The silence in Jenna’s guest room was a physical presence, a heavy, suffocating blanket that seemed to absorb all the light and sound from the world. Three days. Seventy-two hours of silence so profound from Lysander Blackwood that it screamed.
I’d left to see if he would let me go, and in the echoing void his absence created, I was terrified I’d found my answer.
“He’s giving you space,” Jenna had said, her voice trying for comfort and landing on anxiety. “Or he’s licking his wounds. Or he’s an emotionally stunted bastard who’s finally realized he can’t control you. Take your pick.”
I’d picked up a paintbrush instead.
My new series, “Redemption,” was bleeding out of me onto vast, raw canvases. It wasn’t the violent, beautiful ruin he’d once demanded from me. This was different.
I was
