Chapter Twenty
CALLIE
Davis hadn’t said much as he entered my cluttered studio, but his simmering gaze was far from silent, the same way it had been minutes ago inside my house. I turned my back to him, working to douse the memory of him lying in my bed with thoughts of polar plunges in the dead of winter. The intensity that had sparked and sizzled between us had awoken something deeper than attraction and more electric than chemistry. Something I would have eagerly explored if he were anybody other than Davis.
Yet I doubted the feeling would exist without him.
Every cell in my body seemed aware of him—how he watched me as he roamed freely inside my work space, touching each one of my treasures with a casual familiarity that seemed to blast through the ten-foot barrier I’d erected between us.
My desire to go to him fought against every ounce of reasoning and restraint I could muster. But no matter how he made me feel, and no matter what yearning he stirred inside me, I couldn’t act on my feelings for him. Besides, he was too intelligent not to realize I was the opposite of everything he needed.
And yet, here he was anyway, causing me to second-guess the vagabond lifestyle I’d chosen.
The bigger, more aggressive argument inside me also knew that if I went to him now—while his wanting eyes searched my face—and told him how wrong we were for each other . . . the odds would not be in my favor.
But maybe they never had been.
Hoping to busy my hands and rein in my thoughts, I shoved a pile of my latest scribbles into the corner of my workstation.
“I hope you’re not cleaning on my account.” He picked up the small ceramic gnome I’d purchased at a farmers’ market in Eugene and turned it over in his hands. “I was hoping to glean some insight from an artist’s mind. It’s probably better if you keep everything authentic around here.”
But keeping it authentic—my studio, my mind, my heart—was a dangerous request at present. For the first time in my life, I wished for my sister’s compulsive nature. She was a pro at cutting the tension with busywork. I searched for something—anything—in the room to keep my hands occupied.
There. The mixed colored pencils. I’d sort them.
I sidestepped another possible seismic stare-down with Davis and faced a row of mason jars, each filled to capacity with a rainbow of colored pencils. “What happened after you left the laundromat this afternoon? Did you contact the sheriff’s office?” As if perfectly content to watch me color coordinate, Davis pulled out a metal stool from under the worktable to observe.
“I spoke to Sheriff Granger, yes. The laundromat recently sold to an investment property group. They’re replacing the locks tomorrow, but they aren’t going to press charges as long as the trespassing stops.”
I nodded, grouping the reds together and placing them into an empty mason jar. “And Brandon? How did that talk go?”
“Today didn’t feel like the right time to discuss it with him.”
“Really?” I asked, tossing him a questioning glance.
His tone changed to something definitive. Resolute. “I decided to cut my hours down for the remainder of the summer. Considerably. Julie’s looking to build her clientele, and I’m, well, I’m looking to off-load some of my mine. Brandon needs me. I’m going down to three days a week until September 1.”
“Oh, Davis.” Elation rose within me. “That’s . . . that’s so great. Have you told him yet?”
“I plan to in the morning.”
Imagining what it would have felt like to have my own father make such a sacrifice, I beamed at him. “Then let’s make sure we make the most of the next six weeks or so.”
He studied me, a slow smile appearing on his ridiculously attractive face. “You keep saying that, you know.”
“Saying what?”
“Let’s. As in let us. You said it earlier today at the laundromat, too.”
Had I really? I wasn’t usually so careless with my vocabulary. Let’s. We. Us. Those were all word choices for the chronically committed. Not for me. “Well, uh, like I told you before, I’m willing to help Brandon however I can.”
But we both knew helping Brandon was only half of the equation.
He made a quizzical sound in the back of his throat and then slid his hand across the tabletop, pinching the top sketch on my reject pile between his fingers. “What is—is this for the bakery?”
“No, that’s for the trash can.” I reached to remove the pile from the table, but he moved faster, swiping the whole stack into his hand.
“Really, don’t bother with those. They’re no good.”
Pointless words really, as he continued to thumb through each one. “What are you talking about? These are incredible. This one with the baker’s off-kilter crown and her toppling pastry platter is my favorite. It seems right for that old building.”
His flattery burrowed deep. “Really? You think so? I didn’t know if it was too . . . whimsical?” I’d sketched that one just minutes before Davis showed up.
He stared at me. “The whimsy is what makes it such a perfect fit.”
The dryness of my throat made it difficult to swallow.
As he flipped over the last sketch, his face changed entirely. “This one definitely isn’t for the bakery—unless Mabel is going to be serving children books with her cupcakes.”
“Uh, no. It’s not. That was a trial sketch for Penny at the library. I submitted a few ideas to her last week.”
