Page 1 of Painted

ONE

Morning wasRhys Hawthorne’s favorite time of day. It was the beginning, a fresh start, a way to package up the shit that might have happened the day before and shove it way back on a shelf where he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. It was ripe with promise, forward-facing, and free from the distractions of yesterday’s heartache.

It was also the best time of day to paint his favorite view of the landscape around Hawthorne House. He often got up early, well before his first morning class, to sit in the bay window of his classroom, in the isolated nook he’d carved out for himself, even though it was in plain view of everyone else, to work with the early morning light.

He’d often gotten up early and just sat in the window seat of that nook, fresh tea in hand, chatting with his sister, Raina, about life, the family, art, and everything else under the sun.

The familiar ache of grief that thinking about Raina gave him surprised Rhys enough to make him lower his paintbrush and clench his jaw. He glanced at the still—still!—imperfect landscape in front of him, then out the window at the belovedview he was trying to render, then at the empty space where Raina used to sit with him.

“You’re going to have to get on with your life eventually, Rhys,” he heard her teasing, scolding voice in his head. “Just because you haven’t gotten it right yet doesn’t mean you won’t get it right eventually.”

Rhys’s mouth pulled and twitched at those remembered words, like it wanted to smile, even though the rest of him definitely wasn’t in a smiling mood. Raina had been talking about his recent break-up and the deeply vulnerable things he’d confessed to her about the whole ordeal. He’d been dating a woman, Angela, who he’d really liked, but who just didn’t have the vibe he was looking for.

Six months before that, he’d sat in the same spot with his sister, complaining about Michael, the guy he’d just broken up with, because as hot as he was in bed, he just didn’t have that soft streak that he liked.

Raina had always been his go-to sibling to have those sort of deep, confessional moments with. She’d never judged him for not knowing what he wanted, and she’d encouraged him to sample a little of everything before he decided.

Which was ironic, considering she’d married Nick after just a handful of dates. They’d married within six months of meeting, had their first kid, Jordan, seven and a half months later, and their second, Macy, a scant year after that.

And then she’d been killed in a highway accident when Macy was barely a month old, nearly fourteen months ago.

Rhys and Nick had been in the car with her. Rhys was in the back seat. Raina had teased him that he was too drunk to drive and had taken the keys from him.

They’d all laughed about how responsible and motherly she was, not just for her babies but for Rhys, too.

Twenty minutes later, she was gone.

Rhys sucked in a breath and battled to push that memory out of his mind before it could take hold and ruin his day. He’d dealt with it. He and Nick both had gone to therapy for months after they’d recovered from that horrible night. He still checked in with his therapist once a month, though in the back of his mind, he knew it should be more. He’d dealt with life going on without one of the most important people he’d ever had by his side. He’d accepted the way things were in his new reality.

He still bent over backward to avoid driving at night, though, and he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

And he still couldn’t get the damn landscape right.

He cleared his throat and forced his gaze back on the painting in front of him. The canvas was so much larger than he usually worked with. It was as tall as he was and twice as broad. It held the same view that he’d painted a dozen times or more on a smaller scale. His thought was that it would make a great centerpiece for Hawthorne House’s foyer.

He’d been working on the piece for months now, since the early summer. He needed to get it done sooner rather than later, since it was fall now and the colors of the landscape had definitely started to change. The view had changed with it.

Maybe that was the problem with the piece. He’d been trying to create a summer scene, like that view had been during all those balmy, sunny days when he and Raina used to yammer away with each other. Maybe he needed to make it an autumnal scene, full of russets and ochres.

Maybe he just needed to abandon the whole thing as an utter failure.

He twisted to the side and pushed his brush through some of the blobs of paint that he’d squeezed onto the oversized palette he liked to work with, blending Alizarin Crimson with Naples Yellow to try to get the right shade of orange to match autumn at Hawthorne House in his memory.

The red was a bad idea, though. Swirling it across his palette brought to mind the colors that had dripped onto Raina’s shirt from the head trauma she’d received when the intoxicated driver of the MG had lost control and slammed into?—

Rhys sucked in a loud breath and dropped his brush entirely as a bout of shaking overtook him. The screech and crunch from that night echoed in his brain for a moment before he forced it away. He shook out his hand, which morphed into him shaking out both arms and rolling his shoulders. Diane, his therapist, had encouraged him to push his awareness into his body by moving it and being physical when the haunted thoughts of that night infiltrated their way into his mind.

He stepped back far enough to bend over and retrieve his paintbrush from where it’d fallen to the floor, splattering paint on the linoleum. Not that the entire studio wasn’t crisscrossed with layers of oil and acrylic paint from dozens of classes in the past. Rhys liked the floor messy. It meant that the studio was used and given the attention it deserved.

There. That was a better thought to have than either the crash or his failure to render the view he looked at nearly every day. He should be thinking about his upcoming class at any rate, since his students would be showing up soon.

“It’s looking lovely,” his mother’s voice dragged him even farther from the thoughts that flayed him.

Rhys turned to her from where he’d taken his fallen brush to the sink to clean it, then glanced back at his canvas.

“It’s not right,” he said with a frown as he swished his brush in a small cup of turpentine to clean it.

“Not right?” his mum asked with a blink, focusing on the painting instead of him. “It’s lovely, dear. What isn’t right about it?”

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