Was it the lack of art in his life that made him so focused on Tara? His days were busy—the finishing touches on the restaurant were turning out to be quite time-consuming—but he still noticed her absence keenly. Opening up to her earlier in the day had been difficult but cathartic in a way. Her warm sympathy and respect for his space had touched him deeply, and he felt that much closer to her. And … it felt as though something had awakened in him.

He reached for the nightstand and opened the single drawer. It held his never-used but ever-present sketchbook and the pencil he kept sharpened to a point. He pulled both out and sat down on the bed with his back against the headboard. The restlessness seemed to settle into his hands and made them tremble … until he drew the first line. Then they became as steady as a surgeon’s and whirred across the paper in a storm of sketching.

A deep sigh resonated inside him as though a long-held breath had been released, and a painful constriction in his chest eased. He hadn’t even known the pain existed until it was gone. The next breath he took felt as if it was the first full breath he’d taken in years.

Seth ripped out pages after pages of finished sketches until they nearly covered the entire bed, and still he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want this to end. His yearning for Tara hadn’t diminished since she was the subject of every one of his drawings, and he felt somehow connected to her.

The sketches were a reimagination of the photos he’d taken of her. In one drawing, a side of her face filled the page with the surrounding beauty reflected in the iris of her eye. In another, she was but a wisp of wind on the hills, an apparition on the verge of appearing or disappearing. Once a sketch was melded with one of the actual photos, he would have a finished piece. Then an image that existed only in his mind—which mirrored his thoughts, dreams, and hopes—could be shared with the world.

His hand stilled. What was he doing? He’d vowed never to make himself vulnerable again—bearing his heart and soul for people to stomp on—because his heart wasn’t strong enough to be shattered a second time. But his art still hummed its alluring melody in his veins. After being silenced for so long, it demanded to be heard. And Tara … she could never be pushed aside. She had been ever present in his mind since the wedding.

He was scared shitless. The foundation he’d built his adult life on was being throttled, and his head was shaking from the force of it. Art and love were a part of his past, but so was his heartbreak. Was he going to allow something that happened years ago to continue impacting his life? His future?

I don’t know.

Seth gathered the sketches on the bed and hid them away in the nightstand with hands that shook again. He couldn’t look at them anymore. Look at her anymore. He lay down with his arm thrown over his eyes. He didn’t expect sleep to come, but sweet oblivion overtook his turmoil with dawn just peeking over the mountains.