His imploring gaze made my leg muscles weaken. “She hired you?”
“Sort of.” Only I wasn’t charging her.
“What does sort of mean exactly?”
I glanced around the room. “I only work there in my off-hours.”
“You’re doing it for free, then.”
“I’m happy to do it.” Though I tried to shrug off the intensity of his gaze, I couldn’t escape it. My mind worked to close the loop, to bring us back to the real reason we were here together tonight. Brandon. Art. Connection. “But I was thinking about something earlier tonight . . . ,” I started.
Davis waited, watching me silently.
“I had a bit of a setback at the bakery today, and well, I could really use an extra set of hands to make up for the lost time.”
As if waiting for the punch line, he only blinked in response.
“What I’m asking is, what if Brandon helped me with the mural? Ya know, on the days you were at the clinic? I probably have about three weeks of work to finish up, and of course I’ll have the library, too, and possibly a couple of smaller projects.” I shrugged again. “Corrie and Collin will be around, too, most days. But I do realize that Brandon assisting me would mean he’d have to miss his days at the garden club . . .” I did my best to fight the smirk on my face as I added, “But I think we’ve both seen his dedication to that as of late.”
Davis set my drawing down and pondered my offer—this time without a trace of cynicism on his face. Even still, the seconds ticked by.
“I consider myself to be quite intuitive, but you make it really hard to figure out what you’re thinking,” I said.
“I’m thinking you’re one of the most generous people I’ve ever known.”
“I could easily say the same about you.”
“I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow, but there’s not a chance he’ll turn that offer down.”
“I hope you’re right,” I added playfully. “Because at this rate, I’m never going to be able to pay off my debts to you before . . .” But I couldn’t bring myself to finish that sentence. I wasn’t ready to think about moving away. Not from Clem and Chris and the kids. And not from the Carter family either. “Before I get taken to the Davis Carter collection agency.”
He picked up a colored pencil and tapped it on the table. “I’m pretty sure I’m the one in your debt now.”
I shook my head. “Let’s agree to be even.”
“Yes, let’s,” he said through a grin.
He pushed out from the table and took a step closer to the shelf. “I saw Brandon’s sketchbook tonight.”
I whirled around, a marigold crayon pinched between my fingers. “Really? He showed it to you?”
“Not exactly, no,” he said, touching a wooden box of pastel paints. “But I saw the robot, the one from the laundromat. It was like flipping through a wordless comic book.”
I couldn’t help but grin at his on-point description. “He’s incredible, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” But in that one word, I heard a note of dejection.
“You’re worried.”
He let a beat of silence go by before he answered. “I’m still trying to sort it all out. I never figured creativity into the mix of my parenting plan. Sports, math, science, biology—those subjects are in my wheelhouse, but this world?” He drew an imaginary circle around the room using an emerald green pencil. “This is a mystery to me.”
“A lot of people think the brain functions in either concrete or abstract, like there’s some kind of dividing line that separates the population.”
“You obviously disagree.”
I lined the color-coded mason jars up in ROYGBIV order before answering. “It’s not that I disagree there are two types of thinking, I just don’t see them as mutually exclusive. There are moments I can switch my natural response process from emotion-based to systematic when I need to. I may have to work harder for it, but still, I can do it.”
“I’m not so sure I can turn off the way I think,” Davis said. “I see an apple only as an apple. It elicits zero emotional response from me.” He trailed to the jars and shoved the green pencil into the jar of yellows. Was he trying to challenge my color system? “But regardless of my comfort level, I’m committed to supporting my son.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said as gently as I could before returning the pencil to its rightful place and making my way back to the workstation. “But he’ll need more from you than just buying supplies and paying for his classes at the community college.”
“Before you get any ideas about me holding a paintbrush, let me assure you that Brandon did not get his artistic genes from me.”
“Art is so much bigger than you realize, Davis.”
The beginnings of an idea brewed in the recesses of my mind. No matter what he believed about own his creative capabilities, there wasn’t a living soul who escaped the power and connection of art. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?” He chuckled. “You’re not going to make me list my favorite comfort foods, are you?”
“Nope. I’ll leave that game to Shep.” I waved a hand over Davis’s face, as if to close the curtain of his vision myself. “Now, trust me and do what I say.”
With a wry smile, he closed his eyes, the dark fringe of his lashes a detail I’d save to memory.
“I want you to picture the most memorable place you’ve ever visited—but don’t tell me where it is.”
He thought for a long moment. “Okay.”
“Now, place yourself in the center of that setting. Look at where you are in position to the world around you. Memorize the colors, the shapes, the feeling you have when you take it all in.”
