One Good Thing

by Lily Maxton

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know what you mean.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Sienna croaked, stumbling into the room with tousled hair and her pajamas askew.

  “Geeze, Sienna, did you steal Grandma’s brandy last night?”

  She glared at me and I laughed.

  When Christmas was over, and I was ensconced in my apartment again, I laid out my paintbrushes and mixed my colors. Evan’s words were with me when I painted the first strokes on the canvas: There are worse things than failure. Lots of people fail. All the time. Relief flooded me as a picture began to take shape. It was the same feeling as stepping past the threshold of my mom’s house after a long absence, like I’d come back to a place that was part of my soul.

  I didn’t know if what I painted would be as good as what I’d done for the exhibit. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe when I’d worried that I would never do anything better, I was right. But for once it didn’t matter. I painted for myself again, not for anyone else, not for some art critic from the Tribune who didn’t know a thing about me.

  And that one difference changed everything, allowed me to let go of the fear that had tied my hands.

  First, I painted my dad and Friday from the photo I’d found in my mom’s storage boxes, and when I was finished I laid it in my closet, knowing it was one I wouldn’t try to sell. Then, nearly as soon as the first project was done, I started on something new.

  *

  I spent New Year’s alone in the apartment with Princess as my only company, working on my painting. I’d already thrown out two versions of it because I hadn’t captured exactly what I’d wanted.

  Evan texted me just before midnight: At my parents’ house on New Year’s Eve, waiting for the ball to drop. Am I a loser?

  I’m with Princess. That must make me a bigger loser.

  You didn’t tell me you were going to be alone.

  I glanced in the mirror—my hair was in a haphazard ponytail and there was blue paint smeared across my forehead and my ratty white T-shirt. All in all, I didn’t look fit for human companionship. Princess had even run off to hide at some point in the evening.

  I’m working on a project.

  He didn’t respond to that text as quickly. Are you painting?

  I smiled as I responded, looking at the canvas in front of me, the shapes that were starting to form. Yes.

  Do I get to see it?

  When it’s finished, not before.

  You’re cruel.

  But sexy? I typed.

  But sexy.

  I realized my cell phone clock had just changed to midnight.

  Happy New Year.

  *

  Less than a week later, I finished the painting. I stepped back from it, looked at it from different angles, but I couldn’t be objective. I couldn’t look at it analytically; I’d poured my soul onto this canvas.

  I’d used watercolors instead of the bolder oils I usually preferred. It was soft and airy, dreamlike pinks and blues and beiges. I’d painted a scene from memory—the night Evan and I had spent at the apartment on the pull-out couch. The view was above us, looking down, as we faced each other and he traced my smiling lips with his fingers because he couldn’t see without contacts.

  His expression was serious, seeking, and mine was one of pure, unprecedented happiness.

  Now that it was done and finished drying, now that the canvas conveyed exactly what it was meant to, I knew I had to show it to him. I didn’t know if it was the right time or not. I didn’t know what his reaction would be. But I couldn’t wait forever, no matter how scared I was.

  Are you at home?

  He texted back a few minutes later: Yes, why?

  Stay there.

  And then I started banging around in the closet, searching for my coat and hat and gloves. Alyssa came out from the kitchen when she heard me.

  “You know there’s an ice storm coming.”

  Actually, I didn’t. I’d been too caught up finishing the watercolor. “I haven’t heard any rain yet. Can I borrow your car?”

  “You actually want to go out now?”

  “It’s really important,” I said. I wasn’t beyond begging if it was necessary.

  “I guess,” she capitulated. “Just be careful.”

  A few minutes later I was driving on nearly deserted city streets with the painting resting next to me on the passenger seat. The clouds hung low in the sky, a deep, angry gray, and a sleeting rain began to ping off the windshield.

  I’d predicted it would take about twenty minutes to get to Evan’s house, but that twenty minutes turned into an hour as I inched along ice-covered roads, my foot barely touching the gas pedal.

  My fingers tightened on the steering wheel, my knuckles white. I noticed a car had spun off the road and gotten stuck on the sidewalk. The driver was long gone. I should have been regretting not staying safely at the apartment.

  But I’d gone too far to turn back. And I didn’t really want to turn back anyway.

  Evan’s house was dark when I pulled up; I slid as I turned into the driveway, coming perilously close to the ditch. I pried my fingers off the wheel with a gust of breath; I didn’t think I’d ever been so relieved to reach a destination.

  I held the painting in one hand as I walked in baby steps over the ice, my arms out for balance.

  My throat was tight with anticipation as I hit the doorbell.

