The back room is all windows and light. Canvases stacked against the walls. Jars of brushes. Watercolor palettes stained with years of use. It smells like paper and pigment and something deeply personal.
“This is where the kids paint,” she says. “Big tables. Natural light. Mess encouraged.”
I step closer, drawn in. “You built all this.”
She nods. “Art’s just another way to make people feel fed.”
I smile despite myself. “You’re dangerous.”
She laughs, then reaches for a brush. Dips it into red. Then orange. Then black.
“These,” she says softly, stepping closer, “are the colors I see when I look at you.”
Before I can stop her, she drags the brush down my forearm.
I freeze.
The touch is light. Intentional. Electric.
She adds another stroke. Smoke-dark. Ember-hot.
My pulse roars.
I lean in, slow, deliberate, giving her every chance to pull away.
She doesn’t.
Chapter Eight
Ember
I don’t breathe when Boone takes the brush from my fingers.
I should. I know that. Oxygen is generally important for survival. But the moment stretches, thick and humming, and all I can do is watch his hand—broad, scarred, steady—as he dips the bristles into water and then into color.
Soft color.
Not the reds and blacks I chose for him.
Blues. Golds. Pale blush.
My throat tightens.
“What are you doing?” I ask, trying for teasing and landing somewhere closer to bare.
He doesn’t answer right away. Steps closer instead, his presence pressing into the space like gravity. The windows throw late-afternoon light across his shoulders, catching the paint streaked along his forearm. Fire and smoke and danger.
Then the brush touches my skin.
Just below my collarbone.
I gasp.
“Standing still,” he says quietly. “That’s what you’re doing.”
I swallow. “Bossy.”
“Accurate.”
