Page 74 of Our Secrets and Scars

We’re art making more art.

When we’re done, we stand together and stare at the masterpiece we’ve just created. It’s messy and chaotic, and it hurts my eyes to look at for too long, but still, it’s beautiful.

Because it’s us.

“You should name it,” I say.

“What?”

“Isn’t that what artists do? Name their work?”

“Yeah,” he nods, “you’re right.”

“So?”

He looks down at me, a masterpiece of a man in himself, with a wicked glint in his eyes. “I’m not going to tell you.”

I huff a frustrated sigh. “You really love your secrets, huh?”

He’s silent for a long while, just looking at our nameless piece of art laid out in front of us like it holds the answers to all his problems.

“No,” he whispers finally. “Actually, I hate them.”

“Then why keep so many?”

He looks at me, and though I convince myself to ignore it, I see it—that guilt dulling the sparkle in his irises and the regret swimming in their stormy depths.

“Because fate never gave me a choice.”

Twenty

Holden

Wetumblethroughthedoor to my apartment, both of us a mess of dried paint and giddy laughter. I watch Kinsley as she giggles, trying to commit the way she looks right now to memory because I have this deep-rooted fear that our time together is running out.

It’s just that at this moment, like this, with her hair clumped together with paint and her smile so big and easy, I’ve never seen her look so happy. I want to draw her this way, capture her with graphite on canvas so that I can keep her smile forever.

“I need a shower,” she says, stripping out of her clothes and leaving them in piles on the floor. “Do you mind if I hop in first?”

Tilting my head to the side, I consider her question.

“What if we shower together?”

The tension that overcomes her is immediate. Her entire body seizes with panic as she stares at me with wide and fearful eyes.

I know what’s frightening her. The possibility that I’ll finally see the scars on her face, that she’ll give me a piece of herself that she’s never willingly given another person. She thinks that I’ll look at her differently.

But she has no idea that her scars will make me love her more than I already do.

“What are you so scared of, Kinz?” I ask in my softest voice.

She shifts on her feet, refusing to look at me. Her fingernails scratch at the crusted paint on her arms as she chews her bottom lip between her teeth until I’m sure she’s drawing blood.

“Tell me,” I plead. “Tell me what’s holding you back.”

“That you’ll leave.” Her voice is so quiet, I barely hear it. And then louder, she says, “That you’ll see them and never look at me the same again. That they’ll disgust you. That you’ll hate me for them just like everyone who was supposed to be my friend did in high school.”

I swallow the space between us in a few long strides and seize her with my hands on either side of her face.

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