Taken By the Pack

I hadno idea how much time had passed, it could have been minutes or hours, but I had to admit I felt a whole lot better. Standing back with my hands on my hips to admire my artwork really brought my self-confidence flooding to the surface. I’d become engrossed in painting, in making the sunrise the best painting I could, and I felt like I had truly done it. This was some of my best work in a very long time. The colors were really vibrant, and they popped off the canvas amazingly. Although it wasn’t a happy and upbeat painting. My emotions had definitely shown through as I’d worked. I let them fuel me as I created, and what was left behind was something intense and deeply powerful that you really had to study to see every detail.

And study it I would. I was hoping that by taking a step back and really taking it all in, I would be able to see everything so much clearer. I wanted to know what I was supposed to do next. I cocked my head to one side and tried to work out which feeling I wanted to deal with first. Which issue surging through my system needed to be processed before the others. There was still a lot to deal with.

“Is this the right…? Oh my goodness…”

I had pretty much forgotten there were other people in the house, that was how taken in by my work I’d become. So, the voice was jarring, and it almost knocked me off my feet. Mostly because it was that same voice I’d been trying to push to the back of my mind. It really wasn’t going to be easy to forget about the past for the sake of working together when he was so much like Trey. The Trey I fell head over heels in love with, so much so that I didn’t care about my father’s disapproval. The Trey I mentally planned my wedding and happily ever after with, the man I assumed would be mine forever. Not the Trey I found cheating on me. It was so damn easy to get lost in the fantasy of what might have happened between us, had he been the version I’d imagined been real. If he really was the lovely guy I adored.

“So sorry, Renee, I’ve wandered in to the wrong room…”

I twisted around with the paint brushes still clutched tightly between my fingers to offer Toby a smile. He wasn’t Trey. He was never anything like his twin brother. I might not have gotten to know Toby too well when I was with Trey because I was too embroiled in him, but he’d always seemed like a nice guy to me. A gentleman with a heart of gold who would never break me like Trey did. Toby was the fantasy version of his twin. He was the guy I wanted…

Maybe my mind was a little frazzled and I wasn’t exactly as mentally in the room as I would have liked to have been. The lack of sleep and the emotions that had risen within me really gripped onto me hard and took control. The idea that Toby was my Trey took hold and all I could do was follow that instinct. There wasn’t even a small voice inside me screaming that this was all wrong and I needed to stop. No, my brain was completely consumed by the idea that I had chosen the wrong twin brother. That maybe Toby was the one I should have offered my heart to all those years ago. Maybe then I would have found my happily ever after, and I wouldn’t have been coerced into the situation I currently found myself in.

No oil company job, no marriage to Diego Vanderbilt, no need to worry about the children I was expected to have running around at my feet in less than a year…

A life without oppression, that would be really something. A life where I could make my own decisions and marry for love, not for some business arrangement. That was the reason I fell for Trey, because I was in college, was free for the very first time, and I wanted to carve out my own path. That was intoxicating, as was Toby. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from walking toward him, swaying my hips as I went. Instead of the usual prim Renee I presented myself as, I was primal and animalistic. Practically living inside my painting, inside the daydream in my mind. All the things that usually plagued me didn’t exist anymore. All the issues I’d been working out on the canvas melted away into nothingness, and it was only me and him left. Toby and I were locked away in a bubble where nothing could get in or out. I followed the instincts taking control of me. Toby’s eyes widened like he was stunned to the core, but I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t move. He was as drawn to me as I was him, which was dangerous.

Dangerous, but really something…