by M. Leighton
And yet here I am.
In a classroom full of just such people.
I’m guessing I’m the only one here for the singular reason of stalking Evian de Champlain, though.
I’m sandwiched between a sweet little girl with no hands and a teenage boy with only one eye. We all sit quietly, waiting.
It wasn’t hard to get into the class once I told them who I am. They were more than happy to give me any information I asked of them. Probably even some they shouldn’t have.
“Do you know how to paint, mister?” the little girl to my left asks me, scratching her nose with the nub of her wrist, the skin puckered around the place where her hand used to be. Her eyes are wide and blue, her face sweet and innocent. She looks like a small, blonde angel.
It hits me hard to look at her. I might’ve had a child that looked like her if only…
Rachel.
My gut clenches at the thought of her.
“No, I don’t, but I hear I’m in a good place to learn. Is that right?”
She grins and nods her head enthusiastically. “Ms. Evie taught me to paint with my feet,” she says, demonstrating her dexterity by waving the paintbrush held in the sure grip of her tiny toes.
“That’s great! I can’t wait to see what you paint today.”
“Imma paint some flowers. Yellow ones. What are you gonna paint?”
“Maybe I’ll paint some flowers, too.”
Her smile is thousand watt, and it burns me all the way through, in places I try not to think about anymore. They’re locked away.
Forever.
The door in the front corner of the room opens with a squeak, and both the little girl and I turn in that direction. I see a red-tipped white cane poke through the opening, followed by speckled white ballerina slippers and shapely calves. Slowly, Evie makes her way into the room.
Today, she’s wearing a pair of white shorts and a hot pink shirt with Reebok scrawled across the front, both of which are liberally splattered and smudged with paint. Her hair is pulled back into a simple ponytail, and her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses. Maybe it’s because of the bright ribbons of sunshine streaming through the windows to my right, or maybe she usually wears them and just didn’t during the opening, for aesthetics. Hell if I know. I only know that she’s as beautiful today as she was last night.
Maybe even more so.
“Good morning, everybody,” she says in her clear voice as she makes her way to the stool at the front of the class. It’s positioned beside a blank canvas set on an easel. A table holding paints and brushes and a palette rests to the left of that.
“Good morning, Ms. Evie,” the class says in unison.
It’s obvious that everyone here is happy to see her. I see it in their expressions, hear it in their voices.
I stick out like a sore thumb, but there’s a part of me that feels like I belong here.
Among the wounded.
I glance around the room again, at the peace and joy so evident on these faces, and I realize that these kids aren’t wounded. They’re healing.
This is where people come to heal.
I just wish, for my sake, forgiveness could be learned here. Or taught.
“Do we have any new painters with us today?” Evie asks as she settles her cane against the table and perches a hip on the stool.
No one speaks up, but the little girl beside me nudges my arm. “Tell her you’re new,” she says in a loud whisper.
I’d hoped to conceal my presence until the end of the class, but that’s out of the question now. I’m sure Evie will recognize my voice.
“I am,” I announce.
Evie turns slightly in my direction, her smile widening welcomingly. “Well, hello. What’s your name?”
I clear my throat. “Levi.”
I see the faint shadow of a frown crease her forehead, but it disappears quickly, like ripples fading from a pond. “Welcome, Levi. We’re glad you’re here, aren’t we, guys?”
The kids clap and stomp their feet in a rowdy greeting that would bring a smile to the coldest of faces.
“Thank you,” I reply to the dozen or so others in the room.
“Who wants to show Levi how we do things around here?”
“I will!” the little angel beside me yells.
“That sounds like Alana.”
“It is, it is!” she replies, her whole body jumping happily as she squirms with excitement.
It must seem like a magic trick to someone her age—that a blind woman could identify her so easily. Of course, it might seem like a magic trick to anyone of any age. Evian de Champlain sure feels like magic to me right now.
It occurs to me again that I must be out of my mind to have sought her out this way. It’s ludicrous.
But I’ll be damned if I could help myself.
Something about her draws me. Like gravity or a magnet. Or the warmth of a fire on a cold winter’s night. It’s cliché as hell, and I never would’ve thought myself capable of being taken with any woman so quickly—or maybe even at all after Rachel—but here I am.
Taken.
I watch as Evie straightens from the stool and feels her way to the cabinet along the wall at the front of the room. There, she takes out several things and piles them in her arms. When she turns, she’s smiling again.
“Okay, y’all, help me get back there to him.”
She starts slowly forward, and the kids tell her which way to go to avoid obstacles in her path. By obeying their commands and directions, she weaves her way between easels and chairs without incident. I can’t help but admire all that she’s teaching them in such a seemingly innocuous, mostly fun way.
She’s showing them the importance of trust, the value of friendship, and how to be brave in the face of adversity.
What she’s showing me is that she’s even more amazing than I’d first thought.
But also that she’s someone I could never deserve.
I push that thought out of my head when she arrives at my easel, bending enough that I can take the items from her arms.
“Here you go, Levi.”
