Jaycee had done her best to ignore the man face down in the bed when she’d crept into his studio that morning.
She hadn’t intended to invade his privacy or to interrupt his sleep. In fact, she’d done her best to make sure he’d never know she was there.
But now as she hung over his toilet dry heaving and stressing her empty stomach, she was dealt another scathing blow when she heard the sound of his voice.
“Jayc?” Beck called in a grumbly, tired tone.
The bathroom door was open and it faced the side of the bed, but she couldn’t look up to see if he was watching her because she was too busy retching.
The wave of nausea faded, and she coughed as she pulled paper from the roll and flushed. Dropping onto her ass, her back came up against the side of his bath and that was when she noticed him in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clearing her scratchy throat.
“Girl, if you needed to see me…”
Taking the towel he offered her, she held it to her mouth then did her best to climb to her feet. “Not you I came to see,” she said.
Instead of helping her up, he wrangled her back down. “Stay there, girl. Tell me what you need.”
“Water,” she said.
Beck darted out and she watched through the ajar door. He ran around the bed to grab his water glass from the nightstand. He brought it back to the bathroom and emptied it before giving it a rinse and filling it to bring to her.
“We’ve exchanged spit before,” she said, taking the glass and sipping the cool liquid. Beck didn’t get it. “You didn’t have to wash the glass. I don’t think you have cooties.”
“I probably do,” he said. “You need anything else?”
“A cool, wet wash cloth,” she said and he set about getting her one.
“Who were you here to see?” he asked as he ran the cold water. “If it wasn’t me…”
“Who else?” she asked, drawing up her knees as she steadied her shaking hands around the glass. “The Abyss.”
“You were up here tuning the o-dial while I was asleep?”
If she had been then he’d have probably been woken up before now. “No. Do I look like a woman capable of playing with herself? Holding my head up is a struggle.”
Dumping the washcloth in the sink, he came over to pluck the glass from her hands to set it on the vanity.
“What are you doing?” she asked when he bent over to scoop her up. “Beck!”
He carried her through to the bed and laid her down, adjusting the duvet around her and smoothing her hair. “Don’t move or I’ll tie you down.”
Nice, be all sweet and tender then bark like a jailer. But Jaycee was too tired to argue and could only watch him return to the bathroom.
While speculating on what he might tie her to given that there was no headboard, she stayed still. He brought out her water and put the glass on the floor then folded the washcloth into a strip.
He sat on the bed beside her and urged her onto her side. Lifting her hair away, he pressed the cool fabric to the back of her neck and she sighed. “God, that feels so good, Beck. But you don’t have to—”
“Shh,” he said, combing his fingers through her tangled hair. “How long have you been puking?”
“Couple of days.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “It’s the baby?”
“I hope so, or I’m dying,” she said, achieving a weak smile. “Doctor Nicks said this was normal and the exhaustion too.”
“You’ve been exhausted? Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been suffering?”
Reaching around, she rested her hand on his wrist. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can do this,” he said, lifting the cloth to re-fold it and press it against her neck again.
“You’ve been avoiding me all week,” she said. “You spend all your days up here. I’ve barely seen you since I moved back in, Beck.”
“I just—”
“I’m not complaining,” she said, rolling onto her back. The move brought her closer to him, but she was too tired to move, his bed was so warm and comfortable that she’d be happy to stay here for the rest of her life. Although that could just be her exhaustion talking, she’d probably have slept on the bathroom floor if he hadn’t carried her here. “The first few days I was here I was pissed enough at you that it was probably a good idea for us to avoid each other… The tiredness has really knocked me on my ass. And then the puking started, so I haven’t been feeling social over the last couple of days.”
She’d been living back here for a week, and Jaycee was pleased that she had a roof over her head while she was feeling so crappy. Couch surfing wouldn’t be fun with a side of morning sickness.
“You still pissed?” he asked, pushing her bangs aside to lay the cloth on her forehead.
“I’m too tired to be pissed, Beck,” she said. Angling her head, she opened her eyes, thinking that she should get up. As soon as she saw The Quag, she sighed.
“You’re smiling,” he said, picking damp hair from her temple. “You feeling better?”
“It’s beautiful.” Glancing back, he saw what she was looking at then stroked a hand down over her eyes to close them. “I’m not allowed to look? Oh, Beck, don’t punish me, I missed The Quag.”
