I watched her look at them.
Take them in.
The one on the left depicted our hands and forearms on our barely-gray sheets, our fingers interlocked. The black polish on her nails was chipped in a few places, and the matching color on mine was flecked with spots of the green and gray paint I'd been working with that day.
I hadn't been able to get the image out of my mind, one day, after we'd been together for a few years. I'd kept it on the wall in my studio, when we were together.
The painting on the right was of her bare legs draped across my inked thighs while we sat on our blue couch. My hands rested on her legs, and her shorts were sitting on the floor. We had been trying to watch a movie she was dying to see, with her fidget toys to keep her magic at bay.
The toys hadn't worked, soI'd slipped my hand between her thighs and fucked her with my fingers through the rest of the movie. I'd rolled her over and taken her from behind on the couch when it ended.
The painting in the middle of the trio was... different.
Not just a nice image.
Not just a nice memory, either.
Four years into our relationship, I got a call about my mother's death. I wasn't sad, I wasfurious. Liv hadn't understood whatwas going on when I was upset for two full days, and I hadn't been willing to tell her.
She finally followed me into the bathroom and asked me what I needed, on the night of the second day.
I told her I needed her to distract me. She stripped her clothes off and took my cock in her mouth until I hauled her onto the countertop and fucked her hard. When our climaxes ended, I'd lost control of my emotions, and I'd cried.
Not because of my mother's death. Because of all the fucking twisted things our father had done to us, that she hadn't protected us from.
Liv had held me.Clungto me. Her grip was iron and her eyes were soft as she listened to me recount some of the awful, brutal things Larson and I had survived.
The painting was of that day. My view in the mirror in those moments. Her bare ass on the bathroom countertop, her back arched and her skin pulled by the desperate grip of the arms I had wrapped around her. Her hair was tangled, falling unphotogenically over one of her shoulders and one of my biceps.
The painting was rough.
Brutal.
It waseverything.
And it was the reason I'd worn her scent on my skin every day since she threw me out. The reason I hadn't forgiven myself for the nighteverythingwent to hell, either.
Larson screwed up the spell, but I fucked up with Liv.I let her think I was choosing Larson over her. I hadn't made it clear enough to her in the five years we spent together that she was my entire fucking world.
There wasn't a single cell in my body that would accept me letting her die for any reason. She should've known that, but she didn't.
We may not have had a bargain, but the woman already owned my soul. How could she not see that?
Liv finally looked away from the painting and met my eyes. Whatever she was thinking, I didn't know.
I should've gotten up the fucking courage to go after her sooner. To go to her door and tell her that she was everything to me and would always be everything to me.
But I hadn't.
"I should've believed you sooner," she said quietly.
"I never should've put you in that situation."
Liv nodded.
Then she slipped a bottle of black nail polish out of her bra and gestured for me to come closer. "This is the real peace offering."
My lips curved upward slightly, and I walked to the bed. We sat beneath the blankets that smelled like our past while she explained the deal she'd made with Jonah, and the agreement she made with Gwen.
