Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1) (33 page)

“May I see them?”

His pause is minimal, and then he nods, keeping our fingers linked as he shifts. “The pieces are all centered around the idea of separation or division—two halves of every whole. I don’t know if I intended them that way, but when I sat down with my agent to decide which were best, I saw the connection.”

He stops talking and motions to the displayed pieces. “We used both photographs and paintings.”

I turn to look; letting go of my hand, Brooklyn shoves his back into his pockets. There have to be fifteen pieces, maybe more. They’re all framed, something I can guarantee Brooklyn had a hand in. No stark black frames exist here. Each picture, each painting has its own frame, all some sort of soft, graying wood that looks like it has been salvaged from the beach and smoothed down by someone’s loving hand.

I start on the outside wall, traveling through the world in Brooklyn’s eyes, watching the story of his five months away unfold. There are women and men and children in front of me, laughing, loving, living, crying. In every portrait, in every painting, every photo, both light and dark exists.

In one picture, there is the city, all concrete and cinderblocks, and a beautiful dark haired child holding a rare white flower. Brooklyn has faded out all color except for the chocolate of the child’s eyes and skin, and the beautiful white flower.

My breath catches when I turn to the one next to it—a photo of Nala, her surfboard over her head, the world white around her, waiting while she stares out and readies to make her choice. The small card identifies it as
untitled.
Written underneath are the words “on loan from owner.”

“Malcolm owns that one. We never gave it a name.”

My eyes are stinging and my heart is full when I turn to the other side and stop. There, on a canvas, rests my face. My eyes are open, and my lips are parted. All around me there is a contrast of color, emotion, chaos; in the midst of all of it, I stare, and I wait. The power is in me, though, I can see it in my eyes. The eyes Brooklyn gave me.

“
Metacognition.”

I read the title aloud, tears finally brimming over when I turn to look at Brooklyn. He’s still standing where I left him, in the middle of the space with the almost darkened windows behind him.

“That’s one of the first I painted you in. According to the amount of canvases and film starring your face, there will be a show titled
Jordana
someday soon. But this one…” He steps over to me in three long strides. “This one shows all of you—the you who is beautiful and creative, the you whose mind works in such a way I know you’ll change the world, make it better. The you who has compassion and understanding. The you who forgives.”

Brooks turns me now, reaching for my hands once again, staring at them before he comes back to my face. “The night Ashton was put into the hospital…”

“Brooklyn, don’t.”

He shakes his head. “I have to. I’ve thought about that night and what I did, how I treated you. Worse than the words I threw at you after her funeral, the lies I told you about not needing you, was the way I touched you that night. Jesus, Jordan.” He closes his eyes, pain all over his face.

I reach up and stroke my hand over cheekbones, cupping his jaw when he turns his face into it.

“I’m fine. I wanted you to touch me—to need me and depend on me. I liked knowing it was me you trusted to be with that night.” I rise to my toes and wait for him to open his eyes. “I’m here for you, Brooklyn, always. I’m not fragile, and I’m not afraid of you.”

I brush our lips together, once, twice, waiting for him to open to me so I can stroke my tongue across his. His arms band around me, and his mouth begins to mate with mine, no longer slow and sensuous, but heavy, needy, desperate.

“I would have been there. I wanted to be there… if something had happened. If somehow, we had created a life…” He swallows and presses his lips to my forehead. “I’m not sorry I went to you, I’m sorry I left you. Sorry I didn’t check to see if you were okay, that I left all of the consequences and responsibilities to you that night.”

“I’m a big girl, Brooklyn. I can take care of us, too.”

His arms tighten. “You’re
my
girl
, Jordana. I’ll never leave you like that again.”

I hold him a minute longer, and then I step back. “Are you going to show me the last few?”

He nods, grabbing my hand and bringing me to the center, to the piece I know the exhibition was named after. “It’s finally for sale.” My surprise must show, because he shrugs. “I wasn’t ready to sell her before, to say goodbye—but the truth is, I don’t need the painting to remember her. I have her in my head and my heart; I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to have her on my wall, but it’s enough to know someone else can see her and love her.”

I nod and look, my heart bursting when I see Ashton sitting in the center, the portrait Brooks painted of her the night he lost her. Next to her is another painting, one I can’t bear to look at for too long. It’s not Ashton as she was when she was young, it’s Ashton as she was when she left, her back to us, her painfully thin frame wrapped around itself, her sparse hair blowing behind her while she stands at the edge of the ocean, and takes that first step.

