15. Two Halves
TWO HALVES
ASHER
E veryone else was already at work.
Lev lifted his head from Chuck’s angular pastel piece. “Late again, Blakely?”
“Took a wrong turn. Bad directions. Besides, I thought this wasn’t a classroom.”
Lev’s mouth opened and shut. Guess he didn’t have a witty retort for that. Good.
Asher dropped his watercolor kit at a table by a window, filled two glasses with water in the trough-sized sink, and set to work.
Lev spent the next two hours bouncing around the room, lavishing praise on the other artists like he was trying to capture Asher’s attention on purpose, while ignoring him entirely.
Whatever. Surprising Lev with the finished product would yield an even stronger reaction. He couldn’t wait.
Lev said he valued honest art over all others. But did he? How much of the truth could he take?
“On the way to star painter again, I see, Theo.” Lev stood behind him, bending as if to get a closer look, were he not instead checking over his shoulder for Asher’s reaction .
Asher rolled his eyes. Lev might have been a master artist, but he lacked the art of subtlety.
“Thanks, Lev.” Theo gave Asher an apologetic smile.
Asher shot Theo a thumbs up. A thumbs up? What was he, an elementary schooler?
He shook his head and applied a moody mix of yellow ochre and burnt umber, then added it to the curve of the shoulder he’d sketched, the slope of a trapezius, the valley behind the clavicle.
“Not the teacher’s pet anymore,” Chuck said from the easel to his left.
“You win some and you lose some,” Asher said breezily.
“How do you know Lev?” Chuck asked.
“I don’t.” Asher mixed yellow hansa with rose and added water until he’d created a fair peach tone.
“We were all sure you were a nepotism invite.”
Lars walked over. “What are you two talking about?”
“We weren’t talking,” Asher said.
“I was just having a laugh,” Chuck said. “No need to take it personally.”
Lars’s eyes crawled over Asher’s painting. “What are you making?”
Asher didn’t answer. Thanks to Ben, he hated painting in front of other people, let alone Tweedledee and Tweedle Trust Fund.
“I think he’s giving us the silent treatment,” Chuck said.
Asher feigned a sigh. “If only it were silent.”
Chuck leaned over and jerked the leg of Asher’s table toward him, knocking over the water cups, and sending a tidal wave toward his painting.
One glass rolled off the table and shattered on the stone floor.
Theo met Asher’s eyes, a silent question— Do you want help? Asher shook his head.
In one swift motion, he lifted the other glass and yanked the table leg out of Chuck’s hand. “I’m not interested in measuring dicks.”
A shadow blocked the warm sunlight against his back, darkening Asher’s miraculously unscathed painting.
“While the idea of you coming to fisticuffs over my mentorship is rather flattering, it’s disrupting the other artists,” Lev said. “There’s a dust pan and broom in the supply room. Clean this up and keep your eyes on your own work, lads.”
Asher remained seated, assuming that he wasn’t one of the lads in question, and resumed painting. Lev’s shadow lingered long after Chuck and Lars swept up the broken glass.
“Can I help you?” Asher’s skin prickled, his body heated with flames stoked by Lev’s masculine scent and the occasional caress of his breath on the back of his neck.
“This is quite the deviation from your dark color scheme. Playing it safe?” Lev paused, then added, “Broken glass, not withstanding.”
Asher peppered freckles on the page before answering. “I’m not playing it safe.”
“What are you painting?”
“My interpretation of envy.”
“A hand on a shoulder? I don’t see the connection.”
“You’ll have to wait until it’s finished.”
“You misunderstand, Blakely. I want you to explain the connection, and if you want to win my mentorship, you’ll do well to answer.”
With a fresh brush, Asher blended white with the faintest trace of rose and violet.
“Blakely,” Lev said.
“ Marks ,” Asher parroted back.
He wouldn’t let Lev play the uptight art professor after he looked at his sketchbook and spent the day acting like a child. He painted one thin crescent on the forearm, a second crescent, a third .
Lev inhaled sharply.
Asher added the fourth and final scar. “There. Finished. Your hand on my shoulder when I was talking to Theo. Textbook envy.” He snapped his palette closed and dropped his brushes in his cup.
