Page 20 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
Perhaps he can sense I’ve reached the end of my tether, or maybe his feet are getting tired, because he puts a hand on my shoulder so that we’re both angled toward the house.
“Mon ami, we can stand here longer and debate the Muses and madness and the magic of museums, but I think you might rather come inside and see what—who—it is you came to see.” The roguish teasing in his voice as he gives my shoulder a shake is more the Remy I’m used to. “A certain beautiful woman in a garden, maybe?”
I run a hand over my chin. “Is it that obvious?”
He nudges me toward the house. “You wear your feelings on your sleeve, as they say.”
We go in by the orange door, and he leads me down the hallway, even though I know my way by now. Heat rises in me. The whole house quivers, hazy and warped. There’s a strumming in my body, and a whispering in the air that urges me on. Remy unlocks the door to the room where she’s kept, and it’s torturous to stand still that long.
Then . . .
Then, it doesn’t matter—because nothing exists anymore but me and this room and this insanely gorgeous painting that I want to hold and touch. This painting that is perfect—no sun damage, no fading colors, no flowers wilting from the seams.
Remy leaves me alone with the painting, and when I am mere inches away from it, I lift my hand, but I am careful not to touch the frame, or even the canvas. The painting is still a painting.
Until it’s not. There’s a stretching I feel in my own muscles and tendons, like coming awake at dawn when the first rays of a coral sunrise flare through the windowpanes. A sound goes with it—a sweet morning yawn, delicate arms unfolding from the night, and eyelids fluttering open.
Inside her garden, the woman presses her fingertips against the wall of reality between us, imploring the canvas to yield for her. Slowly at first, then more quickly, she reaches her hand through the paint, spreading her fingers.
I don’t hesitate. I reach for her, my fingers touching hers and then sliding around them. Her skin is warm and soft and radiant.
And confident.
There is a boldness in her touch that makes me feel like I can do anything, and the things I’ve done, I can do better.
I press her soft hand to my cheek; her palm is so warm, so tender on my face. I want her to come all the way out, to talk to me, to tell me who she is.
Holding her hand, holding her painted gaze, I speak the first and only thought I have. “I want more than anything for you to be at the museum. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“It is the same for me with you,” she whispers from beyond the canvas.
8
I carry her words with me, through waking and dreaming, over the next couple of weeks. There are exams to get through, grades that hardly matter, since I’ve already been accepted to graduate school here at the university. The most important thing, scholastically, is my project for my independent study.
The most important thing on my mind, personally, is getting to the museum.
Bless whatever neuron came up with the brilliant idea to do my project on the Renoir, because the overlap of those two things may well be the difference between graduating with honors and without.
Today is the day.
I force myself to keep a normal pace on my way to work, just to prove I have some self-control. And also, the woman can’t come out of the garden until the sun sets. So, there’s that.
I let myself into the Musée d’Orsay’s administrative wing with my key card and make for the nearest stairwell, taking the steps two at a time to the first floor, where she—the only “she” who matters—is already in place, ready to welcome visitors.
The crowd surprises me, though it shouldn’t. Tourists and locals alike pack the entrance to the gallery that showcases Woman Wandering in the Irises. It’s not quite Mona Lisa level, but it’s more traffic than the Musée usually sees.
It feels like the floor of a concert venue, everyone sweaty and elbowing each other, angling to get closer to the rock star. Everyone wants to see the lost Renoir.
Then—there she is.
My heart stutters, and a flush heats my face and neck. I want to push through the crowd to reach her and run my hands over her painted body. I want her to see me, and only me, amid the chaos.
I want her to like me.
I want her, full stop, and that’s an exceedingly uncomfortable thing to admit about a painting.
Only, I’m no longer pretending that’s all she is.
I leave her to her adoring public, calmer now that I’ve seen her here. Now that I know she’s in the building. I even manage to get some work done, and to say good night to Adaline when she leaves, and to behave like a human being and not an instinct-driven hormone machine raised by wolves.
