Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3) (14 page)

“That’s all I need.” Her eyes shone with faith.
 

The horrible thing about this guilt was that I still needed her, still loved her, still wanted her just as much as I ever had. More, perhaps. I would take as much as she would give me until she knew. Her faith might have been misplaced, but I would do my best to be there for her, for as long as I could. Time was short. Soon, everything would change. I knew it, and I was pretty sure she knew it as well.

Ever lifted up on her toes to kiss me, and her lips were gentle on mine, yet still demanding. I kissed her back, because I couldn’t do otherwise.
 

She backed away from me, and I followed her to the closed door of her studio. I wondered if she knew I’d seen her standing here, late at night, her hand on the knob, her shoulders shaking. I watched, and she never turned the knob. Never went in. So now, the scene was familiar. She stopped at the door, her hand on the knob. Her shoulders shook. I stood behind her, slid my arms around her waist. Kissed the back of her neck.
 

“What if it’s gone forever, Cade?” Her voice wasn’t even a whisper. It was…shreds of sound, ripped from somewhere deep within her.

“You’ve learned to walk again. You’ve learned to talk again. You can eat, dress, write. You can do this, Ever.” I had to give her hope, had to give her everything I could, while I was still here to give it to her. Even the hard truths. “It will probably be hard as hell. You’ll think about giving up. But you won’t. You’re too strong and too courageous to give up. Art is in your veins, Ev. It’s who you are. And if you can’t paint, by some strange fluke, you’ll find some other way of making art.”

“I’m scared.” She leaned back against me, and I took all of her weight.
 

I crossed my arms over her chest and stomach, kissed behind her ear. “You can do it. Just go in, Ev.”

“Baby steps?”

I chuckled. “Baby steps.”

She twisted the knob and gave the door a gentle push. It swung open on silent hinges, bumped against the wall, and shivered to a stop. Everything was just as she’d left it. I hadn’t dared touch a single thing in this room. An unfinished painting waited on the easel—a piece that reminded me of something Georgia O’Keefe might have painted. A gerbera daisy, seen from up close, an almost unlikely shade of violent orange, each petal seen in dramatic detail. The center of the flower dominated the piece, a ring of orange-red, each tiny fiber looking soft and real enough to touch. Only the edges of the painting remained to be finished, the outside of the petals. Ever stepped into the room, her eyes focused on the easel, on the painting. She walked to it as if in a trance, feet shuffling, one hand extending to touch the surface of the canvas. Her finger stroked the center of the painting, nail skritching
on the dried oil paint.
 

“I remember painting this. I was trying to channel Georgia O’Keefe, but with my own touch on it.”

“You got it perfect.”

She remained completely still, her fingers splayed on the canvas as if in some silent farewell. After a long silence, she spoke in a hesitant, reverent whisper. “It’s like me. Interrupted. Unfinished. Even if I could finish it, it wouldn’t be the same as if I’d finished it then.”

“Ever, you have to know—”
 

“I’m not that person anymore, Cade.” She let her hand drop, curling her fingers into a fist.
 

“I loved the person you were then, and I love the person you are now.” That, at least, was the pure, unvarnished truth.

“The problem is, I don’t know who I am anymore. I lost something. Some part of myself, and I don’t know what it is or how to get it back. And I know you love me.” Ever turned in my arms, brushed my hair away from my face. “And I love you. But…it’s not enough. You loving me doesn’t fix what’s wrong with me. And…
goddammit
—” She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed, stifling a faint sob. “You’re not the same, either. You’re broken, too, Cade. Everything…everything is broken.”

I’d never seen this side of Ever, this raw and agonized despair. I didn’t know how to make it better. “I know.” It was all I could say. The only words that would come out. “I’m sorry. Fuck, Ever. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

For betraying you
. “For being broken when you need me to be whole.” I just couldn’t get the words out; the truth was lodged in my chest. “For…for everything.”

