I hold her eyes, letting her see the honesty in mine. “Please?”
She hesitates, and I can see the battle on her face, the instinct to guard herself and the quiet pull to let me in.Please, let me in, Liv.Slowly, she reaches for the hem and peels it over her head, revealing the simple sports bra and the warm flush on her chest.
I step closer, the brush in my hand. The room is thick with the tang of paint that clings to the back of my throat. I know I’m about to cross a boundary. And yet, I can’t stop myself.
“You’ve been carrying around this story in your head about who you are and what you’re worth,” I say, my voice softer than the bristles touching her skin. “But what I see? I see someone who is brave enough to be messy. To start again. To stand in front of me and not hide.”
The first stroke lands just above her collarbone, a sweep of blue drifting over her shoulder. The bristles drag with a whisper, leaving a cool trail that makes her shiver, though she doesn’t move away. I drag the instrument back gently, and her breathhitches, caught between a laugh and a sigh, and my hand steadies against the rise of her shoulder.
I don’t need to know every detail about her past to know that she’s a human who’s been hurt. She carries it like armor, and I’m eager to see past that, to help her see past that, too.
“You think you’re just the darkness on that canvas,” I murmur, tracing the curve of her shoulder and down her arm, “but you’re also every soft color in between. Every detail that makes it whole.”
I paint slowly, with intention that I hope she feels, gliding along the line of her arm, the gentle swell of her breasts, down the slope where her pulse beats against her perfect skin. Each touch is a sentence I can’t quite say out loud, each stroke a truth she doesn’t believe yet. But I want her to.
She glistens in the dimming light, wet paint silvering against the growing shadows.
Her fresh apple scent, one that now lives in my apartment, mingles with the sharpness from the paint.
I pause, lifting my gaze from the trail of color to her eyes. They shine, catching the light like glass catching flame, and for a moment, the world feels unbearably still, hanging in a balance of almost and maybe.
I let the last words fall between us. “You don’t see what I see when I look at you.” I sweep a strand of hair from her face. “Maybe because you haven’t been looking at me.”
My hand trembles, but it’s not from nerves, it’s from how badly I want to touch her without the brush between us.
She’s watching me like she’s trying to memorize this, too, her chest rising a little quicker, catching each time the brush leaves her skin. There’s a pull in the air now, heavy enough that I can feel it tug in my lungs.
I force myself to keep my pace steady, to give her time to decide what this is. The last sweep of the brush curves just aboveher heart at the start of her sports bra, and I swear the warmth of it travels through the handle to the tips of my fingers.
Those blue depths are wide, bright, and something in them threatens to rewrite me from the inside out. The space between us feels so small now, I can hear the way she swallows before speaking.
“Jay,” she says quietly, and my name in her voice feels like it’s meant for me alone.
“Yeah?”
Her gaze drops to my mouth for the briefest second, then comes back. “You’re wrong.”
“About what?”
Her breath shivers out, skating along my jaw. It’s not a touch but it ripples down my spine as if she were touching me anyway. “I’ve been looking,” she continues, voice barely there. “I just didn’t know how to trust myself enough to want you.”
The words linger between us as fresh as the paint on her skin, impossible to touch without leaving a mark. I watch her inhale and exhale.
She looks down at the blue streaks on her skin. “But you make me feel beautiful.”
“You are beautiful, Liv.”
“You make me feel safe.”
“You are with me.”
“Will you do something?” she asks, color staining her cheeks.
“Anything.”
Her eyes turn steel blue. “Kiss me.”
It’s not a question. It’s an answer to everything humming between us.
