Page 38 of Partnering with the Artist

In about a month, we’ll be at the Creator’s Ball.

She’ll face off against her rotten ex, find her closure, and decide whether or not she still wants me in her life in the same capacity we’ve been starting to nurture.

I don’t have the time tostartin a month.

I need to milk this experience for everything I can get, right here, right now.

Because, eventually, everything I’ve ever thought has brought me close to feeling something…runs dry. It’s just a matter of time before the same thing happens with Maelin, and I’m left with the exhausting chore of maintaining the relationship through effort and memory and the knowledge that, yes, she is important to me.

I just can’tfeelthat importance anymore.

Chapter 14

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Everything comes at a cost.

Maelin

This bed…

Lying sprawled across my pretty black bedding in my pretty, furnished, and filled studio, I stare up at the dark ceiling, watch the blades of the oil-slick fan above me go round and round.

This bed was a beautiful decision. A truly, truly wonderful and amazing decision.

I’ve never had a new bed before, a new mattress, something soft and stable, without any indents or springs poking through. I could close my eyes and drift right into the darkness, little more than a single pearl blight in this dark room color splattered only by my sewing supplies.

This is divine…being surrounded by dark furniture, dark walls, dark floors and ceilings. All my fabrics, all my accessories, all my tools. With an empty closet full of hangers and a row of mannequins ready to bear my designs.

I can’t believe this is happening.

I can’t believe I could be lucky enough to have someone prepare all ofthisfor me.

Something hurt inside my chest says I don’t deserve any of it, and something will happen to prove that pain right, but—so far—my lingering anxiety has yet to grasp reality. All the Bachelor brothers have been nothing but kind to Morana and me. Our lunch breaks with them are peaceful, warm, devoid of tension and formality. It’s safe here in ways that remind me of home, with Mom and Dad and Morana and I all tucked in around thefireplace in the winter, or planning beach trips in the summer, or raking leaf piles in the fall, or planting flowers in the spring.

This is normal.

This isfamily.

The Bachelor brothers feel like family.

“Don’t…move.”

My gaze shifts toward Zakery’s voice to find him lingering in the doorway, wide eyes pinned on me.

He swipes a hand down his face. “I leave you for two minutes, and you becomeart. Stay right there.”

I don’t think I could move if I wanted to. Probably because I don’t want to. I really, really don’t want to. This is the most comfortable bed I have ever touched, and after spending all afternoon moving all my sewing things in, I could fall asleep…right…now.

Zakery returns, LeoPad in one hand, his stool in the other. Planting the legs of his stool down feet from my bed, he begins to sketch, gaze intent on me while he mutters about thecontrastandhow beautiful.

I tilt my face toward him, and his breath catches.

I smile, and his strokes stutter.

“Thank you so much, Zakery, for…everything.” A week ago, I was in a fursuit, desperate to find something that made the lingering ache of rejection and whiplash go away. I was at my lowest. I was desperate, and pathetic, and dejected. Now, I am worth effort, time, adoration. “I can’t explain how much what you’ve done means to me.”

“What I’ve done?” he asks. “What have I done?”

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