Kael lets himself be pulled back into it. “Tell me the answer again.”
We circle the lake while I explain the relationship between cost of living and financial freedom; how high-interest debt, like credit cards, is a woodchipper aimed at your future; and how low-cost index funds beat most managed funds without even trying.
Kael winces. Maybe the woodchipper metaphor landed harder than I meant it to.
He listens, asks a few questions, and the initial tension thins. We land on a plan where I’ll do the voiceover and he’ll paint a visual metaphor with symbols for each part of our three-pronged million-dollar strategy.
“We need to stop for a few if I’m going to paint this,” he says.
“Can’t you do it once we’re back?” I check my phone. “There’s no service here, and there’s no prize money if we miss the deadline.”
Kael drops to one knee and brushes pine needles off a flat slab of granite. He sets the canvas down with the care of prepping something sacred.
“I’m just going to ‘crank it out’ right here, if that’s fine with you.” He looks over the crystalline water. “It’s beautiful.”
I shrug off my backpack. We’ve made good time, and with the parking lot just visible across the lake, it looks like we’re already halfway.
Watching Kael paint feels uncomfortably close to watching him undress. He’s not taking anything off, but his movements all feel naked. His hands know exactly what they’re doing. His mouth softens when he concentrates. I shouldn’t be looking long enough to learn that.
He dips his brush into thick, creamy paint, fingers sure as they glide from one hue to the next. Each stroke blends color into color. He’s not painting the lake, but his eyes keep flicking back to it, like he’s listening to something only he can hear.
In another universe, Kael is exactly the kind of person I want to be. Someone who trusts himself enough to make something without needing a model first. What he’s doing on instinct, without numbers or formulas, I could never do.
I watch in silence, half-hoping that if I stare long enough I’ll figure out how he does it.
He glances over his shoulder. “Do you mind?”
Heat climbs my neck. I look away so fast it’s a blatant confession. I yank my laptop out of my bag and flip it open, grateful for the familiar grid of numbers waiting to make sense.
My spreadsheet works offline for moments like this. Well, not exactly this.
“What are you working on?” Kael asks, brushing color across the canvas.
“My life.”
CHAPTER 7
KAEL
It was fleeting,sure, but when Ash landed in my lap, I let myself imagine it. Not just Ash being fun, or flirty, or a decent lay. I pictured mornings with coffee in mismatched mugs, his too-big arms wrapped around me while I tried to paint. Our whole life bloomed in his surprises.
Like how everything could be wrong about him and he could still be my type. He knew the origins of an art movement. He carried my things without making it weird. And when he looked at me, I didn’t feel like some disaster of a man-child playacting at being an artist.
God, if he’d only stop playing Mr. Tech Bro. But he keeps jamming himself into every Silicon Valley cliché imaginable, repainting his redeeming surprises until they look mass-produced.
We’re perched on a slope near the lake, sun glinting off ripples that feel too romantic for what this is. My canvas is balanced between my knees, but the trainwreck of a piece we’ve envisioned for this little contest barely needs my attention. I swirl dark colors to match the tangle in my gut.
Ash drops onto the mossy boulder beside me, laptop open. His thigh brushes mine, warm through both our jeans, and forone profoundly unhelpful second sitting this close to him feels more intimate than it should. Then he turns his laptop toward me, revealing a spreadsheet so dense it crushes the whole moment.
I bite my tongue, and brace for impact. Five hundred dollars is a powerful motivator.
“This is my life,” he says, and it lands differently now that I can see all his numbers, charts, and graphs.
I stifle a snort. “You don’t find that… depressing?”
“Failing to plan is planning to fail,” he counters. “It’s depressing that most people drift through life without thinking about their future. It’s why, like, eighty percent of older folks struggle to retire.”
“Oh, is that why?” I’m unable to sand the edge off my voice.