He said nothing, yet his features softened as if he were following every last detail of my instruction.
“Now, stay there. Don’t open your eyes. What do you see?”
I slid noiselessly onto the stool across from him and reached for my sketch pencil and drawing pad.
“There’s a mountain range in the distance—white-capped from a hard winter’s snowfall.”
“What else do you notice about them?” I asked, lightly shading in some peaks near the top of the page.
“The largest mountains are straight ahead. Massive, really.”
“Perfect. And are they just ahead of you or . . . ?”
“No, the range curves around to either side of me.”
I continued shading. “What about the sky? What kind of day is it?”
“Mostly sunny. A few clouds overhead. A bone-cutting chill in the air.”
“And what’s under you? Where are you standing right now?”
“I’m floating, actually. In a small fishing boat. Two hard benches with tackle gear between the seats.”
“Ah.” I smiled. “And the water?”
“Reflective like glass. Calm. Some spots so deep it looks almost black.”
“You’re making me cold,” I said with a shiver.
“You’re the one asking the questions.”
I laughed softly. “Tell me what else you see.”
He was better at this than I had anticipated. The landscape had come alive in my head like a postcard image.
“There’s dense timberland on the shore to our left. Boulders, shrubs, mossy sticks covering the ground. And no people but us.”
“Who are you with?”
“My father. Back when he was healthy and strong. He wore a ridiculous fisherman’s hat that I teased him about for days.”
Sadness crept into his voice. I’d nearly forgotten. His father’s death had been the catalyst for bringing him back home to Lenox. But I’d heard something else in his voice, too. This memory was among his most precious.
“What does it feel like to be out there with him—just the two of you?”
As if reeled in by the imagery he described, I rocked forward onto my forearms, waiting. My pencil rested in the crook of my finger and thumb as I watched him draw a steady breath.
After a few more seconds, he opened his eyes. “Like I never want to take another minute of this life for granted.”
His focus was as intent and unwavering as my own. Though I didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink, every part of me seemed to be reaching for him.
He blinked first. “Did I pass?”
“You tell me.” I pushed my sketch his way.
He stared down at the page and touched the image of the boat in placid water, the ghostlike outline of two men—one with a wide-brimmed hat—floating in a lake surrounded by mountains.
“I’m sure my interpretation is far from the beauty of the real thing, but you can see how your word choice created an essence I tried to capture on the page. A presence.” I glanced down at the lines and smoothed my finger across the top of the weighty paper. “I can feel the security of the mountains and the serenity between the men on that boat, but I can also sense a sadness in the stillness of the water. A foreboding that life will soon change.”
When he lifted his head, eyes meeting mine, my knees almost gave out. “You felt all that?” Davis asked.
“Only because you felt it in here first.” I placed my hand over his heart. “Our connection to art has less to do with talent and more to do with the emotion it stirs inside us. And perhaps our willingness to feel that emotion. This drawing could provoke an entirely different response from one person to the next. The same way music does. It’s the perfect balance of individual expression and shared intimacy. You can know this with Brandon, too, Davis.”
He raised his eyes to mine, and a flood swelled within me.
Chemistry, I could conquer. Attraction, I could tame. But this connection, this ever-present, ever-persistent ache that drew me in like a swift current now caused every one of my doubts to scream for a life raft.
But I refused to throw them one. Because I wanted them to drown.
Davis pushed up from his chair and bridged half the expanse of the tabletop with his body. . . I did the same. And in that moment, everything became astonishingly simple, as if a thick layer of fog—all the complexities of life—had finally cleared away, long enough for us to truly see each other.
No titles stood between us. No roles or rules or responsibilities. We were simply Davis and Callie, two people with different dreams and goals and heartaches.
Two people who dared to meet in the middle.
When his fingers grazed my cheek, I waved the proverbial white flag. The fight in me was nothing more than a distant, fleeting memory. Somewhere outside myself were the words I’d spoken a dozen times, a rehearsed relationship code I’d lived by for so many years because . . . because . . . I couldn’t even recall the reason anymore.
His mouth hovered inches away from my own, his warm fingers a whispered caress across my cheek. “I want to kiss you, Callie.”
“I want you to kiss me, too.”
At my confession, his hand moved to cradle the back of my head. And just like that, as if someone had poured water over a chalk drawing, the last of my resolve vanished. I gave in to the tender feel of his lips on mine and invited the ache in his kiss to spread through every hidden pocket of my heart. To every banished dream and desire.
In less than a dozen heartbeats, Davis had exhumed a hope long buried . . . that maybe my father was wrong about me.
Maybe he was wrong about a lot of things.