He stopped stroking her face. “The what?”
Oops, pregnancy was screwing with her brain. “That’s what I call it.”
“The Quag?”
Since she’d opened her big mouth anyway, she might as well talk. She hadn’t really thought about vocalizing her thoughts on the piece until now. Pushing his hand away, she shifted to lie on her side, facing the bottom of the bed so she could stare into the piece. “It’s a quagmire, right? It represents our minds, our id. Filled with darkness that can never reach perfection because the bolts and whispers of melancholy and joy pollute the space we try to lose ourselves in. But the darkness, the black, it isn’t evil; it’s the essence of ourselves, the part of ourselves that is wholly ours. It represents us. Ourselves. Our individual makeup. We can’t be simply our instinctual selves. The lines and flecks, they’re the external influences, all of them, the people we meet, the decisions we make, the experiences we have… Each one is beautiful and is sucked into the swamp of our hungry natures that are desperate to absorb every detail. Some are lost, some disappear into the consuming shadow, but others shine bright, illuminating and celebrating who we are… Yet, still, the blackness craves perfection. It wants to be free… Our egos want to be pure… but we’re powerless to avoid what’s sucked into the quicksand of our consciousness… the quagmire.”
Jaycee could’ve talked all day, but she made herself shut up, and when Beck didn’t respond, she rolled onto her back to look at him. “I just thought it looked cool,” he said, taking a minute before he let his lips curl.
He tossed the washcloth toward the bathroom and lay down on the bed at her back, keeping his hands to himself though he spooned her legs when she turned onto her side again. “Can I just look at it a while? Please? I swear I’ll go back downstairs soon… I need to get more sleep… but the smell up here is soothing.”
“Soothing? Really?” he asked. “It’s probably not good for the baby.”
“I think we’re good as long as I don’t eat the paint.”
“So, no licking The Abyss,” he said.
The teasing made her smile and tip her head back so it moved under his chin. “If I told you the baby wanted me to lick it, would you let me?” His hand was on his hip and she laid a hand over it to interlink her fingers with his.
“What are you doing?” he asked as she moved their hands to her belly. Pressing his hand flat against her lower abdomen, her fingers stayed laced through his. “Don’t do that.”
He pulled away from her and climbed off the bed to stalk back toward The Quag. Just like before, he got tense and switched on that bad mood like he had an internal switch that put it on full-force with one flick.
Guess it wasn’t time for them to stop avoiding each other. “I’ll go back downstairs.”
“No,” he said, spinning to face her. Propped on her fists, she paused in the middle of pushing to the edge of the bed. “Stay.”
“I’m tired anyway, Beck, so—”
“Sleep there,” he said.
He wanted her to sleep here in his studio? While he was working? Things were still weird between them, and she’d learned the hard way not to jump to conclusions just because his work gave her tingles. But it was still an honor to be allowed in this space with an artist who so closely guarded his identity and his work.
“That’s sweet, Beck,” she said, pushing to the edge of the bed. “But I have to go downstairs anyway, I want to brush my teeth.”
“There’s a brush in there,” he said, pointing at the bathroom.
“Your toothbrush?”
He slipped his hands into the pockets of his overalls beneath the tied arms around his waist, which was how he always seemed to work. “You said we’d swapped spit before.”
It wasn’t the spit swapping that bothered her, it was the… intimacy of it. He’d leaped up off the bed two seconds ago like she’d told him she was contagious, but he’d let her use his toothbrush like they were together? But she wasn’t going to bring up anything about “them.” There was no relationship between them and questions that might imply anything else would put him in another mood.
Jaycee was too tired to fight or to check her words, and saying the wrong thing would lead to more bad feelings between them. She’d have to live here for the next seven and a half months. If she felt like this the whole time, she couldn’t handle drama between them. All she wanted to do was get along for as long as they were obligated to each other.
“You’re Beckett Trent,” she said, rising and stretching.
“What does that mean?”
“When I’m standing in front of The Abyss I’d pretty much let you do whatever you want to me, spit in my mouth, kick me in the crotch, strip me and write sexual slurs all over me… whatever you want.”
Drawn to The Quag, Jaycee coasted right past him to admire how it had developed since the first time she’d seen it. Holding her hand up in front of it, she kept her palm a couple of inches away and let it drift down and back up, like she was absorbing the energy of the painting.
