The soothing scent of fresh coffee hit the second Kev opened the door. It was ironic, I thought, as we waited in line. I knew Kev wanted to know about the call—and I wanted to tell him. Not because I wanted to talk about my dad, though. I wanted to talk about the call because it meant I didn’t have to talk about Léo. Goosebumps dripped down my spine as I began to remember the look he gave me before I answered the phone. Like he cared what was happening to me—and like he would have done anything to prevent it.
My dad, I had words for; I had a lot of words for. Plenty to go around for him and Dr. Shelly.
But Léo, my thoughts for him were like stars—burning, bright, and a million miles away from me.
I wished on them. I reached for them. But I had no way to get to them.
And even if I did, it would only be to realize that they were already gone centuries ago, and what I’d been grasping for was nothing more than a flickering figment of hope.
“I can make up something for you, you know,” Kev offered for the umpteenth time as we walked back up toward the school.
“No, I’m good, thanks.” I smiled as I shook my head and turned him down again. I’d already missed two classes, I couldn’t miss this. It was a line of cowardice I couldn’t—wouldn’t cross.
I was feeling better after the break at the coffee shop and then a quick call to Dr. Shelly. Someone needed to know that my dad called and I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with my mom. She offered to move up our session and meet with me before next week, but I just wanted some time to process the feelings she was sure to ask me about.
My stomach rumbled. Even though I was hungry, I felt too nauseous to eat much. With Kev’s help and unfailing sarcastic comedy, I was no longer a blubbering zombie and felt marginally confident that I could get through the next few hours without completely falling apart.
It was a strange feeling, to want to fall apart. Not in all of high school had I ever come close to it, not even all the times he’d disappointment me then. But the past six months… life had thrown everything it could at me to make this strange feeling a reality and I wondered if being an adult only meant getting better at hiding the turbulence inside me.
“I think someone has somebody they want to see tonight,” he continued with a singsong voice next to me as we approached the art building.
“You caught me,” I pretended to give up with a sigh. “I can’t miss the opportunity to see Luke, especially now that I know he plays for my team.”
Kev laughed. “Yeah, okay. You couldn’t be more interested in Luke if he stood in front of you and waved his dick in your face… oh wait… he did!”
I rolled my eyes at him and laughed.
“I think somebody missed a certain surly professor of ours.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “Just like I miss being mauled by a lion.”
It was sarcastic but my body didn’t get the memo. It easily wandered into the memories of the way he’d devoured my mouth like I was his next meal. A certain death that my body seemed content with.
Just like last week, we walked into the empty classroom and took our seats in front of the platform where I promptly zoned out. I didn’t notice when the two others in our group came in. I even missed when Luke strolled onto the platform as I dug around in my bag, trying to pull out everything I needed. But I didn’t miss when Léo entered. He wore the same dark pants as earlier but his white shirt was unbuttoned an extra button, baring just a small triangle more of his smooth chest. I swallowed. Twice. My tongue was a caged animal—given one taste of a meal and now it salivated for more.
And I didn’t miss the moment when it seemed like gravity shut off for a split second and everything seemed to float, including my eyes up to his. There was a flicker of fierce protectiveness there—the same look as when he pulled Wes from me. And just when I thought I’d grabbed ahold of it, it slipped through my fingers—a paralyzing intensity promising in one breath that Léo Baudin would fight me to the death, and in the next, that he’d die for me.
And with that gone, I questioned whether he’d even looked at me to begin with or if I’d only imagined it.
“We begin today same as last week.” Curt instructions boomed through the mostly-empty space as he nodded to Luke.
This time, Luke grinned directly at me as he shrugged off his robe, this time opting for a seated posture on the floor, his legs fell open to let his penis lie long over his balls, the tip resting against the floor. Oh, and all this was directly in front of me. Spread wide. For. Me.
And my body cared just about as much as it would if I were checking out eggplants at the grocery store.
“Close your mouth, Kev,” I tilted my head to my friend and teased him. “You’re about to drool all over the nice shirt you wore for Jake.”
He turned to me, his gaping mouth closing slowly like a drawbridge, before locking up tight with a lick over his lips.
“I hate you so much right now,” he grumbled as he shifted in his seat.
Another half-smile tugged at my lips until I caught Léo’s glare.
The blank white space in front of me was safe. My hand moved shakily at first over the paper, the lines slowly getting darker and more definitive. I tried to focus on the task, but my mind kept wandering back to the phone call.
Was my dad really serious with Lilith?
Was she really the one to help him? To change him? What if she was? What if she was it for him?
“Miss Milanovic.” I jumped when I saw him standing next to me. “I said time was up.”
“S-sorry,” I stuttered, looking back at my drawing to make sure that I’d actually been doing something instead of slowly losing my mind.
His eyes narrowed, sparking with anger when he couldn’t see inside to my distracting thoughts.
“For the rest of the hour, work on the face only. Neck up,” he said as he stepped away abruptly. “The most important thing to capture is the expression—the emotion.”
