Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

Disabled Teen Wins State with Stunning Fresco.

Girl Wins Art Festival Gold Medal with Underdeveloped Hand

No Hand? No Problem for This Year’s Leonardo da Vinci Award Winner.

No matter what I did, no matter what I created, I couldn’t escape the asterisk that followed every achievement.

I traced my index finger of my left hand along each barstool as I circled the room, and on purpose, I made Liam’s painting my last stop.

When I caught sight of it, I stopped dead in my tracks, my breath hitching in my throat.

It couldn’t have been more different from what I’d painted.

Where I’d filled my blank canvas with color and light, he’d painted his dark and dreary, harsh black oil against slightly softer shades of gray. The juxtaposition of the colors and lines made me uncomfortable, the hair standing on the back of my neck, but in the same breath, the curves and softness of the shapes within the black brought out an entirely different reaction.

Almost akin to arousal.

Though to the naked, untrained eye, the canvas was nothing but blobs of black and white and gray, oil thick and messy from not having proper time to dry, I could see a whole world on that canvas. I saw dozens of women, their curvy shapes filling every inch, thighs spread and chests arching, breasts pushed to the sky. I saw lips opened in ecstasy, and lashes splayed out against freckled cheeks.

It was all so secretive, and the more I looked, the more I found. It was like the painting on the surface was nothing, but if you just took even one moment to pause and stare, it would reveal its entirety to you bit by bit and keep you captivated.

So many emotions swirled inside me staring at that painting. Each new breath came shallower and shallower. My heart raced in my chest. My lips parted. My eyelids became heavy.

Before I could think to stop myself, I reached for the painting with the thumb of my right hand. I couldn’t explain it, but I was desperate to touch the oil, to feel the painting as if it were alive and breathing right alongside me.

“Like what you see?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of a deep voice barreling from the classroom door, stumbling backward and barely catching myself before I toppled over the mess of barstools.

When I looked at the intruder, I found a smirking Liam Benson.

“Careful,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe. “Paint’s not quite dry yet.”

I zipped my lips together, standing straight and smoothing my left hand over my overalls while the other slid quietly into my pocket. “I wasn’t going to touch it.”

Liam arched a brow. “Weren’t you? Because it sure looked like—”

“I wasn’t,” I insisted, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I was just… there was a fly, and I was waving it away.”

“Ah,” he answered.

An uncomfortable silence fell between us, and I felt the weight of his eyes on me like they were strong hands pinning me to the very spot where I stood.

I cleared my throat, making my way across the room to grab my purse. “I was just leaving, so you can have the place to yourself.”

“I liked your piece.”

I stopped mid-step at that, frowning when I met his gaze.

“I’ve never seen someone capture light with oil like that — not in this century, anyway. And the detail of the buildings, the people in the streets… even the tiny lemons and oranges at the fruit stand had exquisite detail.”

My heart thumped hard in my chest, so loud and furious I heard it reverberate in my ears. “Are you making fun of me?”

“What?” he asked incredulously, pushing off where he was leaning against the doorframe. “Of course not.”

Liam watched me like I had three heads, his brows bent in concentration. I didn’t know him, and yet my annoyance for him was palpable. It shouldn’t have mattered to me that he showed up last minute and created something I never would have even thought of, but jealousy flickered like a candle in my gut, anyway.

“I mean, look, do I understand why Professor B wasn’t impressed?” he continued after a second, tilting his head this way and that. “Yeah. He sees your talent, though. He knows you’ve got something. He’s just challenging you to do more with it.”

“What, like paint pornography the way you did?”

He smirked. “Pornography, huh? Is that what you see when you look at it?”

“It’s what you painted.”

“Are you offended by female bodies?”

“No,” I scoffed. “I just… I don’t see how it relates to the assignment. He said to paint our first week in Florence. He said—”

All the blood drained from my face when it dawned on me that all those supple breasts and lush bottoms and thick thighs were exactly what filled his first week in Italy.