“Where’s the hope, Beck?” she murmured. “There should always be hope.”
His shadow cast on the floor at their feet when he came up behind her, but she didn’t see him reach for the brush or even know it was there until he picked up her hand and put the brush in it. “Show me where it should be, girl,” he said.
Jaycee was so overwhelmed that she backed up into him and tried to return the brush to his hand. “Oh no, no, I… I couldn’t…”
Beck took the brush but put an arm around her to position her hand on top of his. “Feel it with me, girl,” he murmured. The strength of his body held her up. Leaning on him was comforting. Probably because she was still woozy from the puking, Jaycee didn’t put up a fight and actually kept her hand over his. “Color… what color is hope?”
“Purple,” she said, peering into the oils. “Dark, but… bright… I don’t know if that makes—”
“It makes sense,” he said. “Turn.” With a single hand on her hip, he twisted to the wheeled workbench that was beside The Quag and picked up a couple of tubes of paint, then he paused. “Keep your hands on mine or I stop and it stays unfinished.”
Oh, this was exciting; her stomach was fizzing with the thrill. When Beck said sorry, he knew just how to do it, with her anyway. He worked to add and mix the paint, squeezing and swirling his brush through the thick paste. Watching the color take its hue, she bit her lip. Jaycee wasn’t really doing anything, her hands were just resting on his, moving in time. But this was the most exciting thing she’d ever done.
“Why are you letting me do this?” she asked, trying her best to contain herself. This was nothing special to him, an everyday occurrence. He was mixing paint, big deal. But to her… She was aiding and guiding one of the world’s most talented modern artists.
“I was a prick who hurt you. You’ve been sick. You’re carrying my child,” he said. “Pick any reason you like. But really… I haven’t touched The Quag since you moved out. I’ve worked on other things, but I haven’t touched this. Then you come in and… you’re my muse.”
Today she motivated him. Tomorrow it would be something, or someone, else. Jaycee was learning that the strangest things could inspire artists. She laughed, burying herself deeper in the circle of his arms as her nails turned against the back of his hands. “You called it The Quag.”
“Guess I did,” he said and held his hands away from the paint. “How’s that?”
Tilting her head, she used his chin to scratch her loose hair from her temple to get it out of her eyes. “Darker,” she said, and he followed her instruction. “So that maybe it’s not always really there unless you get close or the light hits it, you know?”
“Sometimes hope is hidden,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, enthused that he was feeling her train of thought. “That’s it. Yes.”
“You understand color, Jayc,” he said. “When you talk about art, you talk about it in terms of color, that’s how you identify with it. The color brings out your emotion, their hue, their position, their shape… It’s the color.”
Yeah, wow, he was right. Jaycee hadn’t thought about what it was about art that spoke to her, Beck had figured it out. “What if I make you wreck it?” she asked as he selected a new brush and took the paint in their other hands.
“It’s a work in progress, anything can be undone, but there’s no right or wrong. I won’t do anything I disagree with.” Ok, so yeah, she was just playing at helping, she could get on board with that. Using his upper arms, he squeezed her to turn them back to the picture. “Now, baby, show me where.”
Jaycee considered the painting for a moment before directing his hand upward to a specific spot. Beck extended the brush, moving his hand to add details, right there in front of her eyes, he was creating this masterpiece.
With a whispered laugh, she bit her lip again to contain her excitement. “I just got chills,” she said and turned her nails deeper into the back of his hand.
“If you feel sick or need to lie down, just tell me,” he said. “We can work as long, or as little, as you like.”
So this wasn’t just a minute of humoring her, he really wanted her input. “Beck.”
“Hmm?” he asked.
Transfixed by the motion of his hand under hers and the blooming work, she didn’t think much about what she was saying before she said it. Beck had been encouraging her to use her instinct after all. “Can we put something in for the baby?” she asked. “Something that represents him… just for us.”
Beck’s hand stopped moving and it was only when he stalled that she thought that request might have been out of line. “When we’re done with this we’ll lift the shade, make him a brighter kind of hope, baby.”
Lifting her lips to his arm, she kissed his bicep, and rested her head on his shoulder. “You’ll have to find something else to call me now that baby is a… baby.”
“Already have, Muse,” he said. “Now keep talking to me.”