Even Luke appeared to be upset by this—not that his face wasn’t as good looking as the rest of him, but the guy clearly liked his junk to be stared at.
Kev and I shot each other a look before getting back to our task. Relief washed through me as soon as my pencil hit the paper. There were so many other feelings associated with this building, with this class, with him, that I didn’t realize just how much evolving this skill had started to mean. It wasn’t chemistry. It wasn’t determined reactions and fixed quantities and known outcomes. Art was freedom. It didn’t matter if you had all the wrong elements and all the wrong quantities, what you could make with them was still something beautiful.
And that’s what I felt like—what my life felt like right now—all the wrong pieces and I just wanted to make something beautiful from them.
My eyes snagged when I caught Léo moving in my periphery. Even when I wasn’t paying attention to him, I was. My pencil drifted to a halt as I watched him a smaller, book-sized, leather sketchpad from his bag, staring at it angrily like it was Pandora’s box.
My mouth dried up as he walked back over. Was he going to draw, too?
A hum went through my body. There were only two times that I’d seen emotion consume Léo—with me and with art.
Deciphering what he felt about me would require the missing piece of the Rosetta Stone. But his work? His art? That was easy. He loved art like Hades loved Persephone—something that both belonged to him yet was too good to remain in his dark and desolate world. And so he chased her angrily over the paper, capturing her inspiration in the few moments she deigned to give him.
His hot glare sent me back to my work but without the necessary focus. My eyes kept drifting away from my sketch, like a boat drifts away from the dock without being tied down, to where Léo sat to the side of us. Even though I swore I felt him branding my skin with his stare, each time I looked, his face was locked facing Luke.
Over and over again. Up and down my emotions went.
Until over an hour had passed.
“Stop.” His chair skidded back as he stood.
I wanted to see his version. His face had been so intense looking at his sketchbook—like he loved and hated it at the same time. And the way his pencil had moved over the paper… soft, strong… just like the way his hands moved over me.
“What is this?” His deep rasp startled me. In my daydreaming, I hadn’t realized that he was now standing behind me to inspect.
“M-my drawing.” I let my eyes have just a quick taste of his expression before I stared at the paper in front of me.
“Where’s the emotion?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean on his face. You’ve had an hour, Miss Milanovic.” My fingers itched to snap the pencil. “One hour. And his face looks like shit.”
I bristled. I thought my rendering looked almost exactly like Luke, which was an admirable feat considering it was Léo’s mesmerizing expression that had drawn most of my focus.
“It looks exactly like him,” I challenged defiantly, meeting those steely blue eyes.
He laughed at me, like I was a child who knew nothing.
“It may look like him… And a brown pile of balls sitting in a cone may look like chocolate ice cream but that doesn’t mean it’s not shit.” I heard someone laugh. If it was Kev, I was going to kill him.
“It may look like Luke,” he continued, now addressing everyone instead of just mocking me. “But that isn’t our goal tonight. The purpose of this exercise is to recreate the emotion. Everyone—tous le monde—comes to see the Davids we are discussing in class. Do you think it is only because they are naked?”
This time no one had the courage to laugh even though he was making a joke.
“There are easier ways… plus secrète… to look at naked people than this,” he rasped.
I glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if there was a heating lamp above me. My skin tingled with warmth as snapshots of the night he was with Giselle came back to me—hot and hurting all over again. It was like a chill that wouldn’t go away.
Did he say that because of me?
He wasn’t looking at me though. He hadn’t been.
Did he know?
“A drawing… a painting… sculpture… any work of art pulls you in because it makes you feel something. Art doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, it tells you the truth. It reaches inside and makes you feel something that you were afraid to feel before. Hate. Love. Anger. Sadness. Desire.”
My breathing became shallow. He was so beautiful when he was lost—when he was consumed with something. I bit down on my lip, shifting my position to ease the ache. The way the studio seats were designed, they were individual little benches that you straddled and attached an easel to the one end. It was a very crude design. I used to think that meant simple and unsophisticated. Right now, I found myself rolling my hips to try to press tighter against the hard wood between my legs and ‘crude’ received a whole new meaning.
Don’t moan. Don’t. Moan.
He’d been pacing back and forth in front of us as he spoke, but he came to an abrupt stop and stared at me. I swear I didn’t moan. No one else had turned to me. And yet, he looked at me like he’d heard me let out the softest mewl of pleasure—like he knew what I’d been doing.
And then he punished me. “Everyone else, keep working. Miss Milanovic, start over. Perhaps utilize some of your feelings this time. Without them, you can’t be an artist.”
“And with them, you can still be an ass,” I grumbled under my breath.
Our eyes clashed, a violent collision of wills that dumped more fuel into our fight, fuel that desire would set aflame. I could see the steam that released from his flaring nostrils. I couldn’t… stop myself. Just like he couldn’t. He saw my weakness earlier. He saw my hatred for it. And now he gave me the opportunity to let that anger out on him.
It was a very strange war that we fought—one where his attempts to destroy me were the only things that kept me fighting to save myself.
