamond back in the bag, and he tucked it into his pocket.
We were making our way back to the street when we came across the burnt remains of Ambri’s portrait. The frame survived, though tarnished and warped, but the canvas was burned to ash.
“Oh, Cole,” Ambri said. “I’m sorry. I understand why it had to be brutal for me, but you? Your success? All your beautiful work. Why did that have to be erased? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t think it’s about right or wrong; it’s about showing me what’s important. I cared too much about what people thought. I was paralyzed by it. I let it get in the way of the work.” I turned to him, my heart full. “My art was lost.Iwas lost. Until you, Ambri. You gave it all back to me. You gave me everything.”
Ambri smiled, and the sharp edges he showed everyone else melted away with me. “You remember what I was. You can start again.”
“No, no more demons. There’ll be some other subject that grabs me, I have no doubt.” I reached out and brushed my fingers over his cheek. “After all, I have the most beautiful muse.”
epilogue
Two years later
I strolled down the hallways of the Winthrop School and paused outside Cole’s classroom. The school for the arts was built in 1889 and smelled of old wood and paint, the wide, pine-floored halls ringing with the talk and laughter of children.
Cole stood at the front of his classroom in jeans, a tweed sports jacket, and a plaid button down, looking every inch the art professor. His hair was still moppish, but he no longer wore glasses. He’d gotten contacts only because I told him his eyes were too beautiful to hide. Moreover, they’d become a liability when I attacked him as he walked in the door after a long day of teaching.
I waited in the doorway, a lunch sack in my hand, and listened. Twenty ten-year-olds stood behind twenty little easels; twenty pairs of eyes peered at the bowl of fruit and a white water pitcher arranged on a table at the head of the class.
“Notice how the light changes the color and even the texture of the fruit,” Cole was saying, wandering among them. “A grape in the shadow has a different quality than the grape in the sun. Play with the color tones. Play with your shading.”
I smiled, my heart so full of love for that man, it was rather astonishing. Like a fathomless sea that stretched out into forever. I’d never reach the end of my love for him. Not in a million lifetimes.
I leaned against the door jam, content to watch Cole share his gifts with the artists of the future. But the old wood creaked, and the twenty little faces swiveled to me.
“AMBREEE!”
Pandemonium, as they surrounded me and pulled me into the classroom.
“Hello little ones.” I looked to Cole. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
He smiled, and bloody hell, if my heart didn’t swell. It’d been two years, but Cole’s smile for me was as happy and rich as if it’d been ages instead of hours since we’d last seen each other.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Lunch is in about five.”
The little nuggets tugged at my hands.
“Ambri, are you staying?”
“Are you going to have lunch with us?”
“Come look what I did!”
I spent the next few minutes wandering from easel to easel, admiring their work. They were all talented for having gotten into this school, but Cole was an extraordinary professor. You can’t teach talent, but he was able to shape the skills they had, and he encouraged them to tune out the noise.“Believe in yourselves and love what you do,”I once heard him say.“Make those thoughts louder than any other.”
The bell rang and they screeched for the door, waving their little starfish hands at me. “Bye, Professor Matheson! Bye, Ambri!”
Alone in the classroom, I went to Cole and kissed him. “I don’t know how you do it for hours a day.”