Across the Divide.

The world is grainy and white, gray swirls coming in off the dark water, a water that beckons for you to reach out and touch because it looks so real.

“I realized halfway through wandering around the world that we all make choices. And Nala’s words from the funeral haunted me. My choices were as wrong as hers—I only saw that I was losing her, that she was leaving me by refusing to get better. I never saw that maybe—maybe she was ready to go, that it was painful for her to get up and live every day. Now…” he trails off and I nod, reaching for his hand again. “Now, she’s free. And so am I.”

We stand and stare at the two paintings, the juxtaposed images of one girl who could never bring the two sides together and be whole again. When someone calls out from the entrance, I turn to Brooks and smile. “Ready?”

He nods, his grip tightening on my hand. “Stay with me?” he asks.

“Always.” And I do. I hold his hand while people begin trickling in, ordering cocktails and studying his work. I stay with him when even more people ask him about his art, about his inspiration, and his process. Nala and Mal and Hunter show up at some point, and they stand with us, too, always ready to stand for the man who has held all of us up at one point.
I stay by Brooklyn’s side until the end of the night when the room is almost empty again, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my face into his back when he looks up at Ashton, the girl who lives forever immortalized on the canvas in front of us, the sister he bled for, and the one he still breathes for, and I watch him say goodbye to her.

And at the end of the night, when it’s just the two of us again, I wrap around him in the dark, taking him inside of me as we move together. In his eyes, I see the man who changed my life, the one who brought me to life with the click of a button. I arch of to meet his lips with my own, rolling over the smooth sheets, and never letting go.

{The End}

Acknowledgments

A story is rarely just the product of one individual’s hard work. To my editor, I say thank you. Billi Joy, you’re a gem amongst the weeds of my crutch words and over-used verbs. With editors there are cover designers. James, thank you for the beautiful cover… and for the emails on skateboarding. And then there are the people who work tirelessly for free, not because it’s their job, but because they believe in the story, even the writer.

To you, all of you, I say thank you. To Amber for reading three separate, beyond rough sections and letting me voice my fears before I patched them together. You and your reading superpower are constants in my life. For you I am grateful. For Tiffany and your check ins on Facebook—girl, you are the best. For Kim and your beautiful beta reading—you rock my world. For Celeste, I am soooo grateful for your support, posts, and willingness to read and share the love.

This book was more than a story—there are some very real parts of me in here, and not just because these words are my words. Eating disorders, body image, image diseases… however you choose to look at them, they take lives and they ruin them. They extinguish fires before they even start. Not everyone has a Brooklyn and Nala to care about them—and even some of us who do aren’t capable of listening. We simply cannot listen to words we don’t understand. Stay strong for those in your life who can’t see their beauty—and remember that every time you believe in them, even if they can’t acknowledge you, they want to.

Girls, young and old, remember that beauty is a beast, and you can do anything. Be brave, be strong; be in love with yourself, first and foremost.

With Love,

Kristen

About the Author

I started writing a long, long time ago. As with everything in life, it took me a while to figure out what genre I wanted to participate in. I write what many would commonly refer to as contemporary romance. I just call it life.

Although I began with the young adult when I published my first novel,
Finding You
, I quickly progressed to what I consider mature young adult with
Beyond the Horizon 1
and
Life interrupted (The Life Series book 1)
.
The Light of Day (BTH 2)
is new adult and
Tripp (The Life Series book 2)
is mature young adult. I write for my characters. I write them because they are people I see and feel and hear and I have a need to put them on paper. 

When I'm not writing for a character, I'm blogging about mommyhood, teacherhood, life, or just being a girl. Join my conversation sometime because I LOVE chatting with people. 

For updates, sneak peaks, and other info, visit my Facebook page. For fun pics of my daughter, dog, or anything else that hits my fancy, visit me on Instagram. For weird retweets and conversations, there's always Twitter.

Happy reading. <3 Kristen

www.kristenkehoe.com

https://twitter.com/KKehoeAuthor

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https://www.instagram.com/authorkkehoe/

Hunter’s Story,
The Grind (The Vert Series Book 2)
, is coming soon!