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I shiver at the rasp of his voice. “Always.”
19
COLE
It takes some discrete bribery and far too much small talk about a museum staff member’s dog, but ten minutes later Amelia and I have the Busch gallery to ourselves.
Amelia stands in the center of the room, taking it all in, her hands clasped softly against her heart. “Oh Cole,” she breathes. “Thank you.”
I shrug, hands in my pockets. I’m fighting the urge to touch her. Run my hands down the sheer fabric that covers her arms. Kiss the bare skin of her shoulder. Press my face into her hair and breathe.
I could do all that. She’d smile, then shiver, then curl into me. But then I’d never know why she loves this gallery. Which painting makes her face light up like that.
I find I’m desperate to know all those things. I want to know everything about Amelia.
“I feel like I’m doing something illegal,” she confesses. “Being alone with all this artwork.”
“Try to resist the urge to steal anything,” I say dryly.
She shoots me a coy look over her shoulder. “The only thing I’d want to steal is already leaving with me.”
Amelia in that dress, joking about stealing me, does something funny to my breathing. I’m so used to people caring about me because of what I can do for them. That’s how it started with Amelia too. Me wooing her with what I can do for her.
But something has shifted between us in the last month. The idea that if I needed something from her now, I could just woo her withme, only me, feels like fantasy I can’t quite believe.
I’m not the guy someone like Amelia chooses. At least not in the long run.
Perversely, the mental reality check makes me want to touch her even more.
I move closer to her, spreading my palm along the small of her back.
Mine, the gesture says. It’s the same thing I’m saying with the custom jewelry in her ears.
But it’s as much a fantasy as the ring on her finger.
“Tell me about your favorite painting here,” I say, wanting to hear her talk.
“My favorite? It’s this one.” She nods to a small pale-yellow square. At first that’s all I can see, but the longer I look at it, the more different shades I see. The yellow is so pale in some places, it’s almost white. In other places it’s rich and warm like honey. The diagonal slants of yellow fall across a deep, dark green background. Or maybe black? The paint on the dark green part is layered so thick, it’s like I want to reach out and touch it.
“What’s it about?” I ask.
She leans back into me. “Check the title.”
I do. “Arden. What’s that mean?”
“It’s the forest in a Shakespeare play.”
I look at the abstract painting again. Now I can see it, the way the yellow looks like sunlight, slanting through a deep, dark, old forest.
Amelia’s voice is soft and content. “In the play, all the characters run into the forest to escape the problems of their real lives. The heroine’s pretending to be a boy when she runs into her love.”
“I think I remember this one,” I say. “She tells the guy he can practice his courting skills by pretending she’s the girl he wants, right?”
“Exactly,” Amelia says. “But there’s something magical about the forest, they can’t help being true to themselves even as they’re pretending.”
Her words hang in the air between us. I can’t help but think of all the ways being with Amelia feels more real than almost every other relationship I’ve had.
“How does it end?” I ask, my voice low and gruff.
