Epilogue
EMMETT
Four months later
“Not that anyone is rushing you, but how long do you think you’re going to take this time?” I eye my wife as she waddles past me with a sly smirk.
“Impatient much?” she says sassily.
“It’s the eighth time you’ve used the bathroom since these asshats arrived!”
“And who’s fault is this?”
I smirk at my wife. “You’re the one who seduced me?—”
“Shut up!” She rushes back to me, covers my mouth with her palm, her eyes blazing. “Everyone can hear you!”
I glance to the side to see our friends, Astraea and King, Kimberly and Noah all staring at us with varied expressions on their faces.
“I can’t believe this,” Kimberly mutters in disbelief. “Were these two always this… brazen?”
“More like perverted, really,” Noah chuckles. “I swear it’s always the quiet ones! Now they discuss the number of times they visit the bathroom in front of mixed company. I’m appalled!”
“Oh shut it, Noah,” my wife says, laughing and looking like a radiant blossom in the sun. God, she’s gorgeous. “You used to grant lewd wishes and now you’re the poster boy for manners?”
“Hey, don’t bring up my past!” Noah clutches his imaginary pearls, and the girls laugh at the idiot’s antics.
“Seriously, give me a moment,” my wife says and rushes out of the room.
We’re in Westbrook Blues where we’ve been for the past few months, finding a rhythm that works for us. And it’s been going very well.
“Jesus Christ, what happened to your face?” Noah suddenly points at me.
“What?”
“It looks like… wait, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the same disease he’s been suffering from these past few months!”
“What disease?”
“Smiling,” King says simply.
I deadpan as the rest of the room dissolves in a fit of laughter.
“Very funny,” I grumble, annoyed and wanting these shitheads out of my house but I need their help. “Can you get back to work?”
Surprising my wife is the hardest thing to do for me. It’s close to impossible.
I can’t catch her unawares, nor can I just spring something on her.
Her sixth sense is always tingling and now that she’s pregnant, she’s extra sensitive about anything I do. It’s been a nightmare but thank God for her recent love for the bathroom.
“Move it there, you directionless idiot,” I tell Noah who flips me off.
“Hey, you’re the one who asked for our help and now you’re complaining?”
“Is this what you deal with every single day?” I ask Kimberly. “I never realized how troubled you’ve been.”
Kimberly sighs dramatically. “That’s my man. I’m going to stick beside him.”
The whole room pauses and looks at Kim and she looks around, confused.
“I can’t believe you just said that,” Astraea says laughing softly.
“What?”
“You, the fiercest woman that can slit a throat without blinking an eye, you’re going to stick beside your man?” King asks, shaking his head. “Love is dangerous, I tell you. It can tame even the most vicious of butterflies!”
The whole room agrees, with Noah’s eyeing his fiancée all lovey-dovey and shit.
When we hear my wife waddling back, I quickly shoo away the imposters so they leave through the back door, leaving the room with only me and my wife.
“Where did everyone go?” she questions, eyes wide.
“To the bathroom.”
“All of them? At once?” She deadpans, folding her arms.
“Yeah, I don’t know what those idiots do in their spare time. God only knows what kinks they get into.”
“Emmett.”
My heart jumps in my chest when my sweet wife says my name.
She communicates so many emotions just by the way she calls me. I know now she’s impatient and curious.
“I have something for you, baby,” I tell her and grab her hand. “Will you come with me?”
“Hmm, am I going to like this?”
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully and then lead her to the room off the library where we were just gathered. “Please close your eyes. Or I’ll blindfold you again.”
A tingle of excitement zaps through my wife as soon as I say the magic B word.
“Behave, Mrs. Easton. There’ll be plenty of playtime later,” I whisper to which she giggles.
Our bedroom has been very interesting lately, but now’s not the time to dwell on that so she closes her eyes, and I lead her where I need her to be.
“Now, open your eyes.”
IVY
I do as I’m told and come face to face with a huge studio-like room.
