But as that date drew closer and my loneliness grew deeper instead of lessening, I began to consider the paths life had taken me on. Specifically, how I’d ended up in Crescent Cove and when I was going back.
There could be a message that I wasn’t seeing.
Sure, certain heartbreak and an early onset midlife crisis seemed like the likely ones. But I was an artist. Trained to look deeper.
An artist who was doing a series of paintings on the one woman I was supposed to be forgetting. So far, that wasn’t working out too well. Not to mention I was dreaming about her so much that I had no choice but to get them out of my head and on to paper.
I looked between the trio of canvases I had on easels in my studio. What I should’ve done was put them up for consignment—once they were finished anyway. The last thing I needed were more reminders of her.
Though it didn’t matter, because I thought of her all day every day anyway.
The first one was an amalgamation of that charcoal drawing I’d done in the park the day after our kiss. I’d changed her attire from just the scarf to the white dress shirt I’d dreamed of the night we’d been together. The material draped over her curves, clinging to her in some places and falling loosely in others.
Of course I kept dreaming about her in it.
I was near obsessed with getting everything down. The interesting shadows that teased the juncture of her thighs, mostly hidden by her shirttails. My shirttails, the buttons strategically undone. Her long hair dipped over one eye.
She made the perfect ingenue.
Perfectly unattainable.
In the second painting, she was different, although the changes were modest. Her hair was just a bit wilder, her shoulders back, the shirt barely held closed. More shadows. More defiance in every line of her body. Her beauty fisted my throat and made the sweeps of my paintbrush erratic.
I tried to catalog every detail, to show the subtle changes from the first. I didn’t know why I’d done a series. We’d only had that one stolen night. It wasn’t as if I’d seen her evolve. I never would.
The third canvas was bare.
I didn’t know what I’d do for that one. I’d just known I had to do three.
After I’d worked for a while getting the shading just right of her hair over her shoulder, I grabbed my phone and took a few quick snapshots of the paintings in progress. I liked to catalog the stages of each piece. Some of my customers enjoyed seeing the process of them coming to life. And sometimes, I just needed to have a record of every step.
Then I tossed my cell over my shoulder in the direction of the mattress and went back to it.
Awhile later, my phone buzzed, and I fumbled on my bed until I found it in the disordered sheets. When I did manage to lay down, rest was elusive. More nights than not, I stumbled out of bed to paint. I was driven to finish these, even if it felt like I was painting a future I couldn’t see yet.
Maybe that was just wishful thinking.
I glanced at the readout. My real estate agent, Connie.
My heartbeat kicked into high gear.
“Hi, Connie. What’s up?”
“You know what’s up. Your offer was accepted.”
I sat on the edge of my bed. “No counter?”
“None. Looks like you’re going to be a new homeowner, Callum. Congratulations.”
Those words echoed in my head as I drove toward Crescent Cove an hour later. Instead of the mini blizzard I’d encountered the first time I’d driven this route, today the sunshine reflected off the icicles gleaming on roofs and sparkled on the thin glaze of snow on lawns. It was still cold enough to freeze my balls, but the sun made me think spring was coming.
Someday.
Dare had a loaner waiting for me when I dropped off my car for the custom work we’d talked about. He was in the middle of a job so he just waved hello while Gage handled the paperwork.
“I’m going to live here soon,” I announced.
Not that he’d asked. Or even spoken much to me. Apparently, Crescent Cove-ites had long memories. At least this one did.