“Hi, honey. I’m home!” I drop my keys on the counter and look at the mail. “So, we’re going to need to talk to Jamie to get our story straight because he’ll be at the game on Friday. Ugh. This is almost over,” I say, setting down the junk mail, then moving into my room to make sure he’s still here.
When I enter, I see the canvases from my closet are spread out on the floor around his feet. My heart stops.
He’s holding one of them, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“Patterson, I can explain.”
When he glances at me, the expression on his face nearly undoes me.
“You painted these?” he asks.
“Yes. I couldn’t stop.” I stay frozen in the doorway because I don’t trust my legs.
He glances around at all of them. There’s a new one of two people sleeping between sheets.
“It’s us,” he says.
I watch his throat move as his eyes scan over my work.
“How long have you been painting me like this?” he asks without looking up.
Right now, I feel exposed, completely cracked open, like he’s read every page of my diary.
“Years.”
He stares at me.
“It sounds ridiculous,” I say. “But after that, I picked up my brushes, and you were just there. In my hands and brushstrokes, like part of you forced yourself inside of my head and refused to leave. Everything I painted in Europe was you. Your hands, shoulders, shadows. My professors used to ask about my inspiration, and I could never answer. How do I explain that it took one kiss to rewire how I saw the world?”
“You painted me for six years?” He crosses the room and stops in front of me. Our eyes meet, and he looks at me like he’s seeing my heart for the first time. And maybe he is. “Wow, Ken Doll. You really are obsessed.”
I burst into laughter. “I really tried to forget you existed. But I couldn’t.”
He’s looking at me the way he did in his parents’ basement right before everything changed.
He cups my face in his hands. His thumbs brush across my cheekbones.
“I love you, Kendall,” he says. “I love you so fucking much.”
I stop breathing. My fingers curl around his wrists and hold on like he might disappear if I let go. I’ve imagined him saying it. Late at night, when he’s asleep and I’m watching the rise and fall of his chest. In the shower, when I’m alone, and I can admit things I’d never say out loud. I’ve imagined it so many times that hearing it now feels like a dream.
“I’ve been carrying that around since the moment you came back into my life,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Choking on it every time I open my mouth. I’d watch you paint and laugh and fall asleep, and I thought it so loud that I was sure you could hear it.”
His thumbs catch the tears sliding down my cheeks.
“Then I was searching for my clothes,” he says, “and when I walked in here, I realized you felt the same. You painted us, and it’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
“I love you too.” The words tumble out of me because I need him to know I’m in as deep as he is. “I love you so much; it terrifies me.”
A sound comes out of me that’s half-laugh, half-sob. He dips his head and kisses the curve of my neck. He makes my breath catch, and I grab his shoulders to stay upright.
“Does that feel like a dream?” he murmurs against my skin.
“Kinda does,” I tell him, knowing I’ve never felt this elated in my life. “Please don’t break my heart,” I whisper, searching his eyes. “Please.”
“Kendall.” He kisses me like I’m the answer to a question he’s been asking his whole life.
I fist his shirt, and we stand in my bedroom, surrounded by my artwork, our mouths sliding together. He picks me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist as he carries me to the bed. We fall onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs, and when he looks down at me, there’s no armor or walls. He’s letting me see him, the real him, the one he usually hides from the world.
