I painted for forty-eight hours straight, ate a full day’s worth of calories in one go and then slept—fitful, restless, dreaming of her, seeing her writhing naked on my bed.
I took my canvasses and paints and easel outside, by the pond.
I painted her on a boulder, in a bikini, head turned to smile at me, a sultry, sexy, come-hither grin, hair spilling over her slender serpentine back.
When I lost the light, I went inside again.
I painted her naked by the fireplace, on the floor. Sated, sweaty, on her back, feet pointing at the fire, eyes closed, breasts peaked and nipples hard, a scrim of blonde fuzz around her core. One arm tossed across her belly, the other extended out behind her. The viewpoint was from behind her, standing just above, gazing down at her.
It was a furious time—hours spent painting becomes days, days become weeks, and I was running out of paint. Running out of places to stack my drying works.
I couldn’t stop, though.
I was obsessed.
It was frantic, a frenzy. A need to paint her, see her, a way to put my mental images of her out into the world. Express my need for her in a visual context.
I lost track of time. I ran out of paint. I made the trek into town to resupply paints and canvas materials.
Hunted for meat. Fish. Hiked the wildest places, clearing my head, thinking.
When I got back to the cabin I started working on a new piece right away.
How many portraits have I done? Ten? Twelve? I was barely eating, barely sleeping. When I was exhausted and fried, I would pack a bag and head out for more hunting, more fishing, more trekking through the forest, recharging my mind and soul and body.
Finally, I just literally passed out on the floor of the cabin. I was beyond exhausted, emotionally burned out from putting so much energy into feeling her, seeing her, painting her, wanting her, needing her.
Cassie…
Where are you?
Cassie
I can feel him, the closer we get.
Juneau, Remington, Ramsey, and Lucas were all with me. Guiding me. I’d never felt so much like a helpless city girl in all my life—we were miles from the nearest trail, dozens of miles from anything like civilization. I’d peed in a bush, wiped with a leaf. The mosquitoes were the size of crows. The temperature was cool, but I was hot.
I had no clue where we were. If Juneau and the boys left me now I’d die, for sure. Juneau led the way, marching unerringly…recognizing specific landmarks, individual trees. She would touch a tree, stroking a trunk, as if recognizing an old friend. We would pause in a clearing, at a boulder or a downed tree, and Juneau would examine them carefully, looking for clues. At one place she smiled as she overturned a huge rock, finding a small cache that included a small hide bag that had a knife and a flint inside. She looked at everything and then replaced it, simply telling us we were heading in the right direction.
She glanced at Remington, at one point. “I haven’t been up to the cabin in a couple years. Funny how the old landmarks jump right out at you.”
Remington nodded. “Go somewhere enough, it gets ingrained.”
“I need to come up here more. Ink and I used to make trips up here all the freaking time. Then life got busy and I just…stopped.” Juneau sighed, a sound somewhere between relief and joy. “I feel more alive, being up here.”
He just squeezed her shoulder and we continued on deeper into the wild.
Further, deeper. Wilder.
Then, suddenly, we were in a clearing, and there was a small cabin and a pond. I barely saw the cabin at first, as it was well camouflaged to look like part of the landscape. The pond was tiny but lovely, a pastoral scene of elegant, wild beauty. A crow perched on the stump of a dead tree poking up out of the water, cawing. A dragonfly flitted across the surface, pausing and darting in unpredictable patterns.
I glanced at Juneau. “This is it?”
She nodded, grinning with pure giddy joy. “The Isaac Retreat.” A sigh, gusty and happy. “For a while, this was my home away from home.”
Lucas glanced around, nodding. “Quite a place. Looks like it’s been here a while, huh?”
Juneau shrugged. “Since the seventeen or eighteen hundreds, we’re not sure.”
“How far around does the property go?” Ramsey asked.
Another shrug. “I dunno. I don’t know that we actually even own anything. It’s just always been here. We come up, we hunt and fish and hike and read and relax. We don’t harm the forest, we don’t leave anything and we don’t take anything we don’t need. We leave it stocked and unlocked, and if you know about it and are in the area and in need, you’re welcome to it. Just respect it, and the land.”
Ramsey nodded. “De facto, grandfather clause sort of ownership.”
“Yep.”
“He’s in there,” I whispered, staring at the cabin. “I need to see him.”
The men and Juneau all exchanged glances.
Juneau bit her lip and said to the guys, “Um. If you guys are game to keep hiking, I know of a great spot for a picnic on the way back to town.”
A chorus of agreements and goodbyes and, within moments, they’d all trooped around the far side of the pond and up the hill. Leaving me alone in the forest, breathing slowly, raggedly, summoning my courage.
I walked up to the door of the cabin.
The door handle was nothing but a small metal lever lifting a latch—I lifted, pulled.
I stepped inside into…a sanctuary of me.
I was everywhere. Paintings of me on every surface. So, so many versions of me. He’d found my little gift, clearly.
I was stunned breathless for several minutes, just staring. The talent…god, the talent. He was a genius. In one, I was at the pond’s edge. Nude. Facing away from him, stepping into the water. I was partially bent, one hand extended to ripple the greenish-brown surface of the water. He’d captured me in motion, somehow frozen an instant in time, a fictional instant.
Another was a close-up, just my bust, a hint of cleavage propped up as I lay on my side, smiling at him with soft tender love in my eyes; tendrils of hair wisped across my face, paused in being blown by a breeze or his breath. My eyes were utterly me. It was like looking in a mirror, writ large. Seeing myself, the way I…the way I would look at him as I lay in his arms in the afterglow of making love.
I teared up.
There were stacks and stacks of paintings. God, he must have been painting me over and over the entire time he was gone, the entire time I was healing and strengthening and giving myself a future.
I moved forward, into the cabin, scanning around quickly. The inside was chaotic—one room, a bed in the corner, kitchenette in another, one wall contained the fireplace which currently glowed with the amber-orange light of a dying fire. The windows were grimy with age, keeping it dark inside. Everything else was art—paintings, darkroom equipment, boxes of film, several old manual film cameras, rolls of canvas and lengths of wood for stretching the canvas, framing supplies, paints, brushes, knives and scrapers and god knows what else. A window was open for ventilation, but it still reeked of oil paints, and Ink.
Then I saw him on the floor, passed out. A palette lay to one side, a brush to the other. His hair was loose, all over the place. He was…a mess.
He had paint crusted on his hands, wrists, in his beard, on his legs. He was coated in old crusted paint.