Epilogue
The gallery has two walls I never touch.
The east wall is Levi’s. Twelve carvings from that first morning, plus the new pieces he’s brought in since.
The bull elk, a series of wildflower studies in reclaimed cedar, and a large panel of the ridge at dawn that a collector from Denver offered four thousand dollars for.
Levi turned down the offer because he carved it for me, not for a stranger’s living room.
The west wall is mine. Charcoal portraits, framed in simple black, lit by the track lighting I adjusted myself. Between them, centered on the main wall, the half-finished charcoal portrait of Levi still hangs where he put it that first morning.
I never finished it. I never will. It’s better this way. The place where my hand stopped and reached for him instead says more than any completed drawing could.
The Trading Post women. The firefighters I started drawing after Levi brought me to the station for the first time.
Dean mid-laugh. Holt leaning against the engine with his arms crossed.
Graham looking at something off the page that I knew, when I drew it, was Neve.
The newest addition is our daughter, Amelia, eight months old, asleep in her bouncer with one fist curled against her cheek.
Levi cried when I hung that one. I pretended not to notice. He pretended to believe me.
The rest of the gallery is other people’s work, curated the way I’ve always curated it. But those two walls are ours. Nobody buys from them. Nobody asks to. The regulars understand, and the tourists learn fast.
It’s after hours. The courtyard is dark, the other shops closed.
Amelia is home with Laurelle, who offered to watch her for the evening.
Dean is on shift with Levi, and Laurelle said our girls would keep each other busy.
I didn’t argue. My husband gets off at six, the gallery closes at five, and the hour between is mine to work in the quiet.
I’m alone behind the counter, finishing a new piece on the easel.
Levi’s hands. Just the hands, holding a carving tool, his massive fingers wrapped around the handle with a delicacy that still catches me off guard.
I’m working from memory, shading the tendons across the back of his knuckles, when the bell chimes.
He fills the doorframe. He always will. Station shirt untucked, pine resin on his forearms from the carving he was working on this morning before his shift. He locks the door behind him, turns the sign, and walks to the counter without a word.
He looks at the drawing on the easel. His hands, rendered in charcoal by mine.
“You’re still here,” he says.
“Almost done.”
He comes around the counter, takes the charcoal out of my fingers, and sets it aside. Then he leans down, his mouth close to my ear, and says, “Time for a break.”
His mouth is on mine before I can draw another breath, deep and hungry, tasting of the coffee he drinks at the station and the wild mint he chews on the drive over. Five years, and my body still lights up like the first time. I kiss him back hard, fisting the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
His hands slide down my sides, gripping my hips, lifting me onto the counter like I weigh nothing. Charcoal sticks clatter to the floor.
“Levi—” I start, but he’s already dropping to his knees between my spread thighs, pushing my skirt up to my waist with rough reverence.
The cool air hits my skin a second before his hot breath does.
He hooks my panties aside and looks up at me once—those dark eyes burning—then buries his face in me.
I gasp, head falling back. His tongue is relentless—broad and flat, then teasing and pointed, licking long stripes up my center before circling my clit with devastating precision.
The wet sounds of his mouth fill the quiet gallery, obscene and perfect. I thread my fingers through his hair, holding him there as my thighs tremble around his shoulders. He groans against me, the vibration shooting straight through my core.
“Look at me, Iris,” he rumbles, the words muffled against my slick flesh.
I force my eyes open. The sight hits me like a fist to the chest. Levi on his knees in my gallery, station shirt stretched across his broad back, his mouth glistening with me as he devours my pussy like it’s the only thing he’s wanted all day.
Behind him, the east wall glows faintly under the track lights—his carvings keeping watch. The bull elk, the dawn ridge he made for me. All of it there while he sucks my clit between his lips and slides two thick fingers inside me, curling them just right.
Pleasure coils tight and fast. My hips rock against his face, chasing the heat of his tongue. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, fucking me with his fingers while his mouth works me higher until I come. Hard.
My cry echoes off the high ceilings as my whole body clenches around his fingers and jerks with the force of it. He keeps licking me through it, gentling but not leaving, drawing out every last pulse until I’m boneless and panting.
He rises then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes wild.
In one smooth motion, he pulls me off the counter and down onto the floor with him, laying me on the cool hardwood behind the counter.
My back meets the polished wood as he strips my panties off completely and shoves his pants down just enough.
His cock springs free—thick, heavy, flushed dark—and I reach for it, stroking the velvety length once before he catches my wrist.
“Not yet,” he growls, voice wrecked.
He settles between my thighs, notching the broad head of his cock at my entrance, and pushes in slowly, stretching me open in one long, perfect slide. We both groan at the feeling. He’s so deep like this, filling every inch of me, the weight of him pressing me into the floor.
We start moving together, unhurried at first—his hips rolling in deep, steady thrusts that drag against that sensitive spot inside me with every stroke. I wrap my legs around his waist, heels digging into his back, nails raking down it through his shirt.
The gallery spins around us in soft shadows—his carvings on the east wall, my portraits on the west, the whole room holding the two of us the way it has since that first morning he hung our work side by side.
One hand braces beside my head. The other grips my thigh, spreading me wider so he can sink even deeper.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” he breathes against my neck, teeth grazing my pulse point. “Always so fucking perfect for me.”
I arch up to meet him, our bodies moving together in the empty space.
The pleasure builds again, sharper this time, fed by the sight of his face above me—jaw clenched, eyes locked on mine with that fierce, adoring intensity that still makes my heart stutter.
I cup his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones.
“Come with me,” I whisper.
He nods, pace quickening, driving into me harder, grinding against my clit with every thrust. My second orgasm crashes over me without warning, pulling a raw moan from my throat as I clench tight around him.
Levi curses, burying himself to the hilt as he follows right after—his cock pulsing deep inside me, hips stuttering with the force of his release. We ride it out together, breaths mingling, until the waves finally ebb and we’re left trembling in each other’s arms.
We stay like that for a long moment, joined and breathing hard, the gallery quiet except for our slowing heartbeats.
His carvings on one side. My portraits on the other.
The charcoal drawing of his hands is still on the easel above us, half-finished, the way the first portrait of him was half-finished the night everything changed.
I don’t rush to finish my drawings anymore. He taught me that. Some things are better when they take their time.
His lips press against my hair. His thumb traces a slow circle on my hip.
“Same time tomorrow?” he asks.
I smile. Five years, the same question every night he finds me here, the same answer every time.
“Same time tomorrow.”
The original carving is still in the window.
The Trading Post courtyard from above, carved in beetle-kill pine, every cobblestone catching the streetlight at the angle he intended.
Beside it, a small framed card in my handwriting.
Levi Stone, Local Artist. He walks past it every morning on his way to the station.
He told me once that he likes the way I framed it.
I framed it right. I frame everything right. I just needed someone to see that before I could.