Darkmoon(21)

“I guess you’d been saving that up for a while,” I teased.

Connor slipped into his shirt and began to button it up. “Well, I think it was the toes that did it.”

Arching an eyebrow at him, I glanced down at my pink toenail polish. “What, are you telling me you have a foot fetish or something?”

“Or something,” he said with a grin.

I shook my head and retrieved my own top. After slipping it over my head, I climbed back into my jeans. I’d just finished fastening them shut when I looked up to see Connor standing in front of the dresser, holding the concho belt he’d given me for my birthday.

“I hated that you left this behind,” he said quietly. “Will you take it back now?”

Something in the simple request made my throat tighten. “Yes, Connor,” I said. “Oh, yes, I want it back.”

We both knew I was talking about a lot more than just the belt.

He came to me and fastened it around my hips. I felt the heavy weight settle against me and smiled. “I might as well wear it as much as I can now,” I joked. “In a few more months I’m going to be as big as a house.”

“And you’ll be beautiful,” he said, bending to kiss me gently on the cheek. “And when that happens, we’ll just put it in a drawer until you can wear it again.”

The smile slipped from my lips, and I stared up into his face, wondering how I could have ever lived a whole two months without him. “I love you, Connor.”

“I love you, Angela,” he said solemnly, seeming to understand that we needed to say it to one another, to re-bind us to each other. “There’s something I want to show you, and then we can go eat.”

I wondered what that something was. Since he was looking very serious, I attempted to lighten the mood a bit. “I thought you already showed me that,” I replied, flashing him a grin, but he didn’t smile, only took my hand and led me out of the bedroom.

We went downstairs. I let go of his hand, then bent down and retrieved my purse from the spot where I’d dropped it. Afterward, he wrapped his fingers around mine before leading me across the landing to the apartment he used as his studio. He paused there, saying, “Just promise you won’t freak out.”

“Wow, Connor, real reassuring.”

I thought maybe he’d grin at my response, but his expression remained somber as he pushed open the door. “I mean it.”

And when I walked into the studio, I realized why he’d made that request.

All around me was…me.

That is, paintings of me. Large ones, all the way down to tiny pieces you could hold in the palm of your hand. Obviously all done from memory — a painting of me standing in the snow, ponderosa pines dark and stately in the background. Sitting in the chair by his bedroom window, with the winter light streaming in and wakening reddish tones in my dark hair. The largest one, still on the easel, a stylized portrait of me with my hands outstretched, my face raised to the sky. It was a pose I’d used often during our seasonal observances back in Jerome, but of course Connor couldn’t have possibly seen me doing such a thing.

In all of them he’d painted me as looking far more beautiful than I thought I was in real life. But then I realized he’d been painting me as he saw me, and not as the world did.

It was overwhelming. I had no idea what to say. I only stood there, staring, for the longest moment. Finally I managed, “And here I thought you only did landscapes.”

Then we did burst out laughing, more to break the tension than anything else. Connor sobered abruptly, however, and said, “I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, you were there. Every time I turned around, I thought I could hear the sound of your voice. It was as if you’d become a ghost, too, and were haunting me. But if I could paint you, think of your face that way, it helped. A little.”

“They’re — ” I broke off, not sure of how to put it. If I said they were beautiful, was I praising his art, or my own features? It just felt…strange. “They’re incredible.”

“So you’re not freaking out?”

Was I? No, not really. Everyone handles pain in their own way, and if painting me over and over again helped Connor come out on the other side of his grief, who was I to say that was wrong? “No, Connor, I’m not freaking out. I won’t say it’s not overwhelming, but it’s not freak-out worthy.” I smiled up at him. “I mean, I’ve got people coming next week to knock out the walls in my kitchen. I needed something to focus on, and I figured remodeling the kitchen was as good a distraction as any.”