6. Her Favorite Artist
Chapter 6
Her Favorite Artist
Rafe
My head aches.
I don’t drink much anymore, so I’m not hungover. I don’t get high; it makes me dizzy. And I’m not even prone to migraines, like my mom.
No, I have a simple, no-sleep-induced headache that won’t stop gnawing at my brain. Why? Because I can’t stop thinking about Bonnie fuckin’ Davies.
I didn’t intend to go to the Night Crawl. I could hear the partying just fine from my loft with the window cracked. In fact, I like the sounds of this town. The people are intoxicating, drawing me in like a moth to a flame. But ultimately climbing down the stairs had nothing to do with Jukes or Bobbi or Moira.
It had everything to do with seeing her .
But, Christ, my mom didn’t raise me to be such a unique level of irresponsible.
Dad once asked me, “How do you sleep at night?”
Now, I can safely say, Not well, thanks.
My studio is still a mess from the Spring into Summer Festival. My mind never feels quite right when there’s disorganization. It reminds me of Mom’s house, and life is never quite right when that place is cluttered either. Thankfully, the tourists walking through my shop don’t seem to mind.
“This is stunning,” a woman says in awe. “Is this somewhere in town?”
She points to a print hanging on my shop wall. It’s a wash of blues and purples, depicting Never Harbor’s secret watery alcove.
I gesture with my hammer. “That’s Mermaid Lagoon. Up on the north side of town.”
“Stunning,” the woman repeats, blinking back to it.
Tourists love images of Never Harbor. Lucky for them, my entire shop is dedicated to illustrations of local landscapes and landmarks. I wish I could say that was by clever design—a meticulously concocted tourist trap—but I’d be lying. I’ve been taken by this small town since the moment I visited here in fourth grade. Never Harbor has always been my kryptonite.
As far as everyone else is concerned, I’m a savvy business owner, selling out to the masses.
But somehow, Bonnie Davies knew better.
I raise a nail to the wall, eyeballing the distance from one canvas to the other, then knock the hammer against it.
Beside the woman, a bulky man strokes his thumb over the ridges of dried acrylic on canvas.
“Don’t touch the art,” I snap.
His head jerks to me with wide eyes, like a little kid caught. Forehead lines are quickly soothed as he takes in the sight of my inked hands and Howling Ravens T-shirt with the small hole in the neckline. The corner of his mouth tips up. That smirk tells me he’s not concerned about what the tattooed local has to say —well, that and the crisply ironed collar on his polo and the loafers, ready-made to board a yacht within the hour.
I balance the new print on the fresh nail and raise my eyebrows to him, adding, “But feel free to touch this one.”
I don’t mind when people touch the prints, but original canvases are best not smeared by fingers oiled in fish po’boy residue. He doesn’t need to tell me he had a po’boy for lunch; every tourist visits Jukes’s Jambalaya for fish po’boys, no matter the walk of life. William Jukes is just that talented, and I’m probably his biggest fan.
Another thing Bonnie knew.
I flip the hammer in my grip.
Bonnie Davies is the last girl—no, woman —I should have hooked up with.
She’s a local, first of all. I don’t date locals.
She’s also Never Harbor’s sweetheart. The girl in art school, pursuing her cute dreams.
She’s also a fucking virgin.
Was.
I’ve lived in Never Harbor for seven years. I’ve seen this girl hang around my art shop for a long time now. It’s hard to miss one of the only redheads in town. She always asked a lot of questions. A very curious girl. Young. Sweet. Not my type.
Now … well, now …
Bonnie Davies is not a girl anymore. No, the moment she moved back the summer after her first year of art school two years ago, with her crop top ghosting over her belly button and a confident laugh on her red lips, I knew something had changed.
Her chin tips higher. The hunched shoulders she used to hide herself from the world are now poised and straight. She’s still got that shyness sometimes—and it’s cute—but it’s overshadowed by fire that was once only on her hair and in her eyes. Now it erupts everywhere into a volcanic defiance that’s difficult to overlook.
“What about this one?”
I gaze back at the man, still touching another damn painting.
“For sale,” I answer. “And you can touch it all you like once you pay for it.”
The man huffs out air through his nose. A sure, got it, I hear you, champ type of noise.
Never Harbor is a quaint coastal town, a one-hour train ride out from Boston. We have inns instead of resorts and personal art galleries instead of museums. We’re not just a vacation town; we’re a perfect trophy to display on wealthy walls, where a couple can say things like, Oh, this is from a cute town we discovered.