Her eyes searched me, and I saw the knowledge there. She knew. Not what, but that there was something to know, a truth hidden between us. A moment passed, and I met her gaze, unwavering. Pleading with her silently, begging her to demand the truth from me, to vilify me as I deserved. Instead, she clutched my face with shaking hands and drew my mouth down to hers and kissed me, and it seemed a vampiric kiss in a way, as if she was sucking strength from me, courage from me. I gave it willingly. She could take all of me, leave me limp and dead, if it would mean she was alive and happy.
 

Pulling away, breathless, she stepped back, searched the room for something. Found the age-soft and paint-splattered button-down white shirt, hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. Took it in her hands and stared at it. Memory showed in the bow of her shoulders. I stood, watching, waiting. Ever set the shirt on the chair back once more, reached down to the hem of the green V-neck she was wearing, pulled it off, folded it, and set it on the seat of the chair. She didn’t spare me a glance. This wasn’t about me anymore; I was merely a witness. Her fingers shook as she unzipped and unbuttoned her jeans, put them neatly atop her shirt. Standing in gray cotton panties and a green silk bra, she was more beautiful to me than she’d ever been. Courage made her beautiful. Tenacity made her glow. To reclaim what was stripped away so unfairly took more guts than I’d ever have.

She had to pause for breath, pause to gather her nerves. And then she reached up behind her back, freed the clasps of her bra, and hung it from the corner of the chair back. She was facing away from me, and I couldn’t breathe for the sight of the curve of her bare back. I stared, branding the image into my mind. This moment, this vignette, it was now something sacred to me. She was physically exposed, emotionally vulnerable, braving her deepest fear, and she was doing it alone. I didn’t think she was even aware of my presence any longer and, in a way, that was as it should be. She’d have to learn to live without me.
 

She stepped out of her underwear, set them on the chair. Ever stood naked in her art studio, her pale skin pebbling from the chill in the air. I devoured her naked form with my eyes, buried the memory of this moment deep within me. I would need something to hold on to, when it all fell apart.

At long last, she slid her arms into the sleeves of the shirt, buttoned it with shaky fingers, smoothed her hand down her front, over her hips, as if to press the reality into her skin, as if to tell herself that she was truly doing this, and that she
could
. I stood with my back to the wall near the door, willing her onward.
 

She took a black Sharpie from the tray on the easel and signed her name carefully to the bottom right corner of the daisy painting, and then, beneath that, wrote:
“Interrupted.”
Ever heaved a deep sigh, then lifted the four-by-six canvas from the easel, carried it across the room, and set it on the floor with a stack of other finished paintings.

 
She considered it finished, I realized, and I understood the symbolism in her choice.

 
Four-by-six was her favorite size of canvas to work with, and she had a stack of them pre-stretched. Ever chose a canvas, set it on the easel, added fresh paint to each primary color splotch on her palette. Chose a brush. Held the palette in one hand, her brush hanging at her side. Her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, nervous and afraid to begin. I could almost hear her thoughts.
What if I can’t do it? What if I forgot how?
 

She stood still and silent for a long time, staring at the blank canvas. I was beginning to think she’d frozen. She nodded once, and then set her brush down and chose a different one, a thick, fat brush for broad strokes. She touched the tip to the black paint, and I could see her hand trembling as she drew the brush across the middle of the canvas. It was a thick, gloppy stroke, a harsh line of black on the clean white. Another long pause, and then she flattened the brush against the black
 
paint and spread it around, added more, and more. With every stroke she grew more confident, and soon the whole canvas was black and she was filling in missed slices of white.
 

I couldn’t even begin to wonder what she was doing, and I didn’t dare ask. This was a private moment, one that belonged only to Ever, and I was privileged to watch. I crossed my arms over my chest and kept silent, making sure even my breathing was quiet.

Ever set the black-smeared brush on the tray and picked up the one she’d originally chosen, a medium-point brush. She dabbed at the white paint, brought it in an arc horizontally across the canvas, refreshed the paint on the brush and made a mirrored arc to match the first. Slowly then, she filled in the space between the arcs, merging the black and the white so that it seemed almost pixelated, as if the black was fading to white.
 

