Oh Brothers

Chapter 27

Lucy, Lynn and Clinton go home for the night and it's just me and the boys. Everybody splits up to do their own thing. My brothers are scattered around the house doing homework and Will is out dropping Lucy home.

"You wanna go work on," I glance at my bodyguards and back at Cole,"you know what?"

"Are you up for it? If you're tired or-" Cole offers but I shake my head.

"I offered, didn't I?" I remind him. Cole smiles and nods his head.

"Yeah, you did. Come on, let's go," he leads the way to his art studio.

Over the course of the week he has been working heavily on the painting. I've come over several times to, I guess you'd call it model, yeah so I modeled for him, wow that sounds weird, anyways, I'd model for him. Cole also took several pictures of me to use as reference so he could work on it when I wasn't there.

Much to my utter disappointment, he hasn't let me look at it yet. He wants me to wait for the finished product.

We reach the door to his art studio and I turn to face my body guards.

"Can you all wait out here? This means a lot to him and he doesn't really want anyone to know yet. I'm totally safe in there and if someone breaks in through the window you guys can be in the room before they whisk me away. Can you please stay out here? We're not doing anything bad or illegal or unsafe, I swear," I plead with my bodyguards. They exchange glances and Marcus nods with an amused expression.

I sigh in relief and follow Cole in to the art studio.

"You totally just undermined my manhood with them," Cole says in an annoyed voice, but I can tell by his face that he doesn't mean it, "made me sound like a freakin pansy."

"I never said you were a pansy. I think you're more of a daffodil kinda guy," I tease.

"Ha ha," Cole says in an unamused voice, but his eyes tell a different story.

"So when can I see it?" I ask.

"The painting?" he asks, surprised.

"No, the pope, yes the painting! I want to see what you've done to me." I retort.

Cole nervously rubs the back of his head with his right hand and it trails up to fluff his hair, " not until it's done."

I groan and huff," ugh, fine I'll wait."

I unceremoniously plop down on the stool across from his canvas and look to the painting on my right. It's one of a girl, but you can only see the back of her.

She's inside a marble palace and she's wearing a white dress patterned with light purple flowers. Her light brown hair trails halfway down her back and her feet are bare except for a silver anklet on the left foot.

Inside the room there's a little square pool raised above the ground, edged with white marble, with red flowers floating in it. The room she's in has two double doors widely thrown open to show a balcony. Outside, past the curved balcony, you see a yellow building with burnt orange colored molding and a young boy, who's perched on a smaller, flat balcony, looking down at the street below. His face looks hazy and unclear, as if he were far away from the girl in the palace. His features are drawn but unclear.

I don't know how long I'm staring at the painting, but it fascinates me. It's so vivid and beautiful.

"How are you feeling?" Cole asks, pulling me out of my reverie.

"What? I ask, startled.

"How are you feeling about the whole parents opting to live somewhere else thing?" he presses.