Don’t get me wrong; most tourists are kind. They have gentle smiles and curiosity, much like this man’s wife. But some act like they’re Christopher Columbus or some shit. They’re the same type of people who don’t tip my mom after she spends an entire year cleaning their house once a week. Cleaning these tourists’ trophies.
“Well then, I’ll take it,” the man says, bored-like, throwing a thumb back to the canvas.
Nothing like making a sale because a man doesn’t like being told no. It’s funny too—I know he feels like he’s winning the moment. I wonder if he knows he’s paying the rent for the tattooed artist who just offended him.
I smile. “I’ll ring you up.”
After the couple departs and I have a new slip of paper in my register, listing their shipping address, I slide the hammer on the counter with a thunk and an exhale.
“Your charisma baffles me,” a sarcastic voice taunts me from behind the register.
I lean over and find my blonde pixie of a friend sitting on the ground. Izzy’s petite legs sprout from green shorts, wrapped around a bankers box full of smaller prints leftover from the Spring into Summer Festival.
“Charisma?” I ask.
“It’s like the more mysterious you appear, the more they want to buy from you,” she explains.
“I’m not mysterious.”
Izzy lets out something between a scoff and an amused snort. “Oh, the wife definitely thought you were mysterious. Hey, didn’t you used to have a thing for tourists?”
I narrow my eyes. “Never the married ones.”
“As far as you know.”
I know Izzy is joking, but the back of my neck still prickles.
I lightly kick my boot against her sneaker. “Hush, you.”
When I first moved to Never Harbor, I was just a red-blooded male in my twenties, amazed I could do whatever I liked for the first time in my life. No strings attached. No burdens placed on others. I slept with tourists, but I was never a home-wrecker. I never upended lives. That’s my dad’s agenda.
Now that I’m nearing thirty, Never Harbor is my quiet place. My home. I’ll ride the train into Boston to scratch an itch, but I won’t indulge in tourists anymore. And never locals.
Never locals , I have to repeat to myself. Christ, I don’t sleep with locals.
And especially not good-girl locals, like Bonnie.
Or is it Shiv?
A shot of adrenaline rushes down my veins to the tips of my fingers. I clear my throat and shake it out.
“You should go,” I tell Izzy. “I’ll wrap this up later.”
She ties her frizzy blonde hair into a messy bun, then continues flicking through the prints, as if she didn’t hear me. She places one in a stack on the hardwood and another in the back of the box. I don’t know what her organization method is, but I don’t need to know. Izzy is good.
It’s been two days since the Spring into Summer Festival, and I still haven’t unpacked from my booth setup. I should have taken last night to clean, but certain … distractions kept me from it.
Izzy needs to leave to run her restaurant in less than an hour, but she’s on the floor of my shop, doing what I can’t. She’s got that weird power of reading minds and anticipating needs. But never tell Izzy you notice her hard work or that she should be doing better things. She’ll help even harder but with added sass.
“I’ve got it,” Izzy shoots back.
“I’ll do it tonight.”
“You could not do it at all,” she counters. “You should hire help.”
“Are you the one who put that sign in my booth?”
“No, the hiring fairy did,” she says with a grin.
“So, you?”
“Duh. Yes, me.”
I don’t know how Izzy and I bonded so quickly. Seven years ago, I came into town with all my savings spent on my shop on Main and the studio apartment above it, ready for me to live by the sea, undisturbed. But the first night I went to the local watering hole, The Hideaway, Izzy was behind the bar with twenty questions prepared for the new guy in town.
It’s funny; I never thought she was flirting, and I’ve never flirted with her either. I felt drawn to her in a way two corner pieces of a puzzle might. We exist in the same game together, but we don’t complete each other in some destined way. We fit comfortably and with purpose, linked together with sarcasm and unspoken understandings.
She came to my shop the next day and bought half the store to decorate The Hideaway. We’ve hung out most weeks since then.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A short text lights up the screen.
Mom: can’t make it next week. busy
Rafe: Busy?
Mom: hard at work as always :)
Rafe: I’ll come to you.
Mom: don’t you dare. its your busiest time baby.
Rafe: Don’t worry about me.
My mom works herself to the bone day in and day out. I can’t remember a time when she didn’t have two jobs. In the worst of times, she’s had three. I like to think I get my work ethic from her.
If I had time to create more canvas paintings, maybe I could work less. People pay good money for original canvas. It’d give me a bit more freedom. Except I just sold one of my last ones.
It’s difficult to make new art when I’m busy running this shop. Funny how passion turns to business real quick once you find success.
Rafe: I’ll call you after work today?
I make it a question because it has to be. She’s a difficult woman to get ahold of.
