Page 190 of Reckless Obsession

I can feel Dante looking at me. It’s that soft, patient, slightly furrowed gaze he gets, the one that makes me feel like a glass beaker under a microscope. He sees the manic tempo beneath my nonchalance, the way my foot taps a restless rhythm against the stone pavers, and the fact that I’m drowning in sensory noise so I don’t have to listen to the silence.

I hate how much I understand that look.

So I pick up my brush again.

“You are staring,” I tell him.

“I am admiring you.”

“Worse.”

He chuckles, then looks towards the canvas.

“It is beautiful.”

“Eevee?”

“The painting.”

“It’s for Tyler,” I say. “I’m sending it to him when I finish. Then I am doing Milo.”

“The corgi.”

“The menace.”

Dante smiles, his attention drifting past the terrace doors into the villa. Several of my paintings are propped against the walls inside: harbors at sunset, cliffs above bright water, the blurred shape of fishing boats beneath a pink sky. Too much color. Too much light.

“They are beautiful too,” he says.

I glance inside.

“Thank you.”

“But they feel different.”

My brush stills.

I know what he means before he says it, which is probably why my shoulders tighten.

“Different how?”

Dante considers his answer instead of rushing to fill the silence.

“They are full of beautiful things,” he says. “Blue water. Bright skies. Flowers. Sunsets.” His gaze comes back to me. “But when I look at them, they do not feel entirely like you.”

Heat prickles behind my neck.

“You have known me for long enough to decide what my paintings should feel like?”

“No.” He speaks gently. “I only mean they feel… careful.”

“Careful.”

“Like you are trying very hard to make them happy.”

I set my brush down.

A little too sharply.