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He says nothing as he pushes open the door and gestures for me to step into the darkness.
I raise an eyebrow in question. “Is this where you kidnap me, tie me up, and keep me as your sex slave?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Only if that’s something you’re into.”
Taking a deep breath, I step into the space in preparation to face some weird sex dungeon or something. But I’m already here, and Kay hasn’t made me feel like I can’treallywalk out the door at any moment.
I step into the shadows and he follows after me, closing the door.
We’re bathed in nothing but darkness. I hear him walk through the space with confident steps, telling me he knows this place well. It would make sense that this could be his house, but it doesn’t quite peg me as Kay’s style.
A light switch flicks, and a crystal chandelier comes to life above me, illuminating one of the most beautiful spaces I’ve ever seen.
Dark wood stairs spiral up one side of the large foyer, stained glass windows depicting an abstract scene of the ocean perched atop it. A large ornate rug sits beneath my feet, antique tables housing various ceramics that look artfully crafted and painted.
On the walls, though, are the crowns of the room. Huge canvas paintings of various styles, the beach at sunset, vibrant flowers, the winding oceanside roads in gorgeous natural colors, line the walls. They sit prominent against the dark wood, practically lighting up the place.
“Welcome to the House of Color,” Kay says behind me.
I’m too in awe of the painting of the sunset before me, the colors captured so beautifully it feels like I’m standing in front of the actual sun.
“Is this yours?” I ask in a small voice. I turn to the next painting, astounded.
“It was my mother’s. My father bought her this house to use as her studio and hang her paintings, sort of like her own museum. It was the one thing I battled Kieran for in the wake of my father’s death.” Kay’s tone has a hint of sadness in it, but also… affection.
Turning to him, I ask, “You were close with your mom?”
He gives a solitary nod. “Very close. I hope to open this as a museum to the public to finally give her work the acknowledgement it deserves.”
I’m rendered speechless.
“Come, I’ll show you around.” He offers me his arm again, and I take it, without hesitance this time.
Kay guides me into a room that looks like it was designed to host extravagant parties, but the walls are covered in murals of flowers and local birds. “My mother took liberty on a few things other than canvas.” Kay smiles, and I can’t help but smile too. “There’s a room upstairs where she painted the floors in a similar way.”
“That’s incredible.”
Kay drags me along again, pulling me back toward the stairs, where we begin to ascend. I admire the windows along the way. “My mother wasn’t a stained-glass artist, but she worked closely with the artist who made this.”
“Did she do the ceramics around the place too?”
“She did everything in this house save for the actual structuring,” he says fondly. I can tell how much he looked up to his mother, can hear the affection in his voice, and I keep thinking how much he keeps surprising me.
He’s so different from his brother. It’s like they were raised by different people—which, after seeing this place, I can guess that they basically were. Kieran was raised by the cold, business-driven Marcus Beckett. Kay was raised by the maker of the House of Color, that much was becoming evident to me.
Guiding me down a hall lined with two doors on each side, he takes me to the end, where a large square painting of a handsome looking boy holding an acoustic guitar hangs. It’s not as vibrant as the rest, but the colors are still warm, almost loving in the way the strokes were made.
And then it dawns on me.
“Is thisyou?” I point at the boy in the painting, hunched over the acoustic guitar, hair falling over his forehead in a familiar way, done with such detail it’s almost heart breaking.
“Yeah. It was the last painting she did before she died.”
At the tone of his voice, I don’t push him further on the details. It doesn’t feel like the time to ask about it. He’ll tell me if he wants to.
Kay pulls me to the closest door on our left, and we enter an enormous bedroom. Four huge windows line the wall, a fireplace splitting them into sets of two. A four-poster bed sits on one end, its crimson comforter disheveled, the pillows askew. But my attention doesn’t linger on the bed for long as my eyes catch on the canvas taking up almost the entirety of the wall to my right. The brush strokes are violent, rough, but come together to create something almost scenic, the colors in shades of red and black. As I draw closer, I realize there’s bits of gold swept in, something tender to offset the roughness. I stand before it, its height towering above me as I crane my neck to take in its beauty.
It’s so unlike the rest of his mother’s paintings that I have to ask, “Who did this one?”