“I’ll keep putting them up,” Izzy says.
I place my phone on the counter.
“Huh? Put up what?” I ask.
“A Help sign.”
My eyebrows furrow against my will. “I don’t want help.”
“Translation: you don’t like it when people get involved in your life,” Izzy says.
“I’ve got things handled.”
Us Cohens are self-starters. My mom makes her way without a man, no matter what it takes.
When I was eighteen, I remember she told me, “I didn’t work this hard to have my child not get his dream.”
So, I did. I moved to Never Harbor, and I operate this place all by myself. This shop runs like a machine. It doesn’t need an unnecessary cog to throw it off.
But Izzy isn’t exactly wrong. I do need more time, and some genie won’t pop up out of nowhere to give it to me. With my luck lately, a monkey’s paw might.
My phone buzzes again.
Mom: i don’t need a parent to take care of me. that’s my job. :)
Rafe: Did your landlord ever get back to you about the broken sink?
Mom: he’s busy. aren’t we all? :)
If she sends one more smiley face to cover a terrible situation, I’m gonna scream. Hell, if she makes another excuse for her shit landlord, I may just have to find him myself. I’ll be damned if I ever have someone holding something over my head.
Groaning, I walk to the printer behind the counter, rip out a blank sheet of white paper, and scribble HELP WANTED in big, block letters.
I lift an eyebrow at Izzy. “Happy?”
“Almost. Let me make it more official.”
I roll my eyes as she pulls out a frame from the supplies box, removes the print inside, and replaces it with the sloppy HELP WANTED signage. She hands it to me. I prop it on the counter.
“Better,” she says defiantly.
I don’t agree, but I also don’t remove it even though my chest itches at the sight of it.
The front door dings, and Steve, our local paper boy and general delivery guy, enters with a bouquet clutched in his fist.
“Oh, for me?” Izzy asks, batting her eyes.
I hand him a twenty-dollar bill, then take the flowers and put them in a prepared mason jar, already half filled with water. I place it on the floor next to Izzy.
“It is now,” I tell her.
I order a bouquet from Florally Yours every day, delivered to me by Steve through his new courier company—growth from his paper business started two years ago. I like supporting Never Harbor small businesses. This hits two birds with one stone.
Mostly, I keep them for a little extra color at the shop, but sometimes, I give them to Izzy. She deserves to know not all guys are assholes.
The bell above the door chimes again.
I scribble down stock updates as Izzy yells out, “Welcome,” in the absence of my greeting.
But then her expression falls. Her lips thin into a straight line. I know exactly who that expression is reserved for, and I find my face doing the same.
“You’re supposed to be at the bar, and you know it,” Izzy snaps.
“Hey, I’m finishing errands, woman,” Peter Davies shoots back. I can hear the smirk on his face.
This is example number one, two, and three of why I give my friend a bouquet of flowers.
It’s not jealousy that drives me to dislike Peter. Izzy is objectively closer to her boss than she is to me, and I’ve never been one to claim best friends, even as a child. No, what bothers me is the tension in her shoulders, like one cat arching to fight another, and how quickly that defensiveness dissolves when he smiles. It’s prey kowtowing to its predator. Because beneath Izzy’s eye roll is a sly smile tipping the edge of her lips.
“Oh, stop with that look.” Peter laughs. “I’m shopping with my sister while she’s still in town.”
My body tightens. I turn around as casually as I can, flipping the pencil through my fingers, like maybe I forgot something on the wall. But I know what I’m doing.
There she is .
Bonnie Davies.
With her eyes already locked on to mine.
If Peter is Izzy’s predator, then his sister is mine. Who is this girl now, with the bright red hair, the full lips, and confidence high enough to invite herself back here last night? I assumed maybe we’d hang out on the rocky shore. Make out a bit, if I was lucky. But she stepped up. So, I did too.
If I’d known it was a front, I wouldn’t have agreed. I wouldn’t have approached it so intensely.
Her beautiful jaw tenses.
I clear my throat and turn away.
“I’ve already checked in with everyone,” Peter continues.
“Oh, please. Don’t give me hope,” Izzy says. She’s teasing now.
Peter’s a lot of things, but irresponsible with his restaurant isn’t one of them. He runs The Hideaway as well as I run Ink she looks at me.
“See?” Peter says.
Izzy squeezes her eyes shut. “Pete, I swear to?—”
“Swear to who, Bells?”
“Sure isn’t you.”
I’m too busy watching Bonnie to know where this conversation goes.
