Page 40 of Painted

“Why, because I’m six-foot-four and built like a tank, I work with fire and metal all day, and I care enough about my two babies to make certain I can be emotionally available to them at night?” Nick asked, a teasing glint in his eyes.

“You’re making the rest of us look bad,” Rhys said, smiling more.

“No, you’re making yourself look bad,” Nick said, getting serious again. “Go find Early, get on your knees, and apologize for whatever you did that’s sticking so hard in your conscience.”

Rhys lost his smile. “Yeah,” he gusted out, glancing at the dining hall’s door. “I’d better.”

“Go,” Nick said. “Do it. I’ll deal with your cousins.”

“You’ve never had to do that before,” Rhys said as he turned. Nick knew them, of course, but Rhys couldn’t remember him really interacting with them. “You don’t know what you’re in for. Good luck.”

He left Nick to deal with the twins and headed out of the dining hall with renewed confidence and a determination to find Early and make things right. As mad as being part of a massive, eccentric, complicated family was, it was wonderful to have so many people around him who he could talk to, and who could slap him upside the head now and then to set him straight.

That renewed confidence faltered as he reached the front hall and approached the office, only to spot Early through the office’s glass walls.

They were dressed like a boy. Instead of the elegant, flowing clothes they’d been wearing lately, they wore plain, stiff khaki trousers and a button-down shirt. The heels were gone. Instead, they wore scuffed trainers. Their hair was pulled back in a man-bun instead of a lively ponytail or loose-falling, silky curtain.

Worse than that, they weren’t smiling as they did their work, and when Rhys stepped gingerly into the office and they glanced up at them, their eyes held anxiety instead of their usual brightness.

“Hey,” Rhys said, as awkward as a pimply teen as he forced himself to keep going, all the way up to the desk.

“Hi,” Early answered. Their voice was still soft, even if the way they were dressed wasn’t. That gave Rhys some hope.

“Listen, I think we really need to talk about a few things,” he said, needing to get it all out before he lost his nerve. “We shouldn’t have let the whole weekend come between us and…everything. I’m sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to seek you out before now.”

In the back of his mind, Rhys thought Nick would be proud of him. Raina would be proud of him.

“Yeah, I…things got busy,” Early said. It looked like they were having a hard time holding eye contact. “I went back to my parents’ house on Thursday to get my things, and then I had to go back on Saturday after my dad put everything else out on the curb for the binman.”

Those words hit Rhys like a fist in the gut. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have been there for you.”

Early shrugged one arm. “It’s okay. Nally drove me over to get the things I wanted to keep. Most of the rest of it was rubbish anyhow.”

That explained why Nally had been so short with him the other day. But it didn’t excuse anything.

“I’ve been a mess myself lately, though that’s not an excuse,” he said, wanting desperately to reach out and take Early’s hands, since he was fidgeting like he was lost.

“Yeah, I know,” Early said, glancing down. “It’s okay. I get it.”

“It’s not okay,” Rhys said. “Nothing I’ve said or done is okay.”

He took a step toward Early, but before he could say anything more, Violet stepped into the office.

“There you are,” she said cheerfully, as if she hadn’t walked in on something incredibly important. “We’re all back in the classrooms, sitting at our easels, waiting. You’d better come or Jim will strip down and pose for us, and no one wants that.”

Rhys felt like someone had dumped ice water over him. He darted a glance to the office clock, only to find out he was fifteen minutes late to his live model class.

With a forced smile, he told Violet, “We’ll be right there.”

Violet must have sensed something was going on. She nodded and smiled at him and Early, but didn’t say anything else before quickly leaving.

“We’d better go,” Early said, stepping away from the desk and heading toward the door. “Rebecca just went to the loo. She’ll be back in a second.”

“Early,” Rhys made a halfhearted effort to stop them as they shot past and into the hall.

Except when Early turned back to him with a questioning look, Rhys didn’t know what to say.

He settled for, “We need to talk. About a lot of things. As soon as we can.”

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