To the left, there are some white cubicles, like the ones found in a museum or in an art gallery, with paintings of different kinds… abstract, pencil sketches, watercolors, oil paintings, acrylics, watercolors, frescos, hell there are even pastel canvases…
“Is this your studio?” I whisper, my heart racing.
I’m seeing Emmett’s studio for the first time since we met almost two decades ago! This is a huge deal!
As I gawk at the space, my heart leaps in my chest with a vengeance.
I take a step into the room, with my eyes stuck on the nearest a painting.
Is that? No, it can’t be!
Before I know it, I move past Emmett, walking into the room as fast as I can, I almost run until I’m right in front of the painting only for my mouth to drop open.
I look at the next painting, and the next and the next… each one confirming my initial thought.
All of these paintings… are of me!
“Oh my God,” I gasp, my breath catching in my lungs.
It’s an entire exhibit… of me.
Me reading a book with a perplexed expression on my face.
Me looking out the car window with flat eyes as if my mind is faraway.
In another, I’m tossing up flower petals watching them float away in the wind with a complicated look on my face.
The next one is of me lying on my back, gazing up the stars above Westbrook Blues.
Before I know it, I’m in the middle of the room, with my heart in my throat, my fingers itching because this is me from when I was a little girl… to me just a month ago, half-smiling, looking distant and preoccupied.
“Oh God,” I whisper.
Actually, the subject of each painting is in semi-profile.
Her face can’t be seen completely… but because each of these paintings are a very tangible, real memory in my mind, how can I not recognize myself?
The tight, coiled curly hair.
The pigtails I’d rock on a daily when I was eight years old through to ten years old.
The braids I tried at eleven years old.
The short hair I got after I cut my hair just after Samuel and I had to leave Westbrook Blues when I was thirteen…
It’s all there, leaving no doubt that the girl in these drawings, these highly detailed paintings… is me.
I turn around like a mouse in a maze, my mind reeling with confusion, shock and a sense that comes from one irrefutable fact I discover right then and there…
I’ve been observed and watched in secret for years.
I notice another familiar trait that makes my stomach dip.
Most of the paintings on display look like the subject is suffering in some way.
She’s worried about something.
Confused.
In agony.
Curious.
Sad.
Lonely.
Depressed.
Holy God… what is this?
“Notice something?” The smooth, deep, cultured voice speaks.
I don’t have a hope of turning around because he’s right behind me, looking up at the painting completely in red.
“Is this…” I trail off as my stomach knots and twists painfully.
The girl in this particular painting looks determined, stubborn, resolute and fearless.
At least that’s what springs up in my mind as I stare at the girl who looks exactly like me… painted in the most creative, stunning way possible.
“What is this?” I croak.
“Don’t you know?”
Do I?
Emmett has always been an artist whose talents are never exposed.
Every work he creates has been kept secret and under wraps. Even though I’ve known him for almost my whole life, I’ve never seen any of his works.
I’ve seen him in the process of creating a painting all but twice… and both times were under very strained circumstances, hovering over the edge of destruction.
And now, after a forever and a half of dying with curiosity, desperate for a peak of his creativity, of what he paints, what he makes, what he expresses on canvas or with a chisel and pick, I’m now looking at over twenty-seven paintings of me.
“Jesus, Emmett what is this?” I whisper, turning around swiftly to face him.
“It’s me… for you.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“This…” he stretches out his arms at the paintings, but his sharp green eyes stay fixed on me. “This is all of me for you, Angel.”
My God.
I hold his firm stare, feeling stunned and deeply touched.
He painted me.
This incredibly primal, intense, forceful man who exudes a kind of strength, scorching magnetism and focus has told me once that he’d never feel for me what I feel for him… this man… he painted me for years!
“Emmett…”
“I know this might look or even feel creepy but if immortalizing your beauty, bravery and authenticity is considered sadistic then I’ll gladly be locked away in a mental institution for it!”
I’m stunned into silence.
