Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SHILOH
I stare at the art hanging around my apartment with a frown. Not only am I running out of things to put on my website… but if I keep going this way, I’m going to run out of things to put up altogether.
I know I can still paint, even if I don’t have my usual medium, but…
My eyes flick to the man splayed across my couch, watching hockey on the giant television that I barely ever use.
Fuck… it’s weird, wanting to be a better person because of someone you’ve only known for a few months.
Love is weird.
“You better not get used to that television,” I sigh, snapping a photo of the piece I did yesterday after class.
It’s just a tree against a dark sky with red streaks spilling across it like a torrent of leaves, or crimson birds.
It’s nothing special. It’s just regular paint, because I am well and truly out of my usual medium if I’m not bleeding myself for it at this point.
I threw away the last bottles I had a few weeks ago when I told Donovan I’d try…
and I haven’t been able to paint much since.
Just things like this tree.
I still put it up on my website for a few hundred bucks. It’s not enough to pay rent, but at least I can buy groceries with it.
“What do you mean?” Donovan turns to look at me. “I’m already used to it. I think I might be a little in love with it.” The smile on his face still feels so shocking, so sweet and new. Not because he didn’t smile at me like that before, but because he didn’t smile at me like that when he knew me.
He knows me now, and he still wants to look at me like that.
Maybe I don’t have the inspiration I used to… but I think I can find something new.
“I have a pretty set clientele who are used to a certain kind of art, Donovan.” I say it carefully, watching for his micro-expressions. His brows knit together, and I continue. “I can’t paint the way I used to… so I’m not sure if they’ll still be interested.”
Those knitted brows smooth out, and the sweet smile that blossoms across his features is enough to make me realize that yes… I can definitely figure out how to work around this if it means I get to see him look at me like that. And then his face falls like he just realized exactly what I mean.
“You’ll lose your place without…” His fingers twitch, and he shakes his head instead of finishing the sentence.
“I have a decent amount of savings, but I’m sure it’ll eventually run dry if I don’t figure things out.”
He leans across the back of the couch, his long arms splayed on the black cushion.
“Do you need me to pose for you like one of your French girls?” That grin is back.
I take a few steps forward and run my fingers through his hair, tipping his head up so I can press a soft kiss to his lips.
“Honestly, Donovan… I’d probably kill someone before I let them hang art of you on their walls.
” When he doesn’t pull away, I kiss him again.
“I’ve actually canceled more than one finalized sale because I realized you were in the paint. ”
“What?”
I lean in close enough to run my nose along his jawline and then press another kiss to his temple before straightening up. “I’m kind of obsessed with you, didn’t you know?”
I watch as the prettiest flush of crimson streaks across his freckled cheeks and feel something in my stomach go tight… because that.
I want to paint that…
And it would be one more canvas hanging on my wall that I couldn’t sell, since that expression is one for me and me alone.
I turn back to my studio and hear the sound of the couch creaking as Donovan stands up and follows me. His warm arms slide around my waist when I pick up a paintbrush, and his lips are soft when they press to the top of my head.
“You can always move in with me,” he says, as if that’s the easiest solution in the world. As if he hadn’t just come to terms with the fact that I was a serial killer, and we still need to navigate through that entire situation.
My mind drifts to that morning after I promised I’d be different for him, to the way he made me food and held me after.
To the trauma that we somehow share, even though it’s two completely different flavors of pain.
I finally shake my head.
“Your place isn’t big enough. Maybe you should move in here.” It’s a silly suggestion. I know that, but…
“Mmm, not enough space.”
That isn’t a no.
How in the fuck is it not a no?
I turn in his arms and tilt my head back, looking at the way he’s scrutinizing the space around him…
“Donovan…”
“There’s not much room here, and my place doesn’t have a studio for you… we probably need somewhere new, right?”
“I… what?” He almost seems to drink down the shocked expression on my face, raising his finger to brush sweetly against my parted lips.
“Like rent a house or a condo? We couldn’t buy anything yet, but we could get something that would be just ours.” His expression goes soft. “That sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”
It does.
It sounds like a dream that I never thought I’d want, and definitely nothing I ever thought I’d deserve.
But…
“Donovan,” I say again, softer this time. He draws up short. “What if I fuck up? What if I hurt someone else?”
I hate saying those words because the last thing I want is to hurt him. The last thing I want is to fuck up this tenuous perfection that feels like it’s slowly filling in all the cracks in my soul and making me into something whole.
