Sweet Hope (Sweet Home #4)(24)

Austin, Levi and me never looked at the stars like that again.

I missed it.

I f*cking missed Austin and the relationship we used to have… one I never got to start with Levi when he was old enough to understand.

As I stared at the sky through the glass, my eyes fell on Orion’s Belt. I couldn’t go there right now. Couldn’t keep thinking of our lives before everything went wrong.

A hand running softly down my back had me whipping around. Aliyana’s concerned eyes were wide as she stared up at me, her hand stilling on my back. I could feel the heat of her imprint on my skin like it was a hot branding iron searing my flesh.

“Are you…?” Her fingers moved, stroking at my muscled back, making my skin feel like it was on fire. “Are you okay?”

My instinct was to pull away and tell her to go to hell. Push her away like I did everyone, but as looked into her eyes, I couldn’t f*cking move… I wanted those hands to move lower, to touch every part of me.

Aliyana’s hand moved up, her fingers brushing past my hair until her index finger ran over my short beard. “Elpi?”

Reaching up, I gripped her hand to throw it off my face. Her breath hitched as our hands touched, but I held on… Fuck knows why, but I held her hand against my cheek, my heart slamming crazy fast in my chest.

A flush of red raced up from Aliyana’s chest to her neck and cheeks. Her tongue ran over her full pink lips and her eyelids lowered as she stared at me, just breathing… the two of us just f*cking breathing.

“Elpi…” Aliyana hushed and began moving toward me. I stared at those full lips and wanted nothing more than to kiss her, to slam her up against the wall and f*ck her until neither of us could stand.

But I couldn’t… We couldn’t.

Squeezing her hand, I pulled it from my face and laid it at her side. Disappointment showed in her hurt expression, and I reluctantly moved to the middle of the gallery, giving us some space.

“Elpi?” Aliyana called from behind me. As I faced her, she was playing with a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her band. She looked so goddamn cute and innocent, looking at me with those huge exotic eyes, her long lashes fluttering against her high cheeks. “Are you okay to talk about the others?” she asked shyly.

No, I wanted to say. I’m done with all this exhibition shit, dredging up things from my past that I don’t ever wanna face.

Instead, I took a deep breath and nodded.

A relieved smile spread on her face, and she moved to stand beside me. I immediately felt her warmth, and the air became thick around us. Aliyana dipped her head and blushed, and I knew she felt the weird pull between us too.

Why did everything in my life have to be so f*cking complicated?

“So which one should we do next?” she asked.

“I don’t care,” I said, my hands in pockets, feeling my smokes… I really wanted a damn smoke.

Aliyana started walking straight for my biggest piece, the piece, and I stopped dead in my tracks. It took Aliyana a second to realize I wasn’t behind her. In fact, I’d turned my back, feeling like a damn crack had splintered through my chest.

I couldn’t deal with facing what that sculpture meant to me right now.

“Elpi, what—”

“I’m not going there,” I snapped.

“Okay,” Aliyana said cautiously. “Do you want to choose another one?”

I closed my eyes and felt myself relax. Making myself scan the room, almost all the pieces tore me apart. All of them had meaning… meanings that were too hard to face. But I could get through a few.

Walking to a smaller piece, an hourglass with a hand reaching up through the sand, I motioned with a nudge of my head for Aliyana to join me.

“This one’s okay?” she asked, and I threw her a single nod. “Do we have a title?”

As I looked at the hand of the man drowning in the sand, I felt the suffocation, the impossible situation he was in… the heavy sand pulling him further and further down…

“Downfall,” I blurted out.

Just like before, I felt Aliyana’s eyes scrutinizing my face, probably trying to read me more, but this time I stayed stoic.

“Downfall,” she repeated, scribbling in her notepad. “And the inspiration?”

*****

After the sixth piece, I felt emotionally and physically drained.

“Do you want to call it quits for tonight?” Aliyana asked followed by a yawn.

Exhaling a relieved sigh, I ran my hands down my exhausted face. “Yeah,” I replied, and for the first time since I’d come into the gallery, my muscles seemed to lose tension… then began aching like f*ck.

As I worked out the cricks in my neck, I heard Aliyana move beside me. I stared down at her. She was blushing.

She was affected by me… And I liked that more than I should have.

“So…” she said quietly, edging even closer. My palms began sweating as she approached. My heart thundering in my chest. “Thank you for doing this tonight. I can’t believe how powerful your words are against your already breathtaking works of art.”

I fought a smirk. Coming from any other curator, I was sure it would’ve been just a line to crawl up the sculptor’s ass, but not her. I saw in her eyes that she loved all this crap. And even crazier, she loved my work… the twisted, f*cked-up sculptures from my mind.