And Carmen was grateful for that, because she didn’t have to deal with what he’d said regarding his feelings for her just yet.
Asa must have guessed the “I love you” threw her completely off balance, because he wasn’t pushing her about it, and Carmen felt her heart inflate with something so intense because of his ability to be so effortlessly selfless.
“I just had a confrontation with Hunter again,” she confessed. “And he’s not someone who’s afraid to kick you below the belt.”
He sighed. “I knew the guy had issues, but I thought he’d have some redeeming quality,” Asa muttered. “I mean, you’re his family. Regardless of how he treats me, he should be decent to you.”
Carmen let out a short laugh, but there was no mirth in it. “He hates me the most, Asa.”
There was a short silence before Asa spoke. “Why?”
“His mum and mine were sisters. Twins, in fact. But his died in a car crash when he was around three, and my mum filled in those shoes. I guess he grew really attached to her. But then she died, too, and he had to go through the same loss for the second time in his life.”
“And he hates you because you remind him of her?”
Carmen didn’t answer right away, because even though that was one of the reasons her presence agitated Hunter, his hatred was born from the blame he placed on her. But she wasn’t ready to have that conversation with Asa right now. She’d like to tell him some day, about how Hunter was right in accusing her of killing the woman who brought her into this world, but today was not that day.
“Yeah,” she answered, not meeting his eyes. “I guess I remind him of her.” She didn’t like lying to him, but her chest was constricting, and she just needed to let herself breathe for now.
The silence that enveloped them right then was peaceful, almost like it was consoling the two of them. Carmen let her soul float in the comfort that Asa somehow brought with him whenever he was with her. Her fingers traced the edges of her journal before she flipped back to the previous page. The sky was only half done, the left half of it bare because she’d snapped the crayon into two.
“Why’d you start a new drawing if you hadn’t completed this?” Asa asked, referring to when she’d turned to a fresh page and started sketching a cracked vase.
“You saw the blue crayon,” she muttered. “I have spare ones at home. Whole ones. I can’t use this when it’s broken into two.”
Her eyes followed Asa’s hand as they grabbed one of the broken halves and placed it in her palm before he wrapped his fingers around it. “It’s just broken, Carmen. It doesn’t mean it can’t still colour.”
He offered her a knowing smile as the meaning behind his words really began to sink in.
Lifting their joined hands, he pressed his lips against the back of her palm, speaking against her skin in a soft murmur. “And I would break every single crayon you have in your possession just to show you broken crayons can still create masterpieces as much as an unbroken one.”
41.
Don’t Let Me Walk Away
Asa felt his heart sink the tiniest bit when Carmen sighed and pulled her palm out of his grasp.
“How can you just say those things to me?” She sounded lost—truly lost—and it twisted his gut.
“What things?” he frowned, genuinely confused.
She closed her eyes, pulled in her bottom lip. Asa didn’t know if she was calming herself down or trying to formulate her thoughts into words.
“Things like what you just said. The whole metaphor regarding broken crayons creating masterpieces, as if—as if you actually believe that I can... That I—” She didn’t seem to know how to say what she wanted to say anymore but it finally dawned on Asa what the actual issue here was.
“That’s what this is about,” he mumbled to himself.
“What?”
“You’re not questioning the whole crayon metaphor,” he told her even while knowing that he was entering unpredictable territory. “You’re questioning what I just admitted about my feelings for you.”
“I...”
“I guess the shock of hearing me say it is wearing off and its only beginning to sink in, huh?” He laughed weakly, staring at a paint splatter on the floor that one of the art students must have caused.
“Asa—”
“It’s okay, Carmen,” he said gently. It hadn’t been planned; he’d never meant to say it. And he hated putting her on the spot like that.
But Asa was and always had been a heart-over-head guy, and he had let his emotions get a grip of his tongue when the three precious words had rolled off it and out his mouth like it was only natural for him to say so.
And maybe it was natural. Every way his senses responded to Carmen’s presence seemed like that was their sole purpose.
“I just…I don’t… I don’t think I—”
“I said it’s okay,” Asa cut in. “And I meant it. Besides, I should be the one apologising anyway. I shouldn’t have just said something like that without considering if you were ready or not to hear it.”
The silence that followed his words didn’t feel right; it wasn’t comfortable like the other wordless moments they’d shared. This one was different somehow, like there was a palpable amount of tension simmering just beneath the surface.
It was evident in the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes, in the way Carmen’s mouth was slightly ajar, as if a part of her was battling against saying something and the other part was fighting back.
Asa didn’t particularly like it, but he wasn’t one
