Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Belle
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Percy asks as he hands me two travel mugs of coffee.
I nod resolutely. “We’re scent-matched, Percy.” Saying the words openly feels so weird. “How can we ever decide how to handle that if I can’t find a way to get to know Knox a little? If he hates my presence, I might as well not start fantasizing about what life would look like if...”
I don’t want to finish my sentence.
I’m too afraid of hope.
“He doesn’t hate you, Belle.” Percy’s argument is hard to believe when his eyes are heavy with sympathy.
“He totally does.” Otherwise, how could he be so cold to me as his scent-match? “But maybe one of your special coffees and my pleasant demeanor can convince him to change his mind!”
“I appreciate your optimism, so good luck.” Percy laughs.
When I told him my plan, he warned me that Knox’s workshop is usually off-limits when Knox is painting. Interrupting his day might be a huge mistake on my part, but I have to try. Who knows how long they’ll let me stick around? I have to make headway while I can... or risk losing my scent-matches and being stuck living the rest of my life with whoever I can find as a consolation prize.
With coffees in hand, I exit the house and follow the path Rhys shoveled for Knox to his workshop. The wood door is cracked open, practically inviting me in. When I reach the workshop, I nudge the door open wider with my foot and slip inside.
I’m not prepared for the sight of Knox at work. He’s shirtless and barefoot, his back muscles glistening as he paints a stroke of navy paint across the biggest canvas I think I’ve ever seen in person. His muscles ripple as he shuffles over to swipe his brush through more of the same color on a palette balanced on top of a stool nearby.
Instrumental music with a strong beat reverberates through the large shed that’s been set up as a painter’s workshop.
The sight of Knox is too distracting to take a good look at the rest of the place, but I can see a huge collection of painted canvases lining every wall from my peripheral vision.
I can’t tear my main focus away from Knox.
There is paint streaked across his body. A green slash over his shoulder. A deep gray trickling down his arm. And when he turns, I see some of the navy color rubbed across the right side of his jawline.
“Belle?” He notices me, his mouth falling open in surprise. “You’re not supposed to be in here. What are you doing?”
He practically stumbles over his own feet, rushing over to a workbench covered in different containers of paint. He jams a button on an old school boombox to shut the music off abruptly, and then quickly throws a canvas sheet over the whole table.
“Is your preferred paint brand a national secret?” I joke in an attempt to lighten the mood.
Knox turns back to me with a frown and crosses his arms over his chest, not acknowledging my bad attempt at humor. “It’s cold out. You should go back inside, or go back to following Rhys around.”
He makes me sound like a stray puppy. I guess I am sort of a stray, lost from home and desperate to stay in theirs.
Instead of letting him scare me off, which seems to be the goal, I walk further into the workshop and choose a section of paintings to admire. A few of them don’t seem quite finished, but I can tell they’re all amazing. My heart swells with emotion as I see the scope of Knox’s work. He’s done everything from abstracts heavy with emotional tension to beautiful mountain landscapes capturing a sense of nostalgia.
I don’t feel like someone who knows a ton about art, but I know enough to know that Knox’s art makes people feel things. No wonder he can afford for this to be his full-time job.
“You’re really good,” I murmur. I shouldn’t be surprised. Any man as tense as Knox is bound to be crazy talented to balance things out.
Knox grunts, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s just paint.”
“This,” I point to a particularly compelling portrait of a silhouette in the woods, “is not just paint.” I inhale deeply, smelling past the paint fumes to get a whiff of the other smell lingering on the canvas. “This one smells like you.”
He swallows hard.
“Why are you painting shirtless?” I ask, assuming that’s why the canvas is so thick with his scent. “Is it a tortured alpha artist thing?
To my surprise, he lets out a quiet huff of a laugh. “No.”
At least I got him to laugh, but I want him to say more. I want him to let me get to know even the smallest sliver of his personality beyond the grouchy introduction I’ve gotten so far. There has to be a real person under all the grunting and huffing.
After a moment, he sighs and gives me what I want.
“My work is popular online. The original paintings sell for decent money, but I make just as much selling reproductions to fans online who like watching my progress, especially when...”
“When you paint shirtless.” I flash him a teasing smile. “So, you’re a thirst trap artist, then?”