  Just when I thought he wouldn’t answer, when despair and cold were seeping into my bones in equal amounts, the door swung open.

  It was Evan, holding a flashlight. Vader was at his side—he gave my hand a happy lick and then nudged me with his head.

  “Dani?” Evan grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house unceremoniously. The power must have gone out. He’d set some candles on the side tables in the living room, and they cast eerie, flickering shadows on the walls. “What are you doing out in an ice storm? Didn’t you get my text?”

  He sounded annoyed. Not a very auspicious start for my life-altering declaration. “Your text?” I frowned, rummaging through my purse for my phone.

  Bad storm coming. You’ll be safer if you stay at the apartment.

  “I didn’t hear my phone,” I said.

  He shook his head slightly, his shoulders easing. “I was worried when you didn’t answer.”

  I smiled. No, I beamed. He was worried about me.

  Evan ran a hand through his hair, tousling it, and glanced at me, a baffled, irritated expression wrinkling his forehead. “I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

  “I don’t!” I rushed to assure him. I pressed my hands to my face. “I’m really screwing this up,” I muttered.

  I’d had a whole speech rehearsed in my head. I’d wanted everything to be perfect. There would be a declaration of love, some explanations of why I’d been afraid to let him get close, how I wanted a commitment now, how I wanted to be at his side, for him to lean on, no matter what happened. How I hoped he could forgive me for pushing him away.

  All of that stuff had flown from my mind when we came face-to-face.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I simply turned the painting toward him, tilting it so it caught the candlelight.

  He stared at the canvas. His hand jerked like he wanted to touch it but then fell to his side. “Is it some sort of parting gift?”

  I shook my head. “Evan … you’re one of my good things.”

  It wasn’t what I’d wanted to say, but he knew what I meant.

  He stilled and then his mouth tilted into a slow smile, his gaze lifting from the painting to me. “I am?”

  “You are,” I breathed. And then I leaned the painting gently against the wall, and his arms opened for me. I stepped straight into them. I sank against him, my hands clutched in the fabric of his shirt, and drew the scent of his skin into my lungs. It was wonderful to touch him again after so long. I molded to him; I fit, we fit together. We always had; I just hadn’t admitted it to myself. “I love you.”

  H
e slanted his head toward me and caught my lips. The kiss started out teasing, but turned into something demanding and breathless. Something that was both flesh and physical, but transcendent. Even as it incited, it soothed. It was love and hope and pure physical desire, all knotted into one. But most of all, the kiss was a promise: it would be the first of many.

  If I had any doubt of Evan still wanting me, it was obliterated in that moment.

  With shadow and light shifting around us, he drew back and looked into my eyes. “I love you, too.”

  And then we were kissing again, like we’d both been made just for the purpose of kissing each other. Without letting go of him, I stumbled backward to the couch, pulling him on top of me.

  I’d missed this, the feel of his weight pushing me down, the heat of his body. I’d missed it so much.

  I slid my hands underneath his sweater, flattening against his stomach. My fingers brushed the trail of light hair that disappeared under his jeans. He felt perfect, familiar and new. And mine.

  I’d never thought of myself as a possessive person. But I liked the sound of that—mine.

  It wasn’t long before we were both naked and skin to skin. His chest crushed against my breasts and he placed his hand on my ankle, smoothing his palm all the way up my calf and over my thigh. He touched me like he wanted to savor me.

  For a long time, we just kissed and touched, felt each other after what seemed like way too long an absence. It started off gentle and slow, almost lazy, but each press of our lips, each caress, turned a little more urgent.

  Evan moved from the couch to find some condoms, and I noticed he didn’t have to go far.

  “Did you just get a condom from underneath your coffee table?” I asked as I watched him put it on.

  “I started to hide them around the house after you showed up for your first booty call. I wanted to be prepared. You are insatiable, baby.”

  “You hid them?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said like it was obvious. “I can’t have guests stumbling across them all the time. They’d think I hosted sex parties or something.”

  “Sort of like Easter eggs,” I mused.

  “You’re changing my perception of every major holiday,” he commented.

  He kissed my smiling mouth. And then he was moving over me, pushing me back onto the plush cushions, and I spread my legs wider for him. He rocked against me, and then his hand grasped my hip and I lifted off the couch and he sank into me in one, slow, easy slide.

  A sound emerged from my lips that was half moan and half groan. God, I’d missed this.

  The still, dark room filled with the sound of Evan’s hoarse breathing and my whimpered moans. I grabbed his waist, pulling and pushing at him to set the rhythm, and I didn’t think, I just felt, with my entire body, and my heart.

