“Don’t stop,” he says.
“You’re not working late.”
“I no longer have a reason.”
Because he’s no longer working for a promotion? Or is he implying he was staying late to ogle me? Not sure what to make of that statement, I pick up the pencil again.
“Carry on,” he urges with a nod of his head.
Uncertainly, I return to the drawing while he just stands there, watching me.
After a while, he pushes off the frame and crosses the floor. Stopping behind me, he peers over my shoulder. “That’s… Fuck. Impressive.”
“Thanks,” I say, suddenly shy for an inexplicable reason.
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t really know. I just draw what I see in my head.”
His deep voice drenches me like syrup, reverberating right in the hollow of my chest. “Does that mean I’m not the evil alien?”
“No,” I say softly. “You’re not.” Because no matter what he is, he’s not only bad.
“It baffles me how you add emotion to their expressions with a few pencil lines. You’re really good at this.”
I rub at the charcoal stains on my fingers. “I’ve had training, remember?”
“Even with training, few people will progress to your level.”
My stomach heats with a pleasant warmth. “Here.” I hand him the pencil. “Why don’t you try?”
He chuckles. “Believe me, you don’t want to see that.”
“No.” I tilt my head back to look at him. “I do.”
Raising his brow, he takes the proffered pencil with an animated sigh. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I flip the page to a clean one.
He rests one hand on my shoulder and bends over me, stretching his arm around me to reach the page. A smell of leather and soap invades my senses. His power wraps around me, binding me a little tighter to him. He places the charcoal point on the paper and hesitates a beat before drawing a harsh, crooked line. He crosses that line, adds a circle on the top, and then covers the circle with spirally noodles. He finishes with two dots and a half circle.
A stickman.
A laugh bubbles from my lips. “Really?”
“Fine.” Huffing, he draws feet and five stocky fingers on each hand. “There.”
“Seriously? That’s kindergarten level. You must’ve learned about dimensions in art class at school.”
“I didn’t finish school,” he says matter-of-factly. “I dropped out at fourteen.”
The news takes me aback. “Fourteen? The legal age for dropping out is fifteen.”
“Ian, my oldest brother, and I ran away from home when I was fourteen. We lived on the streets for a few years, barely surviving, so needless to say, there wasn’t any schooling involved.”
I sit dead still, absorbing the shocking facts he’s sharing, afraid he’ll stop talking if I move.
He continues in a nonchalant tone. “Ian tried to make me catch up later, but our lives were already going in a different direction then.”
“But the programming…” I say, battling to wrap my mind around the fact that he doesn’t have matric or tertiary education. He’s clearly knowledgeable, talented, and intelligent.
“Self-taught. Everything I know, I learned from books. I picked up a lot from reading.” He adds with humor, “Except for art.”
My heart clenches. Something inside me twists with compassion. And I thought I had a difficult childhood.
Putting my hand over his, I grip his fingers where he’s pinching the pencil and draw an egg. I divide it vertically into two and horizontally into three.
“The eyes go here.” Manipulating his fingers, I draw two convex lines on the top horizontal line and cross them out at the bottom. “A crooked eyebrow is questioning or angry. Straight lines running up from the outside corners of the eyes portray shock or surprise. If you reverse the lines to run up from the inside corners of the eyes, you create an angry look. Or you can combine them for stronger emotions. Pick one.”
“Skeptical,” he says.
I draw a crooked eyebrow on the left and one that shoots up from the inside of the eye on the right. “Add a little color in the center of the eye but leave a white spot for dimension. Now a few pleats on the forehead.”
He’s loose in my grip, letting me take charge of his hand. Our fingers move in tandem over the page.
“The nose goes here,” I continue, adding the two most basic lines. “And the mouth goes on the bottom line. Just a curved swipe or a cross for a pinch will do.” I drop my hand to let him see. “What do you think?”
“Holy shit. He does look skeptical.”