CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Michaela
After listening intently to everything Holden had to tell me about the problem that had just knocked on his front door, two thoughts were front and center in my mind:
One, I now understood exactly why the waitress at the all night diner hated me the minute she laid eyes on me. And two, there was no way in hell Holden would be able to let this girl down without breaking her heart.
Especially not a girl who was willing to walk over in the freezing cold with the hope for an overnight invite.
Sighing, I pursed my lips, and tried to decide whether I should find a delicate way to tell him, or just be blunt. “Well,” I said, going with delicate, “my first bit of advice would be to put on a shirt.”
Holden glanced down, confusion wrinkling his brow.
Smiling, I explained, “It’s kind of hard for a girl not to want you when your abs are all exposed and asking to be stroked, and stared at, and licked. Those are pretty much rational mind kryptonite, so putting them away would be in your best interest.”
His blue eyes met mine and I could feel my cheeks flare red. Shaking his head, Holden moved to grab a t-shirt from a nearby table and pulled it on to cover his chest and stomach. Disappointment filtered through me to have such a beautiful sight hidden from view.
“Okay, what next?”
“Next,” I said, going with blunt, “the only thing you can do is be honest with her.”
His expression fell. “That’s it?”
Nodding, I flashed him an apologetic grin. “Sometimes honesty is the best thing you can do. If you beat around the bush, she might cling on to hope that she can change your mind. And believe it or not, women are a lot tougher than they look. She’ll appreciate your honesty, maybe not at first, but eventually.”
Swallowing hard, he nodded his head and glanced at the door. “I hate to do this to you, but I need you to stay in here for a little while longer. I know its boring-“
“I’ll be fine. Go. Do what you need to do and I’ll play captive until you release me from my prison.”
Giving me a sharp look, he growled, “Not funny.”
I held up my wrists and grinned. “I have the rope burns to prove it.”
Turning between the door and me several times as if he wanted to respond but couldn’t decide, Holden finally locked his eyes to mine and did something unexpected. He laughed, the sound low and soft. “Try not to get in too much trouble while I’m gone. I’d hate to have to tie you up again.”
“Yes, Sir.”
A quick shake of his head and Holden was leaving the room on his way to break some poor woman’s heart. Staring at the closed door for several seconds, I listened as voices carried down the hall from the living room, several minutes passing before the front door opened and closed, the house returning to silence.
I returned my attention to the unfinished paintings on their easels, my mind unable to comprehend the amount of talent hidden in a man born into a town that took everything from him, including his freedom. Piece by piece, we’d broken him down. Chained him. Enslaved him. Kept him living a life that was so far beneath him. Holden didn’t belong on the wrong side of the tracks in Tranquil Falls. He belonged in New York. In Chicago. In some big city where his art could hypnotize and entrance, where the tragic bindings holding him to this place could be cut away to let him fly.
We’d called him crazy, when in truth, we were the crazy ones.
Crazy for not recognizing a good person among us.
Crazy for judging him when we were the ones who should have been judged.
Crazy for so needlessly hurting a man that wanted nothing from us but the respect to let him live in peace.
Crazy for not seeing that he had more raw talent in his pinky finger than any of us had in our entire bodies.
But maybe that’s the way it is for shallow people. Maybe we do recognize those souls among us that are special, and out of jealousy and spite, we tear them down.
Stepping back to get a better view of all his paintings at once, my heel hit something lying on the drop cloth. I turned to see what I’d stepped on and found a sketchpad lying face down, a pencil hastily abandoned beside it. Remembering the black dust staining his finger and hand when he’d opened the studio door, I thought that whatever was on that pad was what he’d been focused on when I knocked.
It would be invasive of me to flip it over and take a peek, but I couldn’t help it. The need to know what was pressing on Holden’s thoughts was too strong, too compelling to ignore.
Would it be another memory of Delilah? Another thought of the parents he’d lost? Would it be like the art standing at my back on the easels illustrating how Holden saw the people that surrounded him?
Sitting down, I pulled the sketchpad toward me, lifted a corner as if to flip it over, but paused. I hated invading his privacy like this, hated taking advantage of Kaley’s interruption.
I flipped it over anyway...and froze.
A woman lay sleeping on a bed, her head facing one direction while her dark hair splayed over a pillow behind her. Delicately folded, her hand lay near her face, her lips parted, her nose coming into view. But her eyes were missing, only the top half of her body fully completed.
Even halfway done, I recognized the angles of my face, the line of my jaw, the length of my dark hair. Turning a page, I saw myself again, the image hastily drawn and abandoned. Five more pages were the same, each abandoned, each one revealing less of the woman I’d seen in the first sketch.
He was creating me from an image in his mind, but something was missing, something that had driven him to attempt it over and over again, the outlines and shading shifting and darkening with each new attempt.
Setting the pad down on the drop cloth, I stared at the image he’d attempted to bring to life, my heart beating harder as sorrow filled me. Why couldn’t I have known this person before his life became so complicated? Why hadn’t I been strong enough to reject the hatred everybody had thrown at him so that I could stand by his side?
I was an awful person, and I was being torn apart inside by the fear that there would be nothing I could say or do to fix the present situation we were in.
Flipping the sketchpad over, I moved away from it to sit against a wall. My legs were bent in front of me, my arms wrapping around my shins to tug them closer to my body. Resting my cheek against my knees, I breathed out a heavy sigh.
There was no way in hell I’d let Holden be destroyed completely. I just had to find a way to correct the wrongs we’d committed against him and set everything back to right.