“Fuck, it’s hot when you talk about art like that.”
“That’s good, then, because it’s one hundred percent what I was going for.” He grinned.
I placed my hand on his nape, twisted his hair around my fingers and massaged his scalp. “You’re incredible. I love the way your mind works.”
“Even when I’m messy, leave a sock on the counter, and use your toothbrush without asking?”
“Yes, even then. Seriously, that’s a beautiful way to look at it.” Jesus, I was proud of him.
“Thank you. I’d like to expand it. I’d love to create female couples, hetero couples, some where you can’t tell their genders at all.”
“I think you should.”
“I plan on it.”
“You dork.”
We didn’t talk about Helena and Dad. It seemed we were both trying not to focus on it because it hurt too much. It’d been ten days, and we were trying to just keep going, to focus on each other.
It was late afternoon when Lane pulled into the Manhattan parking garage where he kept his car. I understood why he drove as little as possible there. I didn’t like dealing with traffic in Atlanta, but New York City was a beast of its own.
We got our bags and headed down the street toward his building. Like it always was in the city, there were people everywhere, cars clogging the streets, honking, and construction on a nearby building.
The lobby was sleek, decorated in black, silver, and gray. I’d never been to his apartment. How sad was it that he’d been the most important person in my world since I was fourteen years old, and I’d never been to his home?
Lane unlocked the door. It was early evening, and the sun shined through one of the large windows in his living room. Unlike my condo, Lane’s was more comfortable and lived in. There was artwork all over the walls, different styles and colors that all came together in a way I wouldn’t know the first thing about doing. His couch was thick and plush, a light blue. Clothes hung over the back of it, a blanket balled up in its corner. A shoe under the coffee table, the other across the room beside a chair that matched the sofa. Stacks of sketchbooks littered the space as well.
A few pieces of clothing on the floor made a trail down the hallway. In the corner of the dining room, he had stacks of canvases, and supplies all over the table. He had an easel there too, even though I knew he had a studio.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place that’s more you.”
Lane grinned. “I love it here.”
I wrapped my arms around him from behind and nuzzled his neck. “I’ll move here if you want. I won’t have a problem finding work. Plus, my boyfriend is a famous painter. He can support me.”
His laugh vibrated through his body and into mine. “I love Atlanta too. I appreciate that I don’t have to be on as much there. That I don’t have to be around people the way I do in the city. I missed being home. I missed you and Mom and Timothy…” His words hung in the air, the truth we’d tried to bury. That our parents were hurt right now. That they didn’t want us to be together.
“I’ll be here with you, though. I mean, can you think of anything better?”
“No,” Lane replied. “We’ll figure that out. Come with me. I want to show you something.”
I let go of him, let him lead me away. When we passed his studio, I said, “I want to peek.” It was clearly a much better one than he had in my apartment. It was set up to be more functional, with shelves and cabinets for his supplies.
A blank canvas sat on an easel, and I couldn’t help wondering what he’d planned to paint before he left.
We ended up in Lane’s room. The bed wasn’t made, and a slideshow of him and Jayden there together flashed in my head. “Did you fuck him in those sheets?”
“Not right before we left. And they’ve been washed.”
“Yeah, but have they been burned?”
Lane rolled his eyes. “So jealous.”
“You would be too.”
“True.”
I walked over to the distressed-wood nightstand, where there was a collage of us—in high school, at graduation, and those times we were together with family over the years, when I’d tried to keep my distance but couldn’t.
It was there, where he’d slept every night, watching over him, and suddenly I wasn’t so jealous anymore. Lane had chosen me long before we’d admitted it to each other.
“Come here,” he said, and I followed him to his walk-in closet. He opened the door, and along the side were storage containers full of sketchbooks. He pulled out two boxes, and we dragged them to the bed, where we sat to open them.
I picked up a sketchbook and flipped through. Page after page after page of me, of our nights in the attic together, or in the backyard, or sitting on his bed. The day our parents got married, a quick sketch of me standing in the window. Book after book. All the times he’d drawn me were in there. There were other drawings, of course, but most were of me. “Holy shit. You kept them all?”
“Yes. Keep looking.”
I picked up another, and it was me at a park in Atlanta, standing in a bag at a sack race we did at a family reunion. And there was me and him at a picnic table, and me asleep on the couch as an adult. There were drawings of me in places we hadn’t been together, like in Washington Square.
“I understand if you’d like to file a restraining order now,” Lane said, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the drawings. “You’ve always been my favorite muse, even when months would go by and we wouldn’t see each other. Even when we were a thousand miles apart. One would think I should have accepted what that meant before the day you kissed me.”
My hand trembled. I would never get enough of him.
I couldn’t find words, so instead, I set the books into the containers on the floor, reached out, cupped his face, and tugged him forward until our mouths met. Lane’s lips moved against mine, our tongues dipping in, tasting each other.
Lane leaned backward, and I followed, until he was lying down with me on top of him, the two of us rutting together as we kissed and sucked and savored.
I sat up and straddled him, Lane lifting his torso just enough that I could tug his shirt off. I removed mine next, before taking his mouth again, working his jeans open as I did. The second I slipped my hand beneath his underwear and wrapped it around his cock, Lane arched forward, groaned into my mouth. He was hot against my palm, a steel rod covered in soft skin.
I jacked him while kissing him, and then he was shoving his hands between us to open my pants as well.
I pushed onto my knees, tugged his remaining clothes down with eager hands. Lane chuckled but worked with the same clumsy speed to try and get me naked.
When we both were, we lay down on our sides, facing each other. Lane hooked his top leg over my hip, his body feverish with want. We were close, his breath against my face, before I kissed him, the two of us moving against each other. “So, no restraining order?” I teased while my mouth journeyed down his neck.
“What do you want?” Lane asked.
“You.”
“Already have me.”
“Then I want to fuck you. Want to paint the inside of your body with my cum, before you jerk off on me and paint my skin with yours.”