  Afterward, he shifted to hold me against him, and the thud of his heartbeat sounded loud but hypnotic against my ear. To me, it was like a lullaby. I was just starting to feel drowsy when I noticed him glance toward the wall where I’d left the painting. His gaze swept over the canvas and he grinned. And it was an expression of such elation that my breath caught as I watched him.

  “You like it?” I asked.

  “I love it.”

  He pressed a soft kiss against my head and I snuggled deeper against him.

  I had no intention of leaving his embrace any time soon. No intention of running from what he made me feel.

  This—this moment, with this man—was exactly where I belonged.

  Epilogue

  Eighteen Months Later

  “What is this?” Dani asks, her hands rising to tug at the blindfold.

  “Stop trying to look,” I say. “You’ll ruin everything.”

  She laughs and I grin as I watch her. She’s mine—this smart, sarcastic, sexy (I know, too many s’s, but they’re all true) woman. I can say it. And what’s even better, I believe it.

  “Can I take it off now?”

  I place my hands on her shoulders and position her in the center of the art studio/study. She moved in with me six months after we started dating and turned the room into her work space. Now she has a job at an art gallery and comes home to the studio to paint. I miss having her at SLQ. There were some fantasies I really wanted to re-create in the break room. But she’s happy, so I can’t complain.

  Sometimes I sit at my computer while she paints, and I can never get much done because I like watching her. She looks intent when she’s in here, confident; the same way she looks when she recites poetry.

  “What exactly are we celebrating?”

  “Our one-year anniversary,” I state.

  “Our one … ,” she pauses and smiles. “Since I moved in with you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can’t celebrate everything.”

  “We can try.”

  “Okay, let’s see you try to top yourself.”

  I’ve definitely topped myself. But I’ve been planning it and saving for it for a while. The one-year mark for the date she’d moved in just happened to come at the right time. If it hadn’t been that, I would have found another excuse.

  “Okay,” I say, my fingers brushing her hair as I untie the blindfold.

  I hear her sharp intake of breath. I’ve put up four art posters on the wall she’s facing, and I think she’s already realized what they have in common.

  She turns to face me, and her eyes narrow like she doesn’t trust me. “These are all at the Louvre.”

  “Really?” I ask, pulling a piece of paper from my jeans pocket with a flourish. I’m not above a little showmanship. “Then it’s a good thing I bought tickets to Paris.”

  She looks at the paper, and I notice her hands aren’t quite steady. “Evan … this is too much.”

  “You said it was your dream to go there. That’s all that matters to me.”

  She collides with me, her arms tight around my neck. “I know … it’s just … when I said that, I didn’t expect it to actually happen anytime soon. And what about Comic Con?”

  “I still want to make it to Comic Con someday. But I need plenty of time to design our matching T-shirts,” I joke.

  “I don’t know if I deserve you,” she says against my chest. Her warm breath seeps into my shirt. “And it’s not the trip. It’s everything. I never thought I’d find someone I feel so completely myself with.”

  “I know what that’s like,” I say.

  And then I’m kissing her, because really, I can’t have her body against me and not want to kiss her. My hands roam down her sides, grazing her hips and then clutching them more firmly.

  “Didn’t your parents invite us for dinner?” she asks with her eyes closed.

  “We can be a few minutes late,” I respond. There are more pressing matters to attend to.

  I lead her to the window seat and undress her with the sun bathing over us. Another reason I like this room—when I get Dani naked in here, I can see every single detail.

  I kiss a trail from her delicate jaw down her throat and along the slope between her breasts, and I anticipate the sounds she’ll make when I slide into her. To me, there’s nothing better than this. Nothing better than being sprawled out in the light, skin to skin with the woman I love.

  Sometimes life is pretty damn good.

  Acknowledgements

  A huge thanks to the Bloomsbury team, specifically my lovely editor Meredith Rich, to Jeremy for all of his support, and to the romance community—readers, writers, everyone—you guys are awesome!

  About the Author

  Lily Maxton grew up in the Midwest, reading, writing, and daydreaming amidst cornfields. After graduating with a degree in English, she decided to put her natural inclinations to good use and embark on a career as a writer. She loves history, tea parties, long meandering walks, and everything romance.

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, and Sydney

  Copyright © 2015 by Lily Maxton

  The moral right of the autho
r has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means, (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to ths publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in August 2015 by Bloomsbury Spark, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Spark, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018

  Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at specialmarkets@macmillan.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

  ISBN: 978-1-61963-782-5

  To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

  Cover design by Maggie E. Hall