Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 71044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
I lift an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Against the backdrop of that big, beautiful sky and the town flying by … I felt arrested by your strength.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is so much more to you than I gave you credit for that first night we met. I almost wrote you off. I can’t believe we could be strangers right now on opposite ends of this town, doing our own things, instead of …”
When he doesn’t finish, I bring a hand to the back of his head, gently stroking his hair. “Instead of …?”
He goes in for a kiss. I close my eyes, falling into it, seduced by the soft touch of his lips.
Then he pulls away. “Let’s eat.” And with a cute little smile, Quin lets himself out of the car.
I blink, staring at the air where his face was a moment ago.
I’m gonna get to the bottom of this.
The Desert Moon Diner is fairly busy, but I manage to get the two of us a booth by the window. Once we’re seated with big menus in our hands, I watch Quin across the table, studying him with curiosity.
“Don’t look at the prices,” I tell him. “Pick whatever you want, it’s yours.”
He smirks. “Even if I take ten Family King’s Stacks to go, with extra bacon on the side?”
I frown at him.
That makes him chuckle. “Y’know, I think I’m gonna have to take your suggestion and try the breakfast tacos.”
“Me too.” I set down my menu and cross my arms over it, then gaze at him. Time to dig. Maybe the two of us have even more common ground than we’ve already discovered. “So tell me what he was like.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “What who was like?”
“The guy who broke your heart.”
He squints quizzically at me. “What do you mean?”
“You’re an artist, right? Aren’t all artists sad because of a broken heart? Or is that just singer/songwriters?”
He lets out a dry chuckle and shakes his head. “No one broke my heart. That’s not why I’m an artist.”
“So why do you do it then? Why art?”
“I don’t know. I like creating things. It’s the best way to make other people feel something without you saying a word. And it’s interpretive. You don’t tell someone how they’re supposed to feel when they look at your art. You just create your little piece of madness and … throw it out there like a bird, see if it flies, see if it dives down for prey, see if it finds a pretty branch to perch on.”
He’s got such strange ways to say simple things.
But honestly, he lost me at the bird part. “So your art is, like … a bird …?”
“You look so adorable when you think too hard.”
I frown. “Are you calling me dumb?”
That makes him laugh. “No, no. What I meant to say is that I … I think art can have a mind of its own. It becomes whatever it wants to become. Sometimes, when I start, I don’t really know what I want to create, but in the chaos of creating something without a plan, magic happens.”
Is that what’s happening between us?
Are we the magic happening?
“Have you ever, like … gone to the gym,” he asks, “feeling more free and spontaneous than usual, and you just … approach whatever machine ‘speaks’ to you …?”
“Free weights are more my speed, but … yeah, I think I get what you’re saying.”
“Well, it’s like that,” he finishes with a shrug. “You just dive into your work and … see what happens.”
I think about how I laid myself out on the table, naked for him. I felt pretty damned spontaneous then. “Maybe I can be more than just your Dreamwood Isle chauffeur. I can be your … your …”
“My muse?”
“Yeah, that.” I smile.
He seems to mull over something. Then he says, “It’s funny you should say that, because … well …” He bites his lip and averts his eyes. “My professor sorta told me that I should … maybe … focus my whole project on one thing.”
“One thing?”
“He said it while looking at a painting I did of you.”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. “Me …? You were painting me?”
“I’ve been painting a lot of you. More than anything else lately, actually.” He shrugs. “I guess you’re my muse whether you like it or not.” He looks at me quickly. “Is that okay? Is that okay if you’re, like … basically the center of my everything?”
I stare into his eyes.
I’m not sure whether he meant that question to sound as significant and all-encompassing as it did.
Maybe he meant it innocently.
Maybe he meant—“It’s okay,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “I don’t have to center my showcase around you. It was a silly idea.”
“No, no. I just took too long to respond. You can make me the subject of your whatever,” I insist. “Do it.”