Page 109 of Falling for my Brother's Best Friend

He sighs. “I already know you do.”

I think back to the journal he gave me as he dips my brush into the red. Guiding my hand onto the canvas, he puts a swirly line across it.

“What is that?”

“What’s it to you?”

“A swirly line.”

“Use your imagination.” He leaves me and goes back to his easel.

I stare at the line. “I don’t think I’m an imagination kind of person. You use pictures. Can’t I use pictures?”

“Maybe I should make you do a paint-by-numbers,” he says, not getting up from his stool.

“That would be perfect.”

He leans over again, shooting me that look that teeters between annoyance and humor.

“Fine.” I blow out a breath. “But I’m not showing you after.”

“Okay. You don’t have to.”

Ugh. Mr. All The Right Answers. I swear.

With my paintbrush on the canvas, I continue the swirly line in a circle to make a flower. Dipping another paintbrush in yellow, I do the center of the flower, then green for leaves and stem.

Once I figured out what I’m going to paint, I do enjoy the process. I continue with another flower, then more green and yellow. The music switches to a more upbeat track, which makes me bounce in my seat as I flick little dots of blue on the canvas for water droplets.

Liam checks me out a few times, but I put my two fingers to my eyes and back at him. “Keep your eyes on your own work, Kelly.”

He laughs and his foot taps on the floor to the beat of the music.

A half hour later, I spin around on my stool. That did feel awesome. I got lost in the process of painting and the time flew by. “Done!”

“It’s not a race, babe.” He’s still dipping and stroking, dipping and stroking.

I watch his forearm muscles shift and flex. I’ve grown used to seeing him without a shirt, but I’m positive I’ll always get hot and tingly from looking at him.

“Stop staring,” he says without even glancing my way.

“Are you almost done?”

“Almost.” He dips his paintbrush again.

I tilt my head back, looking at the ceiling. Jumping off the stool, I head back to the pictures stacked in the corner. The squeak of Liam’s stool says he’s watching me.

I can’t say finding that picture of my mom wasn’t like a gut punch by Floyd Mayweather. I’ve seen pictures of my parents. I pass one every morning when I enter the Bailey Timber Corporation building. My dad’s picture is beside my grandfather’s in the executive hallway, but I never stop and truly look. I glance, never fixating on it. That’s how I’ve survived these years.

Flipping through the paintings, I smile at some, skip over others—like the one from the funeral—and stop cold at the last one in the stack. It’s my parents’ wedding.

I shift all the other ones to pull it out. “They were such a beautiful couple.”

“Like Ken and Barbie,” Liam says from behind me.

I stare at the picture of my parents on their wedding day. We capture this scene every year in the Founder’s Day parade.

“The picture is kind of iconic. That’s why I had to do it.”

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