Emmett’s eyes are blazing with something too fierce and all-consuming that I dare not look away.
“All these years, I lived through you, baby.” he says softly, stepping even closer until we’re literally almost fused together, with my pregnant belly that’s now showing between us.
He stares into my eyes fiercely, sincerely and steadily.
“I never had the courage to show you my work because I didn’t want you to think I was a pervert, but this is my work.
I paint you,” he tells me in a low, raspy voice intended for my ears only.
“When I was too sick to live a normal life, you allowed me to live through you. When I was too closed off, unable to process emotion, I’d paint you to understand what anger meant, what curiosity meant, what kindness is, compassion, joy…
all this I understood through you, baby, because to me, you are life. ”
I think I die right there and there.
My knees weaken.
My breath quickens.
And my heart? Well, that thing is about to burst.
“Now you know,” he says hoarsely, caging me between him and the painting behind me. “It has always been you, Angel. There was no one else for me, but you. I love you when I shouldn’t have. I loved you when I didn’t even know it and I loved you when I couldn’t show it to the world.”
My God, never in my pains and aches did I think a moment so solemn and wonderful would be dedicated to me.
“You should also know how integral you are to me,” he goes on. “No one understands me the way you do. No one has loved me the way you have. No one has stolen my soul and made it better the way you have. I’ll spend the rest of my life showing you everything.”
“Oh Emmett, I love you so much. You had me from the moment I listened to your heartbeat,” I cry, my heart full of joy, it feels like it might burst.
These last few months, it’s like I’m dreaming.
He had our contract framed and hung up in our bedroom. When I finally read the whole thing I realized it gave me all the power and that yes, I was Emmett’s forever. I didn’t even see that before.
Also, I wake up to fresh flowers, sometimes vases full or a single rose beside my pillow with a notes that greets me and with one, he tells me how much he loves me.
Everyday, he spends time with me in the library. While I read silently, he holds me on his lap, nuzzling my hair without saying a word.
A month ago, he sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do in life, and I told him I wasn’t sure anymore. I dropped out of med school and was feeling very sad, but he comforted me, and when I was ready, listened to all my ideas, ready to let me try something.
My husband believes that when one has a goal in life that they’re passionate about, life is easier to bear, and I see it too.
Then he took me into his studio, made me sit between his legs and he taught me some basic pottery skills. It’s his favorite thing because the session always ends with us in a precarious position.
He takes walks with me, holding my hand all the way and never lets go.
But my favorite is when he cooks for me! God, I’m a goner for my husband’s cooking. It’s honestly the only meal I can keep down.
He has taken me on spontaneous dates all over the country, showing me the things he likes and asking what I’ve stopped liking and why because he wants to get this right and know me for who I am now, not who I was.
We’re two people who’ve been trying to heal and actually surrender to the cards we’ve been dealt and live this life to the fullest.
And this man has been making each day feel like I’m in a land of love, peace and joy.
“I know exactly how you feel,” my husband says gruffly. “I’m going to fight like hell to make up for all the years we lost. I love you.”
He kisses me deeply, stealing my breath away until his phone rings and he pulls back, clearly annoyed.
I turn to look at the paintings again, but I can hear him talk to George on the phone.
Suddenly, a thought I had some time ago comes popping in my mind again so when my husband hugs me from behind, I can’t help but ask, the alarms going off in my head.
“Baby?”
“Yes, love of my heart?”
I preen at that. God, this man knows how to seduce.
Focus!
“Uh, that year we all came back to Westbrook Blues, my brother, me, and Astraea, George had pretended to be dead, Astraea and Alex’s abuse was not known and Noah’s adoption too was still hidden…”
Emmett tenses behind me and is silent for a long time before he asks me in a low tone, “Ask me.”
My heart drops to the pit of my stomach but I ask anyhow.
“How long had you known the truth on each of those matters and why did you pretend not to know?”
Poison is never the end, sometimes it’s the beginning…
THE END
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