He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck.
Wait a second.
“How do you post online without any service up here?” We stare at each other. I’m waiting for him to answer; he looks like he’s waiting for the ground to swallow me up and get me out of his hair. Understanding dawns on me. “Oh, you can have Rhys post for you when he goes to town.”
Knox slowly nods, his lips pursed.
I feel silly for even asking when the answer is so obvious. Just because they’re happy living with no access to the outside world doesn’t mean they never interact. After all, Rhys’s trips into town are the only reason he stumbled across me on the way home from the grocery store.
Like fate.
Skimming back over the room, my eyes catch on a painting propped up near Knox’s easel. At first glance, the gray and white painting seems monotonous, but the longer I look, the more intrigued I am. I wander closer to get a better look.
There’s a blurred figure in the center of the canvas, a shadow in a sea of whites and grays. Almost like someone is wading through a snowstorm toward me. The painting would almost be somber if you didn’t notice the way one of the figure’s hands appears to be outstretched, reaching for connection. As I bend down to study the details more closely, my nostrils flare.
“Your scent is especially strong on this one,” I muse. My nose nearly touches the canvas as I lean in as close as possible without pressing myself up against the canvas. The idea isn’t totally unappealing, but I manage to control myself. My eyes flutter closed as I let Knox’s sage scent waft off the canvas and consume me.
He struggles to choke out the explanation, “I painted that last night after I met you.”
My eyes fly open, and I look back at him over my shoulder. I inspired him to paint. See? He’s not immune to the scent-match. There’s a reason his scent is strongest on the painting I inspired.
Knox’s eyes lock with mine.
“I’ve waited years. Looked everywhere for someone who smelled like home . Then, completely out of the blue, Rhys shows up with you in tow. A scent-match just when our pack had given up hope of finding our omega.... and I’m scared as hell, Belle.”
“Of what?”
“That you’ll remember where you came from. That you’ll leave.” A haggard groan tears from his lips, and he turns away to pace across the length of the workshop. “We live in the woods with more nature for company than other people. Rhys and Percy will dote on you endlessly for as long as you’ll let them, but I’m rough around the edges. Harder to care for. And I paint with my damn shirt off in a freezing shed! What kind of life would this be for an omega as sweet and patient as you?”
His pain is so thick it makes the air in his workshop hard to breathe. The man standing in front of me has been forced to make peace with the idea of being unworthy of a complete pack.
My heart breaks for him. For all three alphas of his pack.
If I don’t go to him, my heart is going to beat its way out of my chest. I cross the distance between us to stand beside him and yank off my gloves before putting a hand on his forearm so that I can feel the heat of his skin under my fingers.
“I don’t know who I was before the storm, Knox. But right now? Nothing feels more like me than being around your pack and exploring your cabin. This smells a lot like home to me.”
Knox exhales like all the wind has been knocked out of him.
And then he pulls me in against his chest.
His arms wrap around me, one hand cupping the back of my head with fingers threaded through my windblown hair while the other presses into my lower back, anchoring me to him. I can feel his heartbeat as my cheek settles against his bare chest, and I relax into his embrace.
“I don’t want to let go,” he murmurs into my hair.
“You don’t have to.”
We stand frozen in our embrace for so long that our breathing falls into sync, and I lose track of where we each begin and end. The workshop fills with a powerful combination of the smell of cinnamon and sage. Our scents reacting to each other. To this moment.
Knox is the first to finally ease away, his hands lingering at my waist as his face scrunches with the pain of letting go.
“I have to finish this,” he says hoarsely, gesturing to the canvas on his easel. “I need to... think. Process everything I’m thinking and feeling before I mess everything up for all of us.”
I search his eyes for a different answer. For him to ask me to continue to stay or to offer more than a brief stay at their cabin until the snow clears and my memory–hopefully–returns.
His eyes are stormy. His jaw is tight with restraint.
“I’ll give you some space,” I concede.
He brushes his thumb against my cheek so gently that my breath catches.
“Thank you, Belle.”
He turns back to his art, shoulders sunken from the weight of carrying all of the things still unsaid between us, and picks up a brush. I watch for a few moments longer as he sinks his focus back into his work.
Our conversation isn’t over; it’s just begun.