It wasn’t until she stepped back that I understood what she’d painted: an eye, opening.

“The moment you woke up,” I said. She only nodded. “You haven’t forgotten.”

Ever set her brush and palette down, turned in place to look at me, hesitated, and then ran and threw herself into my arms. She cried long and hard.

“I haven’t forgotten.” Relief filled her voice. “It’s not the same, though. Even that is different. I don’t—I’m not sure I can explain it. I don’t see things the same. When I think about painting something, even the images in my head are different than I remember them being before.”

Before.
 

Her life was split into
before
and
after
.

For me, it wasn’t so simple. There was before, and there was after, and there was the unmitigated hell of in between. During. That time, the
during
, that was what had broken me. I’d survived the loss of my parents, my grandparents. I might have survived the loss of Ever, if she’d actually died. But she didn’t. I’d lost her, but not completely. It wasn’t the pain of her loss, the agony of limbo, or even the uncertainty of not knowing if she’d ever wake up that had done me in, though; it was the choices I’d made. The fact that I’d lost sight, lost hope, and betrayed her. And she’d woken up. I couldn’t undo it, couldn’t take it back. And even now, I wasn’t sure if I could have done anything differently. But that didn’t change the reality of my now. It didn’t alter the fact that when Ever found out, it would gut her.
 

And that would crumble even the ruins of what remained of me.

art imitates life

In the weeks that followed, Ever rarely left her studio. She barely slept, barely ate. She painted. She filled canvas after canvas, and sent me out to buy more, since she wasn’t up to stretching her own just yet. She painted, and painted and painted. And from what I saw, she was absolutely correct in her assessment: she had changed, artistically. She had almost totally regained her fine motor control, could use the finest-point brush to paint delicate strokes and pin-thin lines. It wasn’t a change in skill, but rather, as she’d said, a matter of perception. She painted messily, with quick, harsh strokes. Dark colors, little white space. She’d had a light style before. Even when the subject matter was heavy or dark, she managed to make it seem bright and lively. She had a painting of a raven, one I’d seen when flipping through her old paintings while she slept. It was a week or two before the accident, and I was up early. The raven had been so lifelike that I’d almost expected it to step off the canvas. There were reflections in the raven’s beady eyes, and the sun glinted off its feathers. The piece contained all the inherent creepiness of a raven, the hint of some ancient evil in the eyes, the omens and portents of darkness in the predatory shape and black feathers. Yet, for all that, the piece had been distinctly
Ever
, still infused with the beauty of her style.
 

Now, her paintings were…almost grim.
 

She painted a lamp, one that sat on our bedside table. It was an ordinary lamp, silver and straight and modern, with a pull chain and white trapezoidal shade. In the painting, the lamp was on, surrounded by shadows. The outline of a moth was silhouetted on the inside of the lampshade. The sense of entrapment was palpable. The moth seemed caught mid-motion, as if banging against the shade, drawn by the light but burned by the heat, unable to fly away and unable to resist.
 

She painted a still life of a bowl of fruit, but the apple was bruised, flattened on one side. It was true to life, an accurate representation of the fruit that sat in the bowl on our dining room table. Yet the painting seemed bleak. The sky in the window in the background was gray and overcast. The banana was flecked with black spots, looking soft to the touch.
 

She painted me from memory, and the look in my eyes was haunted. My face was shadowed with the stubble of a beard, and my forehead creased with worry lines. But my eyes…god. If the painting was any reflection of me, she could see my secrets, and saw that they were bearing down on me. I looked
old
in the painting. Tired.
 

I realized then that I hadn’t touched a pencil or pen to draw since the day she woke up, if not long before. With Ever in her studio, warring with her demons and seeking herself in a thousand blank canvases, I brought out my sketchpad and pencil case and sat at the table with an empty page before me.
 

I drew Ever, in that moment of vulnerability, her back bare and curved slightly to the left, her shoulders bowed under the weight of her fear. I wondered, as I drew, if she had shed a tear. Private. Unseen.