Sugar on the Edge(95)

My life is still measured in weeks, but they are infinitely better than what they used to be.

At seventeen weeks, Gavin insisted I move in with him permanently and carted all of my stuff over himself. Casey was okay with it, because she made a shit pile full of money when she sold Gavin the house and didn’t have to depend on splitting the rent with me anymore.

At nineteen weeks, my parents came to visit so they could meet Gavin. They loved him and while quietly making love to me so they wouldn’t hear us in the next room over, he said, “I adore your parents. I have a new family now.”

At twenty weeks, we had my next prenatal visit. We both cried when we saw the ultrasound and Gavin kissed my belly, despite the gel they had squirted all over it. “You’re a beauty, little Clare,” he had said with a thick voice. I cried again.

At twenty-two weeks, Gavin’s parents came to visit. That first night, I sat astride Gavin and rode him slowly. This is his favorite position now, so he can see my swollen stomach and watch my eyes. “I adore your parents, too,” I had told him.

He told me, “Less talk, Sweet. More fucking.”

At twenty-six weeks, Gavin insisted I stop working at The Haven. This resulted in a fight of epic proportions and only after he called Brody and got his assurances that I wouldn’t do anything too strenuous, did he finally relent on letting me stay.

As if he really had a say-so in what I do.

And here we are now… at twenty-nine weeks, and he has my fat ass in a car with a blindfold over my eyes, driving me to who knows where.

God, I love my Filthy.

Finally, the car comes to a stop. I wait patiently for him to open my door and lead me out. He holds one of my hands with his and keeps his other on my lower back to carefully guide me.

“Step up, Sweet,” he says when we reach a curb, and I blindly follow with trust in his voice.

We take a few more steps, and he releases me. “Just a second.”

I hear keys rattling in a lock, and then the squeak of a door swinging open. He takes ahold of my hand again, the other on my back, and leads me inside of a cool room. Walking me several paces inward, he turns me back around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and finally removes the blindfold.

When he peels the black material away, I blink into the bright light, and realize I’m looking at a clear glass door that looks out onto the street where his Maserati is parked. I start to turn around, but his hands grip my shoulders and he says, “Just wait.”

Then he turns me just ninety degrees to my right. I see a long, blank wall, painted in bright white. I can see gray, industrial carpet underneath my feet, but the room we are in appears to be empty. He turns me around again, another ninety degrees, and I see the back wall with a closed door that leads to God knows what.

Finally, he turns me the last ninety degrees to my right, and I inhale a deep breath of surprise. The entire wall is a painted mural… and not just any mural. It’s a replica of the picture I had taken of the baby Corolla horse frolicking in the surf.

My heart immediately clenches in guilt for destroying the pictures I had taken and hung in Gavin’s house. But I had rectified that situation. I made more prints and had Gabby replicate the frames. The replacements now hang over our fireplace once again.

I pull away from Gavin’s hands and walk closer to the mural. The tiny horse takes up the entire wall, and whoever painted it wasted not one single detail to the fine hairs on his mane as they bounce with his movements, to the spray of the salt water that flies off his back hooves as he kicks out.

Turning back to Gavin, I murmur, “This is incredible. Who did this?”

“An artist that I flew in from Miami. Pretty awesome, right?”

“Awesome doesn’t even do it justice,” I say with disbelief as I look at the mural again.

“Come on,” Gavin says, taking my hand. “I want to show you the rest.”

“The rest of what?” I ask as I pull back against him. “What is this place?”

He beams at me brightly. “It’s your new photography studio.”

I blink at him, confused, and totally not understanding a word he says to me. “But I don’t have a photography studio.”

“You do now, Sweet,” he says as he tugs on my hand and leads me to the door on the back wall. “You can use this space out here for a lobby area, or it’s large enough we can partition it and create some additional space for you to do portrait work if you want.”

Pulling me through the back door, he says, “Wait until you see this.”

He leads me through another room, and I gasp. “How did you do all of this?”

“Had to hire someone to tell me everything I’d need,” he says, and I spin around to look at the darkroom he created for me. “But you can develop all of your stuff here when you get back to doing your wildlife photography.”