Someone different.
“What if you don’t?” Donovan leans in, running his fingers through my hair and drawing me back against him so I’m enveloped in his warmth.
“What if you never hurt anyone again? The world is full of what-ifs and maybes, but we don’t have to live with them hanging over our heads, okay?
” He sounds so achingly sincere that I want to believe what he’s saying is true.
That I don’t need to kill—that my talent and ability aren’t intrinsically tied to death and pain… but…
“But what if that’s all I can be?”
I expect his expression to go shuttered, for him to push me away again. Instead, he presses his forehead to mine when he answers. “Loh, you’re the kind of person who wants to make sure no other kid ever hurts the way you did. You’re more than your darkest parts.”
And just like that, I feel like I’m going to break into a thousand pieces all over again just like I did in his apartment. My gaze drops to the floor and I press my forehead to his shoulder.
“I just don’t want to lose you,” I whisper, hoping the words stay trapped against his skin, wrapped around his heart and settled somewhere behind his ribs.
“We’ll figure it out together, Loh, okay?” I don’t miss the gentle tremble to his shoulders, the way his heart rate picks up as he adds on. “No matter what happens. Together, okay?”
I don’t know if that’s a promise that he’ll be there for me if I fall apart and realize I am a monster after all, but his quiet confidence and sweet vulnerability is enough to make me nod.
“Okay…” I breathe the word against him in another promise that I’m going to try my hardest. “Okay… so when I can’t paint anymore because I don’t know how to do it, you can rent me a house with a studio and a deck so I can find my inspiration again.
” I manage to squeeze the words out playfully even though something inside me still feels terrified, frozen around the possibility that I will fuck this up.
“First of all, you’re going to be fine, Loh. Promise, I’ll be your muse. And second…” Donovan tilts my head up and presses a kiss to my nose. “If you really need a house with a view of the water so you can paint sunsets, that’s what we’ll do.”
I blink up at him, feeling the softest smile lift my lips—something honest and real that I’m not sure I’ve ever offered him before.
“That easy, huh?”
Donovan nods. “Yeah, that easy. What’s the point in having money if I don’t get to spend it to be exactly where I want to be?”
That makes me ache just a little. “You want to be by the water with sunsets?”
“No,” he answers. “But I want to be wherever you are, California.”
I really, really hope I don’t fuck this up.
A few hours later, after Donovan convinced me to paint an entire ocean scene and put it up on my website to prove that I was still an artist after all, we’re cuddled on the couch together.
I look at the piece, the way it’s already marked sold. It’s one of my clients who lives in Florida, and they told me it would look great in their beach house before they paid me a thousand dollars for it.
Donovan was practically gloating when he dragged me into the shower so we could wash the paint off my body.
More surprisingly, I see a message from Sidney waiting for me when we settle against the couch after Donovan gives me what is probably the slowest, most teasing blow job a person could ever give.
I half think it’s a reward for me proving myself wrong…
but the other half of me is pretty sure he did it because he loves to touch me just as much as I love to touch him.
My eyes flick to the message waiting for me again before I swipe out of it.
Not your usual, but I’ll still take it. I feel like you haven’t put up anything new in a while.
I don’t like that he can tell that it’s different, though maybe he just means it’s not angry and full of pain for once. That art was full of hope. A promise for a future that I’m not even sure I deserve.
And the silly thing is, Donovan already had to talk me out of taking it back. Not because it has him in it… but because he told me to paint it.
I want to save it.
I want to hang it on the walls of a house that’s only hypothetical, but feels like a promise of a future we could have together.
I’m still staring at the image of the painting and contemplating refunding the thousand when Donovan tenses beside me on the couch.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my eyes flicking to his phone screen. His eyes are fixated on it, so my question should probably be what’s on the phone instead of what’s wrong. Donovan frowns and swipes out of a message, tossing it to the side.
“I’m always getting weird messages from fans, but sometimes they’re really weird.” There’s something about the way he says it that tells me there’s more to what he’s saying… and I have to bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper to keep myself from asking him.
I want to know who makes him frown. I want to know who is bothering him…
But I want to be good for him more than that.
I want to be the Shiloh he sees when he looks at me, the one he wants to move in with, wants to have a life with.
I want to be that Shiloh, and I’m pretty sure if I got the name of someone who was upsetting him, I’d end up breaking my promise before I’d ever even had a chance to start.