10. Getting Closer
Getting Closer
Keene
I can’t help but feel suspicious when Bex unzips my duffel bag. “If you’re looking for another creepy hockey mask, I gave mine to Ares to show the sheriff.”
“No,” she shudders. “No hockey masks. But I’m sure we’ll find something interesting.”
I shake my head. “Knock yourself out.”
In reality, I’m thinking if there could be anything embarrassing in there.
Thank fuck we have laundry facilities at the arena, and either the freshmen or whoever gets on Coach Harrison’s wrong side is tasked with the honor of cleaning our sweaty, stinky training clothes and gear.
So, the stuff I keep in my duffel bag is mainly clean clothes to change into if I want to squeeze in an extra session in the gym after hours.
And some extra pairs of clean underwear and socks.
A man can never have enough of those, if you ask me.
It’s probably a life hack I carried into my civilian life from deployment, but I live and breathe by that rule.
“Are you done yet?” I arch one eyebrow as Bex keeps rifling through my things.
“Bingo!” She grabs a brand new puck that I had forgotten I had in there, part of the merch we got from the same sponsor who gave us those masks at summer training.
She gives it to me, a triumphant smile on her infuriatingly gorgeous face.
“What does a puck have to do with art and with Poonani?” I frown.
The explanation surprises me. “Since we aren’t using paintbrushes, why not try a different way of putting paint on the canvas?
You can use the flat, round side, or the curved edges.
Put paint over all of it or just part of it.
Mix the colors. Just let your imagination run wild.
And think about Poonani while you work.”
That sounds crazy enough that it could work.
It can’t get much worse than tonight’s failed cubist attempt, right?
We work in silence. I play with colors and shapes, thinking of how I heard Poonani’s desperate cries. She was trapped under a collapsed building that had been bombed in the civil war riddled country where we had been sent to provide humanitarian relief and training for their national army.
My first lieutenant told me to ignore it, since it didn’t sound human, but I couldn’t.
The first thing I saw was Poonani’s vibrant green eyes when I removed two large chunks of rubble to expose a small space that had saved the small feline from being crushed.
She was covered in dust to the point that I hadn’t realized that her coat was black. And in typical Poonani fashion, she tried to attack me when I tried to reach into the hole to pull her out.
I eventually managed to bundle her into my raincoat and brought her back to our camp. Earning her trust was a slow process, but she was hungry, and food offerings played a big part in the beginning of our relationship.
“Ok, I’m all done.” Bex’s voice brings me back to the present. “Let’s see what we have here.”
I take a step back, looking at the entirety of my canvas for the first time since I started working on it.
A groan escapes my lips when I see an explosion of color on the once white canvas. I’m probably fucked. I don’t see how this is any better than the square blob I painted before.
“Oh my God.” Bex covers her mouth with both hands, her green eyes as wide as saucers.
“That bad, huh?” I snort, running a hand through my hair. “I guess I will fail that class, after all.”
But I must have misread Bex’s reaction, because she shakes her head. “Are you kidding? That’s really good, Keene.”
“Really?”
The smile on Bex’s face causes a strange warmth in my chest.
“Absolutely. That’s so full of emotion. I can see fear, pain, compassion.
” She says, pointing at different slashes of color.
“And the way you used different parts of the puck, like I told you to do, is very clever. The color progression is also pretty impressive. I can totally see how your relationship with Poonani evolved from the day you found her, to the bond you have now.”
Shit.
Coulda fooled me, but she’s right. You can actually see my emotions on canvas. If anything, that shows how completely foreign art is to me.
“So you think this is good enough to bring to Cantucci tomorrow?” I ask.
“I think so.” She smiles. “I’d be surprised if this doesn’t earn you at least a C. But if it were me grading this work, you’d probably get an A. Can I just ask you a question?”
I can’t help but smile, hopeful that Professor Cantucci will get off my case thanks to this painting. “Shoot.”
“Like I said before, the way your relationship with Poonani evolved is shown clearly in the colors you chose. And I think you started painting on the left-hand side and moved to the right, yes?”
I don’t know where she’s going with this, but she’s correct. “Yeah. Why?”
