Page 57 of More Than I Can Bear

Chapter29

Freya

“Stop that,” River said. We’d been back at the apartment for a while now, and there were shoes, paint and pencils scattered everywhere. The sun was dropping low in the sky, turning the whole city red gold, but he ignored it. His focus was on my phone, just like mine was. Kaine had said I should turn my accounts private, that he’d have a social media manager take them over, but he hadn’t managed to organise that yet. So every time a notification came, I looked down at the phone. “Give it here.”

He held out a hand for the phone, the other one still holding a pen.

“You guys are so fucking bossy,” I said, but I slapped the device in his palm.

“Bossy when it comes to looking out for you,” he said and for a second I saw something intense in his gaze. Those grey depths seemed deep, endless as a river, taking all of me in, even stuff I hadn’t meant to put on show. It was somehow seductive, when I’d felt like I had to fight to get someone to see me sometimes, and now I had all the attention I needed. “You don’t have to read more shit from people that don’t even know you.”

He set the pen down, drawing my attention to the drawing he’d been working on. Me again, which seemed to be a theme, so I focussed on that rather than my phone.

“Why do you always draw me?” I asked and he let out a sigh. Not ominous at all.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve always been drawing you, my whole life,” he said in reply. “She was a vague figure before, my mate, so I’d be forced to fill in the details, guess at the shape of her eyes, her nose, the curve of her lips. And now…?” His full lips twitched just slightly, almost forming a smile. “Now I know exactly what you look like. And drawing helps me focus.”

“Because it pushes everything else into the background,” I said, searching his face, looking for clues that he felt the exact same way I did and that’s when I got my smile. A slow, shy one that forced him to look away for a second, though not for long.

“When I draw I don’t have to think,” he said, “I just see, all the extraneous shit falls away. There’s only you.” Those grey eyes locked with mine, the fall of black hair pushed back now, not hiding the harsh planes of his face. “That’s what I focus on, what you’re doing, whether or not you like what you’re drawing, then the moment you sink down into that other space.”

“Flow state.” I barely whispered that, feeling something I’d longed for. I could talk to Jack and friends from art school about my work, but everyone else? They didn’t seem to see things the way I did. But River just nodded.

“That’s the place where my brain shuts up and I just am, where I’m not wondering…” His lips pursed, then he dared to look at me again. “I’m not wondering what the fuck is going to happen between you and me. Whether Adam fucked shit up irrevocably. Whether you’d be interested in me even if he hadn’t.”

This was a truth baldly stated, something I’d never really experienced from a guy before. There was usually lots of posturing and bullshit, not this. Not real vulnerability, something in him reaching out to me, demanding a response. But when my lips parted to respond, his phone rang. He blinked, frowned and then pulled it out, looking at who was calling then tapping the screen to answer it.

“River?” A feminine voice came through the phone speakers. “Darling, is that you?”

“Of course it is, Mum,” he replied with a wry smile. “Who’d you think you called?”

“You didn’t say hello or who was speaking, like I taught you more times than I can count when you were a boy.” River shot me a look, eyes twinkling, both of us silently acknowledging that she hadn’t given him a chance. “But let’s not get caught up in that. Your mate.”

I stiffened then, the call suddenly taking on an incredibly personal tone that I felt uncomfortable encroaching upon. I dropped my brush in some water and went to get up, but River grabbed my hand.

“How are things? Have you spoken to her? Of course, you’ve spoken to her.”

The woman was having a conversation all with herself, something I understood well. When you were anxious, you couldn’t wait for the other person to reply, your brain producing the expected response before anyone got a chance to actually answer.

“Mum—” River said.

“Are things so terribly bad? I’ve heard some bad news about Adam.”

River used his grip on my hand to draw me down beside him on the couch, the size difference between us suddenly stark.

“Things aren’t… great,” he said, which just got her twittering again.

“Oh, River… That silly boy. Too impulsive by half. I told you—”

“Mum—”

“If you’d chosen to form a sleuth with someone more reliable: like Hailey’s boy.”

“Mum—”

“But maybe there’s hope. Maybe Freya can see past Adam’s rashness. He is a good boy at heart.”

“Mum, shut up and listen for a second,” he said with a sigh.

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