“I’ve already told you what I want to do, and you said no,” I grumbled, turning away to stare out the window. I wasn’t ashamed of the pout on my lips. Not even a little.
“You can’t spend every session putting on makeup, Iggy,” he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Why not?”
“Because you need something you can look at when it’s done. Something to reflect on later in the programme.”
“I can look in the mirror,” I snapped, hands curling into fists as frustration simmered under my skin.
“Iggy, please?—”
But Darren didn’t get any further, because I pushed up from the window seat and stomped towards the door like the dramatic bitch I was.
I made it halfway across the room before I stopped dead, eyes catching on the figure tucked away in the far corner.
The guy from the garden.
He sat hunched over a sketchbook, head bent, one side of his face bathed in soft golden light. The shadows carved out the sharp line of his jaw, the elegant slope of his nose. And when he lifted his head to meet my stare, his blue eyes sparked, bright and startling, like sunlight hitting ocean water.
Every evening, we sat together on the same stone bench,vaping as the sun dipped behind the trees. He’d only said four words to me the first day, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to say them at all. But since then, I’d managed to pry a few more out of him. His name was Bodhi, he was from LA, and his walls were thick and high and mortared with something far heavier than attitude.
I was determined to chip away at them.
I didn’t know why. Before rehab, I’d rarely bothered to look at anyone beyond their surface. Not since leaving the ballet. I didn’t need to when the only people in my orbit were half-decent company while I was high or a nameless fuck when I was bored. As long as they could have a good time or get me off, I didn’t need to know what made them tick.
I knew it was shallow. Dr Williams had made sure I could admit that to myself. But Bodhi wasn’t like those people, and for the first time in a long time, I found myself wanting to know what lurked beneath.
Something about Bodhi intrigued me. Maybe it was the shadows that clung to him like a ghost, weighing down his shoulders. Maybe it was the way he drifted into his own head when he thought no one was watching. I wasn’t sure. I just knew I wanted to understand what was going on behind those eyes. I wanted to understandhim.
Before I could think it through, I marched across the room to where Bodhi sat. Leaning over, I slapped my hands down on the table beside his sketchbook. He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, silently asking what the hell I wanted.
“Are you finished?” I asked, flicking my gaze down at the page he’d been attacking with a stick of charcoal, only to freeze when I saw what he’d drawn.
Me.
Curled up in a tight little ball on the window seat, kneestucked to my chest. The sunlight caught one side of my face while the other was swallowed in shadow. My expression was blank, but my eyes... god, they looked so sad. Hollow. Exactly like the version of myself I only ever saw reflected back at me when I was alone. A look I never let anyone else glimpse.
And yet Bodhi had seen it. Seen me. And then he’d put it on paper, every raw edge and crack sketched into place.
It almost hurt to look at. To see how broken I felt on the inside laid bare in front of me, exposed by the hands of someone who was technically still a stranger. Part of me wanted to grab the charcoal he’d used and ruin his work. To gouge those too-honest eyes right off the page.
But the drawing was... beautiful, in a way. Real. And I couldn’t bring myself to destroy something he’d created with such careful detail. Not when he’d seen right through me.
I was almost startled when Bodhi snapped the sketchbook shut, hiding his creation. But it reminded me why I’d come over in the first place.
“Well?” I prompted.
“Uh... I guess so,” he said, shifting in his seat and lifting a tattooed arm to rub the back of his neck. The move was so unmistakably self-conscious that I wondered if he was embarrassed I’d seen the drawing. That I knew he’d been watching me from across the room.
“Great.” I straightened and clapped my hands together. “Can I borrow your face?”
“Huh?”
I nudged his sketchbook out of the way and perched on the edge of the table. “I’d like to borrow your face, please.”
He frowned, lips pursing in a way that was honestly unfairly adorable. “Why?”
“Darren said I can’t beat my own face, so I’d like to beat yours.”