There is no familiarity in her expression, no indication that I’m anything other than Average Joe who came to her class to learn or heal, or both. That’s when it occurs to me that maybe she doesn’t recognize my voice.
It shouldn’t bother me that she doesn’t. We only met last night. What the hell was I expecting? That she’s thought of little other than me, like I’ve thought of little other than her? That she went to bed with me on her mind and woke up with me on her mind?
Maybe I was hoping for that. Maybe I was hoping she was feeling this insane pull, too.
Either way, it does bother me.
A lot.
I haven’t forgotten a single detail about her. Not one damn thing. Yet it seems she put me completely out of her mind.
“Thank you, but I could’ve come up there to get this.”
“No, this is how we do things around here.” She lowers her voice the tiniest bit before she says, conspiratorially, “I’m just treating you just like I would any other man on the planet.”
When her words sink in, words that reflect our conversation last night, I’m more relieved than I care to admit. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it makes me damn happy.
She knows exactly who I am.
Her lips curve into a mischievous grin, and mine twitch up into an answering one.
It’s crazy as shit that I want to drag her into my arms and kiss that smiling mouth of hers, but that’s precisely what I want to do.
I lower my voice, too, leaning slightly toward her. “You left before I could achieve my goal last night.”
“You can’t really achieve goals like those when you’ve got another…companion.”
Julianne.
Damn.
“That wasn’t what you think. She’s an old friend. Just an old friend.” And that’s true, even though Julianne has never tried to hide the fact that she wants it to be m
ore.
“Oh.” I swear I hear relief in that one syllable. Or maybe it’s just that I want her to be relieved. “Well, you could always try your luck at lunch then.”
Back to last night, when I’d asked her to lunch today.
“I thought you had a previous engagement.”
She laughs softly, a sound that I’m pretty sure could make a dead man hard if he listened to it a few times. “So did I, but…” She shrugs. “Things change.”
“I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”
“You wouldn’t? Then why are you here?” Her question is pointed, but her expression is playful.
She nailed me. Saw right through me, even though she can’t see a thing.
A high-pitched giggle divides my attention, and the girl to my left leans in and whispers in her baby doll voice, “Did you just get in trouble?”
I wink and admit to her in a tone of exaggerated seriousness, “I think I just got busted.”
She giggles again, and I reach over to tweak her adorable nose.
“Alana,” Evie says, turning to address the child as well, “will you please explain to Levi how we paint?”
Alana nods and turns to me, her cute little voice carrying clearly throughout the whole room. “‘We paint what we feel with what we feel. Fingers, toes, nose, or brushes.’ Darwin even paints with his teeth,” she exclaims in awe. She uses the place where her hand should be to point to a boy at the back of the room. He has no arms, his T-shirt sleeves dangling emptily down his sides, but he’s holding a paintbrush between his teeth, working it over the canvas with enviable finesse and a brooding intensity.
Alana leans closer to me, her words hushed, “He already started. He never waits for Ms. Evie to get here.”
Evie hasn’t stopped smiling. “But that’s okay, isn’t it, Alana?”
Alana nods, grinning enough to show her tiny, white teeth.
“And if you want to paint like me, what do we do?” Evie asks.
“You get blindfoldeeeddd,” Alana supplies with glee.
“So, how would you like to paint today, Levi? Would you like to be blindfolded?”
I know she doesn’t mean it in a sexual way—or maybe she does—but part of me doesn’t seem to understand that. A very specific part of me.
I shift in my seat. “No, no blindfold. I think I’d rather be able to watch you. You know, to learn and all.”
“But this is art therapy. You need to feel the paint, not watch me.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.” I don’t mean paint, although I’m about as artistic as an oak tree. I mean not watch her. I don’t think I can not watch her.
“Sure you can. You just have to try.”
“Can you help me do that? Can you show me?”
Her pause is long before she answers quietly, “Yes, I can show you.” Her demeanor is softer now. Less playful. Almost…sad.
She takes a single step back, one that seems to be an emotional step back as much as a physical one.
I don’t know what I said to cause the change, but obviously I touched a nerve. Or insinuated myself into a space she doesn’t allow people into.
“Tell me what to do.” Not just about the painting, but to fix this. I feel like I stepped into a steaming pile of shit that I didn’t see and don’t know how to get out of.
I didn’t come here to antagonize her. I came here because, for whatever reason, I wanted to see her. More than I wanted to do or see anything else today.
“Bring your things up to the front. We can work on my canvas. Together.”
She turns and makes her way back through the easels with an ease and competence that belies her perceptive limitations. She doesn’t need help. She didn’t when she walked back here. She was having the kids guide her not because she needed it, but because they did.
Once again, I’m amazed by her.
I take up the load of stuff she just brought me, and I follow her to the front.
“You can set your things here,” she says, indicating the table where her supplies are laid out.
“Won’t they get mixed up?”
Her smile is tolerant, something I might expect to see on the face of a woman who is humoring a child. “No, I can tell the difference. Levi, is there a stool over there?” She points at the wall to my right.
