Page 72 of Butterfly
I can’t do this.
It echoes in my head and leaves me smearing canvases with black paint. When I try to see an image, all I can see is his eyes.
I’ve painted Donovan’s eyes looking at me like I’ve broken him a dozen times. I painted his hand, reaching for me right before it fell.
I’ve painted his lips turned down in a frown, and the little spatters of blood that got onto his shirt, freckles that he was never meant to have. Every painting has a crimson wash of my blood—his memory and my body… the only way we can touch now.
Donovan covers my apartment, and I can’t sell a single one of the paintings because it’s all I have left.
I drop the brush and look at my arm… tiny cuts litter my skin, places I’ve run my knife, like bleeding onto the brush could somehow bleed out the emotions that are drowning me with the flow.
It doesn’t help.
Nothing helps.
When I look at my phone again, the notification screen is only full of messages from my website about when I’m going to put up more art…
It’s too much.
This is all too much.
I can’tdothis anymore.
I grab a knife and head out into the icy snow left over from the storm, knowing that there’s only one thing left for me.
I need to see him.
I’m afraid to knock on his apartment door. I walked the entire way here in nothing but a thin shirt, because I haven’t been able to wash the blood from his hoodie. It still smells like him beneath the scent of copper, and I can’t lose it.
My hair is soaked, clinging to my cheek in chilled tendrils that barely penetrate my senses.
I’m afraid.
I’m more afraid than I’ve been in my entire life, because I know that if he tells me to leave again… that’s it.
It’s really over.
And I’m not sure what I’ll do if he says that.
My fingers grip the knife I’m holding, though they’re shaking so hard I nearly drop it when I finally raise my fist and knock.
Once.
Twice.
And for a minute, there’s nothing… I don’t know if he’s at practice. Fuck, for all I know he moved to make sure he never had to see me again.
When the door opens, I sway on the spot. My vision blinks in and out, gray speckled with black and white…
But in the center of it all is crimson.
Donovan.
My heart.
“What are you doing here, Shiloh?” His voice is full of pain, like seeing me hurts. It would almost be enough to completely break me if it weren’t for the fact that I see the way he sweeps his eyes over my wet hair, and concern draws his brows together. I’m too caught up on how gorgeous he is—on his freckles and full lips—to care.
None of my paintings did him justice. Donovan is more than art.
