I gave her hand a tug, pulling her towards the sunporch. “No time like the present.” I arranged her in a standing position. The same way I had envisioned the woman on Harbor’s point. “Raise your chin.” I guided it up with a finger. “There. Just like that.” I let my hand slide down the curve of her neck, the feel of her smooth skin such a contrast to the rough pads of my fingers.

Shay shivered. “I thought you were painting.”

My hand kept trailing down, tugging at the material of her shirt so her shoulder was bare. I bent, trailing kisses along each visible scar. I wanted to touch every single one. To heal them. I wished I could make them disappear, but that would somehow take something away from Shay. Because these marks on her flesh were outward signs of how strong she was. Of everything she’d overcome. With one last brush of my lips, I straightened.

No words were needed. And Shay gave me everything in response when she didn’t pull the fabric back into place. When she didn’t hide from me but instead let me in a little more.

I rounded my easel and took in the blank canvas in front of me. The same white space that had been there for the past six days. I’d wandered into the room more than once. But every time, the empty space taunted me.

I flipped open my sketchpad to the drawing I’d been filling in as I waited for Shay to return from Anchor. The day my illusion of sanctuary had been shattered. There was only one way to fix it. And that was to rebuild. One stroke of paint against canvas at a time.

I looked from the rough sketch to Shay. She was so damn strong. She wasn’t fearless. She was something more. Someone who had been terrified but fought to survive. Who’d experienced the greatest depths of that fear and kept on going. That was what I wanted to capture with this piece.

A woman looking out at the storm to come and not turning away. Facing it head-on. And I just had to harness a tiny fraction of that strength to put my first mark on the page.

25

Shay

I looked up from the grocery list I was compiling when Brody set my violin case down with a thud. I glared in his direction. “Watch it. That piece of wood in there is like my child.”

His lips twitched. “Well, what do you say you take your precious baby for a spin tonight?”

I froze, my grip on the pencil tightening as if it were my last lifeline. “Play for you?”

“Hunter and I were talking, and it turns out the band playing at The Catch tonight is bluegrass. They’d love to have a violinist with them for a few songs.”