She takes a print off the wall and walks toward the counter. She saunters when she does it—there’s no other way to explain it—and people part for her as she passes through. It’s a mix of men who don’t know the bombshell redhead but wish they did and locals who do and adore her. I honestly don’t know which group I fall into anymore.
She places the print on the counter. Less than twenty-four hours ago, I was right here, kissing her with her tiny waist between my thighs.
“Hey,” she whispers.
“Hey, Shiv.”
A small bruise dots just above her collarbone. I think that’s from my teeth.
I clear my throat. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Yeah?”
“You?” she asks.
I sigh. “Don’t worry about me.”
Her tone is stilted as she answers, “Fine. I won’t.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“What? Can’t I buy from my favorite local artist?”
I don’t answer. I’m not sure what to say.
“Are you actually hiring this time?” she asks, pointing to the scribbled sign.
I knew I’d regret that damn sign.
I tip it face down on the counter. “I’m looking into more experienced artists.”
Her red lips purse.
She huffs out air through her nose as she extends exact change in my direction. She doesn’t drop it on the counter. She’s making me reach out to meet her. She’s irritated. I must be sick in the head because I kinda like it.
“No charge,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I’m not getting your art for free.”
“Your money is no good here.”
I reach out and graze my hand over her delicate knuckles as I close her fingers back over her coins.
“Ass.”
I huff a laugh through my nose.
“What do you want with it anyway?” I ask.
She blinks at me. “I wasn’t kidding. You’re my favorite artist. You see things in a certain way others don’t. There’s so much in this painting that is undeniably you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I could,” she says.
“And what would you get out of it?” I ask.
A slow, sly smile spreads over her face as she shrugs, feigning innocence. “Another soul.”
I’ve brought women back to the shop before, but it was so long ago. If I’d known … well, her circumstances … I would have taken her upstairs. I would have made it more special than just a hallway tryst. She deserved so much more than what I gave her. Or I wouldn’t have said yes at all.
I glance at Peter. His eyes are stuck on my hand touching his sister’s. If it were Jasper or Cassidy, I might have some tact and pull away. I’m not the type of guy to be intimidated by brothers, but I respect those two enough to not flirt with their sister in front of them.
I simply do not respect Peter.
He can watch me.
“If you’re not at The Hideaway by the time I get there, I’m firing you, Pete,” Izzy says, slinging her purse strap over her shoulder.
Peter flicks his eyes to her, then smirks. I’m immediately forgotten. I swear he has the attention span of a goldfish.
“But I’m your boss,” he says.
“You wish.”
“Factually—”
“Walk away, Pete.”
He smirks. “Yes, ma’am.”
Bonnie clutches the print to her chest. “I’ll see you later, Rafe.”
My name is almost a taunt, and her words stick to my chest like an unspoken invitation.
She turns on her boot and strides across the shop floor again. I may or may not intently watch her walk away.
The Davies siblings exit the shop, and when I turn, I find Izzy staring back.
“Doesn’t Bonnie go to art school?” The words are like a whip from her tongue.
She wastes no time being attentive, does she?
“And?” I ask.
“I bet she’d help you for the summer.”
“She’s looking for internships. And I don’t need help.”
“Your sign says otherwise.”
“ Your sign. I don’t need her help.” I say it too quickly.
Izzy gives a smug smile. “So touchy about sweet little Davies.” She strokes a finger over the counter, picking up dust. “Hey, didn’t you work with her before?”
“She was eighteen, and it was a logo for her brother’s business,” I clarify. “Mostly emails. We barely spoke.”
“She was talented though?”
Of course she was. For every creative idea I had, she came up with three more.
Izzy smiles at my silence. “So … she’s looking for?—”
“I don’t like internships or mentorships?—”
“Or any other -ships,” Izzy finishes.
I tongue my cheek. She’s getting at something, and I don’t like it. So, I ignore it.
“You don’t like -ships either,” I counter. “What’s that thing about people in glass houses?”
She shrugs. “I’ve considered -ships.”
I snort. “With who? Dickbag Davies?”
Her face scrunches into a tense glare. “Clearly, I’m not the only one considering a Davies.”
She eyes the door Bonnie and Peter walked through seconds earlier.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
She crosses her arms and laughs with a bite too wicked for my taste.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” She clicks her tongue. “I’ll see you later.” She walks toward the door, then turns back around. “And don’t worry; I’m not mad at you. Just disappointed.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing,” she repeats.
I raise an eyebrow. She lifts one back in challenge.
But Izzy doesn’t say anything else before walking through the door, and neither do I. We don’t have to address either of our accusations because they’re empty and they mean nothing.
Mostly.
We don’t need to discuss. We’re friends like that.