Page 114 of A Shore Thing

She opened her eyes. The clouds looked darker. She didn’t want to move.

“Penny. About your lecture.”

She registered his tone with faint alarm.

“I have something to tell you.”

She sat up, into the wind. “What is it?”

“There’s no painting of the bladderwrack. I tried, but…” His jaw tensed. “I failed. Still can’t draw a midge. Or a kelp.”

She drew back. She’d suspected, hadn’t she? She’d discounted her intuition, choosing instead to believe a lie.

“You said you’d painted it.” Her voice was thin and accusing, and she burrowed her gloved fingers deep into the grass.

He went a shade whiter beneath his tan. “I’d hoped to make it true. I was afraid if you knew, you’d give up on me. I was afraid I’d give up too.”

“You are giving up.” It was written all over his face. “Why now?”

“We’re almost back where we started.” He slumped, his bleak expression fit for the gallows, as though the loop they’d been cycling around Cornwall was a noose and their return to St. Ives would cinch it tight around his neck.

It seemed years ago that they’d passed by Land’s End, the western- most point on the circumference of their journey, and passed through the Lizard, the southernmost. Now that they’d reached the Devon border in the village of Kingsand, and swung north as far as Bude, and west again, they were closing in on victory—one sort of victory.

“We’ll win the bet,” she whispered.

“You’ll fulfill your side of the bargain.” He ran a hand over his face. “It is evident that I cannot fulfill mine.”

Resignation wasn’t his way. He looked and sounded unfamiliar.

“You still might,” she protested, and he gave her a bitter smile that seemed wrong for his mouth.

“I can’t even draw you.” His eyes moved over her, and she wondered at his inflection. Should it be easier to draw her than a midge, or a plant? Yes, for him, aficionado of the female form.

Dark emotion welled. She’d once offered to let him paint her body, and with every passing day, she found herself offering more of herself, finding more of herself, body and soul, and it was turning her inside out.

The terror returned with the force of all she could lose, borne on a gust of wind that stung her cheeks like a slap.

“I don’t give up on you,” she said, through numb lips.

He stared, eyes nearly black, and then he looked away.

“Shigeki Takada will take the commission instead, I’m almost certain. He’s not a flower painter either, but he’s meticulous and harmonizes his tints like no one else. His pictures won’t disappoint.” He looked back at her, wind plastering his soft hair to his hard cheekbone. “I am sorry.”

He was. She could see it. He was sorry, sad and sorry, and after all, his disappointment had to outweigh her own. He was an artist who couldn’t make his art. She couldn’t imagine anything comparable—banishment to the moon, perhaps, where nothing grew.

She reached for his hand and squeezed.

“You’re not angry?”

“I’m not angry,” she confirmed.

“Another thing about your lecture, then.” His gaze sharpened. “Your friends, the botanists who invited you to New York. You said they haven’t written. Have you written to them?”

“I sent a letter before I left for St. Ives.”

He nodded. “You explained your plan? Told them that you’ll critique Heywood’s intervention and the ways botany has been put in service of the powerful more generally?”

Her hand twitched in his. “I asked logistical questions pertaining to my arrival.”