But the fourth charcoal, that was the one that made my stomach tighten and cramp. It was the day we’d broken up. Behind me was the lighthouse, just barely visible, houses dotted below in minute detail. My face looked stricken, pale, even though there was no other way I could look on canvas. Despite the lack of color, the look in my eyes was vivid, inviting me into the pain on my face. The pull I had to the sketch was undeniable.

This sketch was softer, almost reverent and tender. Where Levi’s painting of me played it safe, Elodie’s looked like it was designed in emotional free-fall. My stomach tightened, twisted, plummeted. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to soften the fall.

I remembered the sting of my tears, the way the chill kissed my cheeks raw and pink. The circling gulls over the lighthouse, the fishing fleet in the distance. I remembered the muted gray of the day, El’s hair whipping into a bird’s nest, her crying as she told me I deserved better. I’d felt like when she ripped away from me, she’d taken all the color with her. The gulls’ cries had taunted me as my legs buckled and gave out. As I sank to the ground, grief tumbling over and over in resounding crashes.

I felt exposed, laid bare. Everything I’d felt that day was mirrored in her canvas, as though she was trying to tell me that she understood. That she wasn’t as impervious or unaffected as I’d thought. Next to me, Levi stiffened. Vaguely, I realized Lucy and Lorcan had edged away.

The sights and sounds around me faded, drained of color, of life, of everything. How could she do this to me? Betrayal twisted in my gut. My pain was not hers to use, hers to display. How many people had seen this? Wasn’t she scared by what her sketches would reveal about her? About us? About everything she said she wasn’t ready to share? The music, playing from chameleon-like hidden speakers, was drowned out by the erratic, sharp thumps of my heart.

Elodie’s eyes swallowed the room. I could only see her face, my face, her face, my face. The look of control she always wore like battle armor had slipped, leaving behind an unnerving storm in her eyes. Tension crackled between us. It was only my opinion of the drawing that she cared about, I realized. It was for me. It was all for me.

“This is…” Levi sounded unmoored. There was wonder and confusion in his voice, tinged with something else that I couldn’t place. He couldn’t look away from Elodie’s work, his face calm, but his jaw was clenched tight. Like me, he wasn’t immune to the chaos of the strokes, the palpable energy of the piece.