He cocked his eyebrow at me, wondering if I really wanted another battle right now. I knew better. In this room, he still held the appearance of power, so I ducked my head and flipped to a new sheet.
As soon as he walked on, Kev coughed and demanded my attention.
“Okay, I know I was being the nice friend earlier, but seriously, you need to tell me what’s going on between you and Professor Baudin,” he whispered frantically.
“Fine,” I agreed as my pencil scratched angrily over the paper, trying to catch up to everyone else since I was forced to start again.
He was an ass.
What expression was I supposed to find on Luke? All I saw was how satisfied he was of himself, no matter how brooding he tried to look like sitting there.
No, Léo did this to make me confront my emotions, to take them and channel them to create something new, something beautiful. And I didn’t want to. Because as soon as I did, all I could feel was the vise around my heart berating me for not being able to read him and the way that he touched me. For how I kept coming back for more when all he was trying to teach me was that it would never be enough—that I would never be enough—for him.
And that meant it wasn’t good enough for me.
I pushed hard and furiously over the paper, carving instead of drawing the lines on Luke’s face; I was surprised I didn’t rip through the paper.
Because somewhere along the trail of our bruised and battled relationship, it was no longer enough for me to win the war—I had to win him.
“Stop.”
My pencil skated on the paper as I jumped at his command. Had it been another hour?
According to the clock, it had almost been two.
With stiff movements, I set my pencil down before my hand jumped to my cheek, suddenly afraid that I was crying and I hadn’t realized.
“We are done for tonight,” he said tightly, and I felt him staring at me again. “I will take a look at your work again next week. Feel free to perfect it between now and then.”
Kev jumped up immediately. We’d worked right up to the end of class.
“I thought he was never going to let us go,” Kev whispered with a half-laugh.
What if he never lets me go? What if the entire semester is like this? Where I’m a crippled, needy mess.
What if it wasn’t just my brain that was broken, but my body, too?
I nodded and reached for my sketchpad.
“Except you, Miss Milanovic.” His terse words froze my movement.
His gaze was unreadable. A complete fog that blinded me before he turned to speak to Luke who was putting his robe back on.
Kev gave me a look that asked if I wanted him to stay and wait.
“Go,” I said softly, waving him off. “I’ll be fine.”
Watching a lamb led to the slaughter wasn’t the best pre-date event anyway.
“Eve. Ry. Thing.” Kev tapped his phone with each syllable. I guess that meant I was supposed to call or text him later. I wasn’t exactly sure.
I watched as he walked out of the studio with the rest of them. Luke was gone too, not that I looked, but because I could feel it. As soon as it was just him and me.
But that wasn’t enough. No, life likes to throw everything at you at once—like Thanksgiving dinner. All the food. All the calories. All the family. All the drama. My dad being who he was, we didn’t really celebrate Thanksgiving, but this is what I imagined that day to be. And like right now, I should have starved and secluded myself all day rather than face everything the world wanted to throw at me. All the anger. All the hurt. All the longing. All alone.
And then my phone started buzzing again. I swore I’d shut it off.
I felt his stare. I melted under it. My pencils clattered to the ground the way my bag opened as I frantically reached for it, practically dumping everything onto the floor before I got to my cell.
Dad.
I swallowed hard, staring at his name for the barest of seconds before I clicked to decline th
e call. I knew my gaze was watery, but I refused to be weak; I refused to be pitiable for a second time today. So, I rose and met his inquisitive glare.
“Still no emotion, Miss Milanovic.”
“Well, you made me start over,” I shot back.
“Emotion is the quickest thing to capture. If you can feel it.”
Rage flared inside me. So, now not only was I a child, a needy little daddy’s girl, but I was also unfeeling.
“He has no emotion!” I exclaimed waving my hand toward where Luke had been sitting. “No. That’s ridiculous. I’d like to see you do better.” My chin notched up. It was definitely not the right thing to do to yell at and then challenge your professor, but if I wasn’t doing anything else right today, why bother starting now?
“I saw you working over there,” I accused, ignoring how it gave away that I’d been watching him. “How about you show me just how much emotion you were able to capture?”
With a growl, he stalked over to me and dropped his face to an inch in front of mine. My eyes drank him in when he was this close. His rich, spicy scent invaded my nostrils—the first attack. His gaze. His strong nose. Defined cheekbones. Granite jaw. And his hair… so damn messy. I itched to cut it. I itched to hold those scissors so close to his beautiful face, and like Delilah to his Samson, I itched to sever his strength.
“Do you always handle critiques this way, Miss Milanovic? Perhaps you should consider a profession other than art.” The half-smile he gave me was razor sharp.
But so was my anger.
“And do you always kiss your students, Professor Baudin? Perhaps you should consider a profession other than professing.”
Forget poking the lion. I’d grabbed ahold of its tale and yanked with all my might.
He reared back. His rage everything that I wanted… to know that I wasn’t alone in mine. “Sit up there.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sit. Up. There.” He pointed at the platform and the look he sent with it was one that I was too afraid to disobey.
The Fall of Troy Page 15
