Page 77 of Beyond the Lines
And right now?
My feelings are a fucking orchestra.
I just need to drawsomething.
Anything to stop this endless loop of bathroom tiles and stubble and hands?—
Nope.
I grab my pencil and start with loose, rapid strokes. No planning, no thinking, and no intent to do anything with this art exceptfeel. Just shapes. Color. Movement. Energy. Lines that have nothing to do with blue eyes or strong hands or the taste of?—
Goddammit.
But as the lines flow onto the page, curves and angles taking shape under my fingertips, I realize I’m drawing hands. Strong hands with knuckles that are slightly red and cracked. Hockey hands. And a face. A very specific face. With a stubbled jaw. With intense eyes that see too much.
I flip the pageviolently.
Apparently, my subconscious is a traitor.
“No!” I slam the sketchbook shut. “What iswrongwith me?”
But I know exactly what’s wrong with me. I’m attracted to a guy who lied to me, who ripped my art apart in class, who is my brother’s teammate, and who I subsequently let go downtown on me in a public bathroom and then reciprocated. And the most fucked-up part?
I want him to do it again.
I open my sketchbook to a new page, grip my pencil so tightly my knuckles turn white, and start drawing with furious strokes. If I can’t stop thinking about it, maybe I can draw it out of my system.
The lines are harsh, almost violent. I’m not thinking anymore, just feeling. Letting the raw emotion flow through my fingers onto the paper. Before I realize it, I’ve drawn us in that bathroom. Not realistically—I’m not ready to see that—but as an abstract explosion of tangled lines and shadowy forms.
Two bodies melting into each other.
Tension and release.
The drawing is chaos and urgency. It’s filthy and beautiful. Frantic pencil strokes capture hands grabbing, mouths meeting, and bodies pressing. I can almost hear our ragged breathing echoing off the bathroom tiles, and taste the salt of his skin.
I keep drawing, unable to stop now. Adding darker shades, more pressure. The graphite smears under my palm as I work faster, messier, giving physical form to the storm inside me. And soon, one drawing isn’t enough. I turn the page and start another sketch.
I lose track of time as I fill page after page. In one, I focuson just our faces, the moment my expression shifted from pain to desire. In another, I draw the hickey he left on my neck, surrounded by patterns that look like waves or flames—I can’t quite tell.
Another becomes an abstract tangle of lines that somehow still captures the feeling of his fingers inside me, his mouth on me. And, when I finally pause, my hand aching and smudged with graphite, I look down at what I’ve created.
Holyshit.
These aren’t just sketches.
They’re… intense.
And undeniably erotic.
Beauty and filth. Lust and anger. Guilt and excitement. Pain and pleasure. Tenderness and fury. Every contradictory emotion I’ve been feeling splayed across the pages in black and gray.
I snap the sketchbook closed.
No.
I amnotletting myself feel anything real for Declan Andrews. This is just physical attraction—intense, inconvenient, maddening physical attraction—and there are too many good reasons not to give into it.
My phone buzzes, startling me out of my spiraling thoughts.