“Not so fast.” Wood legs scuffed the stone like nails on a chalkboard as Lev spun Asher’s chair around, and planted his hands on either side of the seat, caging him in. Lev lowered his voice to a menacing whisper. “How do you know about my scars?”
What was his problem? It’s not like Lev had covered them like Asher did with his tattoos. For all Asher’s internet stalking, the only thing he knew about Lev’s scars was that he had them.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Asher said, regaining his dignity. “I didn’t realize you were insecure about them. If you want me to paint over them, make the next sin Pride and you’ve got a deal.”
“Answer me,” Lev hissed.
“You read my sketchbook. You tell me.”
Lev lowered his voice quieter still. “What? Am I some fixation of yours?”
“In a professional sense? Sure. You were. Now, if you’ll back the fuck off…” He shoved against the stone wall of Lev’s chest.
Lev didn’t even flinch.
“Move,” Asher said, running out of bravado fast.
He needed to leave before something terrible happened, like he popped a hate-boner because there was something broken inside of him that wanted to fuck Lev as much as he wanted to punch him. But Lev wasn’t even looking at him.
Lev’s brows darted together. His head cocked to the side, attention snared by something over Asher’s shoulder. He went eerily still, breath caught in his chest mid-inhale like he had that first breakfast when he’d paused in the middle of his sentence.
At the time, Asher had written it off as Lev losing his train of thought, but his expression had been similar then. Not confusion or a blank stare. Alert. Almost as if he was listening.
“Lev?” He pushed against Lev’s chest again.
“Sorry,” Lev said vacantly, and backed away, gaze still fixed on whatever had caught his attention.
Asher swirled around. But there was no one there. Only the same view through the window of lazy waves, blue skies, and a thin wisp of fog.
Seizing the chance to make a somewhat graceful exit while he had it, Asher swiped his sketchbook from his table and stuffed it inside his hoodie, then skirted around Lev.
Everyone was staring.
The ocean had probably covered some of their conversation. How much had they heard?
He quickened his pace, desperate to escape as a panic attack threatened, then lurched to a stop, wrist shackled by Lev’s hand.
“I’m not finished with you yet,” Lev said.
Asher froze at the hint of Lev’s fingernails kissing his forearm. Regret crossed his mind first, but not for any sane reason.
He wished he hadn’t worn long sleeves, because maybe if he fought to free himself, Leviathan Marks, his hero, his god, would tighten his grip and leave a mark, one Asher could later slice open with a razor’s edge and add ink into the wound bed to make sure it scarred.
The epiphany slid into place crescent by crescent, then all at once. He looked down at Lev’s hand on his wrist.
The scars were the marks of fingernails buried in skin.
Asher wrenched his arm back, dragging Lev toward him, and said against his ear, “So, that’s how you got those scars.”
Lev released Asher’s arm, stunned. But not for long. In a blur of motion, Lev ripped Asher’s painting from the table and tore it in half down the center.
Silence fell, a silence so complete, it was as if Lichenmoor itself had choked on a gasp, as if every blade of grass on the moor had stilled, as if the very ocean had paused its endless tides to watch the two halves drift to the ground.
“You didn’t complete the assignment as directed. I’m afraid I have no choice but to give you another F.”
Sound came back all at once, starting with the roar of blood in his ears. Fury thrummed through his body like a drug. He balled his hands into fists.
Lev’s lip curled. “You aren’t going to hit me, are you?”
“You just threw a tantrum and now you want to act like I’m the unstable one? Fuck you.”
“Asher,” Theo said, placing his palm on Asher’s back.
How long had he been standing there?
“You should listen to him,” Lev said.
Asher charged forward, stopping short of slamming into Lev’s chest. “You told me you wanted art that was honest, and I gave it to you, but you can’t even look at it.”
“Don’t cry, Blakely. It’s only art.”
Asher laughed humorlessly. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite.”
“Watch your tone.”
“Or what? You’ll send me home?” Asher patted Lev roughly on the lapel of his ridiculously overdressed navy blazer. “I think I’ve learned everything I need to know, sir.” He spun on his heel and left.
Leviathan Marks was nobody’s hero, let alone his.