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“How long have you been here?” Valor asked.
“A few years.”
“But where’s all your shit? Your furniture?”
“It never seemed important.”
Valor whistled. “I honestly thought we were going to have to hire a hoarding specialist, not a decorator.”
A sound of distress escaped me. “But where do you eat? Where do you sleep? Where do you sit?”
“I eat outside a lot. If the weather is bad, I spend time in my room. There’s furniture in there.”
The kitchen had been recently updated, and the stove looked like it had never been used. There was a living room and a media room. I fell in lovewith the cozy library, with its built-in bookshelves and view of the forest to the side of the house. Some rooms had walls that were still blank slates, but many were covered in his artwork.
We entered a large, formal-looking room with a piano. A conservatory?
“Do you play?” Valor asked.
“It came with the house, but yes. Mostly classical. I was raised to entertain. Art, music, dance, mixing drinks, charming small talk. She insisted on me being taught the fundamentals, too, so I wouldn’t embarrass or bore her. I also read a lot. Just don’t ask me to do advanced mathematics. I don’t have a head for numbers.”
He stroked the keys almost affectionately and sat on the bench. “Do either of you play? I never thought to ask.”
“Maybe you can teach me,” I said half-heartedly. Neither of us had any musical skill to speak of, but if it made Loïc happy, I’d try.
His fingers flowed across the keys, and a quiet tune filled the large room. The acoustics were lovely. There might be classical music in the house for the baby to listen to? I liked that idea.
“Where’s your room?” Valor asked. “You said there was furniture, and I haven’t seen any yet.”
Loïc stopped playing mid-tune and rose from the bench. “Well—if I’d known you wanted a tour of my bedroom, I wouldn’t have bothered showing you the rest.” He grinned wolfishly at Valor.
“I—I was curious.”
“Yes, Valor is always curious about Loïc,” Loïc said, amused. “You want to see where I fight with my blankets and obsess about the two of you?”
He caught Valor by the wrist and dragged him along, leaving me to trail after them, enjoying the show. Valor gave me a helpless look. Sometimes it was nice seeing him knocked off his dominant high horse.
Loïc took us to the back of the house, where the windows overlooked a tangle of greenery. He stopped as we reached an open doorway, brows drawn together, apologetic.
“I’ll paint over this room myself.”
“Show us,” I urged.
Grimacing, he led us into his inner sanctuary. A full bookcase lined two walls of the room, and a wall of windows offered a view over the backyard, but the last wall? The mural this time was of Valor and me.
Stark naked.
We were beautiful.
After a long while, I realized both Valor and I were staring at the wall in stunned silence.
“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable. Like I said, I’ll paint over it myself so that no one else sees it. I never expected you to visit here, let alone see this room.”
“Is this how you see us?” I asked in bewilderment.
“What do you mean? It looks exactly like us. It’s uncanny,” Valor said.
Oh, to have the natural self-esteem of a man.