“Yes.”
“Would you grab it, please?”
I do as she asks, bringing the stool back and setting it beside hers. She turns to face her class. “Does anybody have something specific they’d like us to paint in class today? Or do we all want to work on something different? Darwin, I know your answer already.”
She smiles and I look back to see Darwin’s lips curve around his paintbrush. Although Alana is really the only one who has interacted with her, I have no doubt that every person in this room adores Evie.
And I can see why.
“Flowers! Let’s paint flowers. Yellow ones,” Alana pipes up.
When no one else offers any suggestions, Evie agrees. “Flowers it is. How about a sunflower? It’s yellow and it’ll be a good starting place for Levi, too.”
Evie turns to me, a plucky smile in place. It feels like that smile is just for me. “I hope you’re ready to get dirty.”
Oh, hell yeah, I am!
CHAPTER 5
EVIE
I BUSY my hands sorting through my painting accoutrements to keep them from trembling.
The man from last night.
He’s here.
And his name is Levi.
Levi. God, that’s a really good name. Strong, manly. Handsome. Conjures up a mental picture that I’d love to be able to actually see.
But he had a date last night. Even though he said she was a friend, he had a date. A date! And he was flirting relentlessly with me.
I should be aggravated. Cool and aloof.
But I’m not.
None of the things that should matter seem to. They aren’t making a bit of difference to my pattering heart and pounding pulse. All they seem to care about is the fact that he’s here.
That he came to find me.
That he wanted to see me again.
As much as I secretly wanted to see him.
I draw in a calming gulp of air and clear my throat before I speak. “I’ll draw the outline, and then I’ll blindfold you and you can help me fill it in, ’k?”
“Okay,” Levi replies.
His voice is close, so close it gives me chills. It’s almost like he’s speaking right into my ear, like we’re the only people in the room. It seems so…intimate.
I reach for my paints, trailing my fingers over the braille lettering on the side of the first few until I find what I’m looking for.
“This is quick-drying paint with an applicator tip. I use this kind for class to draw a quick sketch, but when I have more time, I use puff paint for thicker lines. The idea is to make lines I can feel so then use those borders as guides for where to fill in with the oil paints.”
Levi is silent, but I can feel his attention on me like a physical touch. It makes me nervous and twitchy, and warm and excited.
“Okay, y’all, let’s start with the stem. Pick one of your brown or dark green paints and use a thin, light stroke. Start near one corner of the bottom of the canvas and make an arc that sweeps up toward the center and stops.”
I draw what I described to my class, only I use my white paint instead. I walk them through outlining the leaves and then the center, and, after that, each delicate petal arising from it. In my mind, I can already see the hues I’ll use—the brightest yellows and the deepest golds, the richest browns and the muddiest greens.
When the outline is dry, I rub my fingers lightly across it. I feel a sunflower. I can feel every line perfectly, visualize it in my head like I saw it only yesterday.
“Close your eyes,” I instruct Levi, “and give me your hand.”
I turn my palm up, and he gives me his hand. It’s warm and heavy. Thick and masculine. It feels…capable. Capa
ble of wielding a sword in battle. Of swinging an axe toward wood. Of helping a woman out of a car, gently stroking her cheek, turning her into his willing slave. Capable of making her beg.
Flushing hotly, I turn it over and grip it from the back.
“Close your eyes,” I reiterate.
“They’re closed.”
“Are his eyes really closed?” I call back to the class.
“Yes,” several answer in unison.
“Don’t you trust me?” Levi asks in that husky voice that’s meant for bedrooms and silk sheets and dark nights.
“Am I supposed to?”
“Eventually.”
“Then I still have time,” I tease. After a moment, I get back to the project. I guide his hand over the canvas, from the stem to the sunflower’s center, running his fingers back and forth over the petals. The action almost feels too sexy for a classroom, like I’m rubbing his fingers over parts of me, letting him feel every line and curve. I can nearly feel the sweep of his touch brushing over my skin. “See how you can feel the shape of the flower?”
“Oh, I feel it,” comes his hoarse, rumbling reply.
Oh, God!
His words, his tone…they make me twitch. Nearly groan. My fingers flex involuntarily around his, so I suck in a breath and hold it for a few seconds, struggling for calm indifference.
I don’t continue until I feel sure I can speak like a coherent adult.
“Now we just have to fill it in. Without seeing.”
“The easy part,” he quips.
“Yeah, the easy part.” I smirk. “And there’s no cheating in this class, is there, guys?”
I raise my voice at the end, and I hear Alana’s reply, a loud and vigorous, “No! No cheating!”
“We are all equal in here, limited only by the bounds of our imagination. So for today, I’m going to show you how to exercise yours.”
“My what?” he asks.
“Your imagination.”
“Trust me. My imagination works just fine.”
Again, it’s not his words so much as the inflection he puts on them that causes my stomach to flip over. He makes me feel like a gangly, horny teenager, ready to strip off her clothes in the back seat of a car just to feel his skin on mine.