Page 121 of Between Love and Loathing
I didn’t elaborate.
She’d understand soon enough.
CLARA
Ithought Dominic was talking about how he’d set up the house for me being sick, which didn’t make much sense. I was still who I was, just a bit sicker.
They were changing the meds, we were going to regulate better, things would progress the way they were supposed to. Or so I hoped.
I’d driven forward the last few months on hope, and I was going to keep going on it. Sometimes hope shows in the day with the sunrise or the sunset, sometimes it shows in the tasks you complete or the ones that are left, sometimes it shows when you push yourself hard enough and you see still that you have the strength to keep going. And sometimes it shows in others.
In him. Dominic Hardy.
He opened the door for me, and there were no lights on, but candles with gold petals on the ground—so many I couldn’t even see the white flooring. “Dominic?” I didn’t walk forward.
“It’s one of the only colors I enjoyed before you. Follow them, huh?”
I followed them forward into the living room to see the wall he’d had a few pictures hung on was now filled with them. Tons and tons of snapshots. Framed photographs of us in the bakery, of us in the club, of us everywhere. “Why?”
“Why not? They’re for the girl who puts up pictures of everyone but herself. I figured she needed a wall with her in them.”
“Where did you get all these?”
“Mostly the press. They can capture us in the best lighting, but when I offered them six figures for the photos along with a lawsuit in exchange for printing them, they agreed pretty easily.” He scooped up Spice when she meowed by his leg and petted her as I squinted at the wall connected to the study.
“You painted?”
It was a soft peach pattern, not black or white at all, and it appeared familiar like a spotted sweeping mountain that sort of reminded me of the California horizon. He hummed. “It’s not done but I’m considering keeping it just like that.”
“What is it?”
“Your freckles babe. Just your freckles. One of my favorite parts of you.”
“But why?” It was all I could ask. “When?”
“We worked on it all week since you’ve been gone. If I couldn’t have you, I wanted the idea of you.”
I shook my head because tears burned at the back of my eyes now, and my heart beat faster, and my mind was going a mile a minute. “Dominic, this is—”
“This is our home, and I wanted you to feel that when you’re here healing.”
“You don’t have to take care of me, you know that? I can take care of myself.”
“Right, but if I don’t take care of you, who’s going to take care of the shell of a man I become, Clara? Who’s going to take care of me being a complete asshole all the time? I need you as much as you need me.” He pointed to his study. “Don’t forget to look at the study.”
I chewed my cheek. “Why did you do all this?”
I knew before he answered that this was how Dominic proved he loved me. He showed people through action, not words.
“I wanted it this way. And I want my girlfriend back. Is that a good enough reason?”
All I could do was nod because I already saw color so vibrant and brilliant in that study that I hurried to push the double doors open and stare at it. Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall books, all colors of the rainbow, sorted beautifully to match one another row by row by row.
“What did you do?”
“Made my study your study, I guess.”
“Oh my God.”