“The colors become softer and more joyful as you look from left to right, but I don’t understand the slashes of red and gray on the far right of the canvas. It goes from top to bottom, and they look angry, but then the red fades into a magenta and almost a pink at the end. What does it mean?”
I’m surprised that Bex noticed that. “When I rescued Poonani, I was on a twelve month tour. My company had five months left before we were due to come home. The rules at our temporary base were more than clear; no pets in the barracks. So I had to hide her.”
Bex is listening intently to my story. “Couldn’t you have brought her to a temporary shelter? Until it was time to go home?”
“I thought about it, but the nearest shelter that was still standing was in an area of the city where the fighting was more intense. The enemy militia was bombing that area on a daily basis, and I couldn’t risk it.”
There’s sympathy in her gaze, and I realize that she really cares about my experience during that deployment.
My ex-wife didn’t ask me once how it was during our phone calls.
All she was interested in talking about was how that deployment inconvenienced her.
Granted, she was sleeping with the rear D lieutenant, but that’s beside the point.
The way Bex is listening to my story and asking more questions does something weird to me.
It creates a crack in the shield I carefully erected to protect my heart.
And I want to let her in. I’m aching for it.
I know that’s dangerous, and it’s everything I vowed I would never do again.
My plan when I arrived in Star Cove for summer training was to keep my guard up.
I’m here to get my degree and to play hockey.
Coach Harrison’s team is my best chance to show off my skills so that I can be signed by an NHL team.
Any distractions, anything that can derail me from my goal, are unwelcome.
Especially if it’s something emotionally unstable and unreliable like a woman.
“So did you manage to hide Poonani for the rest of your deployment?” Bex asks.
Fuck, I can’t stand the softness in her voice. I hate the way I want her to know everything about me.
I need to remember that I have nothing to offer her and all she can give me is more heartbreak when she inevitably betrays me. Jamie and Connor are complete fools if they think that sharing her is going to save them from being taken for the fools they are.
“Fuck, no.” I laugh, straightening my posture and taking a step back where I can’t feel the heat radiating from her body.
“I suspect that Poonani had been a stray. And as such, she was used to getting out to hunt, especially at night. My first sergeant spotted her coming back to my room one morning after PT and called me into his office.”
Bex’s delicate brows furrow, one manicured hand flying to her chest. “Oh, no. Did you get punished?”
“That’s what I thought was gonna happen. But apparently, the base had a huge problem with mice infestation. It had been going on since we took it over from the local army. The only building that all of a sudden was mice free was my company’s.”
Her frown turns into a smile. “Because of Poonani?”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Yeah. When First Sergeant saw her, she had a mouse in her mouth.”
“So, what happened?”
I need to shut this conversation down. I’m enjoying talking to Bex too much for my own comfort. “I got yelled at for a couple of minutes because I was in violation of the rules, but then I was tasked with bringing a squad to the shelter and to return with a few more cats.”
“That’s amazing.” She beams. “So that’s the gray and the red? Her hunting and killing mice?”
I nod. “Correct.”
“Gruesome,” she muses. “And I kinda feel sorry for those poor mice, but I get how they must have been a problem.”
“Poor mice?” I snort. “Not when they were getting into our food supplies. The potential for disease caused by mouse droppings contamination is a real risk in most areas of the world.”
My tone is harsher than I intended, and Bex rears back as if I had physically hit her; the openness in her eyes is gone as she closes off right in front of my very eyes.
A part of me regrets it on the spot. But another, bigger part of me knows it’s for the best.
“So if we’re done, I’ll take my painting and?—”
“You can’t.” Bex interrupts me. “The paint is still wet. If you carry it now, you’re going to ruin it. Leave it here, like the other students did. The classroom gets locked up at night, and you can come back for it tomorrow.”
Being corrected by her irks me. “Fine.” I bark, sounding rude even to my own ear.
“Fine. See yourself out, so I can lock up.” She barks out, her tone sharp as she looks anywhere but at me.
I turn on my heels, anxious to get out of the building and to put as much distance as humanly possible between me and this gorgeous, dangerous, infuriating woman.
My feet carry me outside in a couple of long strides, but I freeze when I realize that it’s dark outside. On a school night, the parking lot in front of the art center and the surrounding roads are almost deserted.