Had I already scared him away?
I fought to keep my anxiety at bay as I slipped out of bed.
Logically, it didn't make sense for him to leave.
He'd asked me to mate with him, regardless of fate. He'd dressed me in his t-shirt and tucked me into a bed that smelled like both of us after helping me shower, and even though his spot had gone cold, I knew he had been holding me when I fell asleep beneath the blankets.
He wouldn't have left me.Not completely.
I forced myself to breathe evenly as I walked to the kitchen, looking for him there.
It was empty.
So was the living room—though I noticed someone had put a new landscape painting up on the wall in there, where one used to sit when we were together.
I checked the gym.
The pool room.
The movie room.
The three spare rooms.
The back porch.
Maybe Niall had left after all, though he'd also left paintings everywhere. A few of them were the landscapes he was mostly known for. Most were paintings ofus. And only half of them were paintings I'd seen before.
I'd study them later. When I knew whether or not he was still there.
I was on my way to the garage to check for his truck when I saw the door to his home studio, tucked at the very far end of the house.
The studio was the last place to check.
The door was already cracked, and I opened it a little more as I peeked my head in.
Niall was sitting on the floor, his back leaning against the wall and his palms braced on the tile, with his legs sprawled out in front of him.
He glanced my way, but didn't smile when he saw me.
I'd left the plants I'd wrecked the room with, when I wrapped some of his paintings so I could safely drive them over to his current studio. They were everywhere.
"Sorry about the plants," I said, not stepping inside.
We'd never had a conversation about it, but his studios had always been his space. They were sacred, and I'd never had any desire to mess that up for him. He invited me in sometimes, and I obviously had no problem going inside when he did, but I never went in without an invitation.
Except after I kicked him out. When I trashed the place with greenery.
"I don't care about the plants, Livvy." He tipped his head to the side, a silent invitation for me to come in and sit down by him.
I did, leaving enough space between us for him to work through whatever he was thinking or feeling.
He stared out at the plants.
I did too.
"I fucked up the vibes, huh?" I asked after a few minutes, mostly because I was going to have a panic attack if I couldn't find something else to focus on. I wanted desperately to just be there for him, but my magic made that difficult.
"The vibes can be fixed a lot easier than most things."
