CHAPTER FIVE

Tillie awakened with a dry mouth and rolled over on her back, taking stock. No migraine, despite the fact that she'd slept fitfully, too hot, twisting up in the covers. Every time she'd surfaced, something strange wove itself out of the painting she'd seen at the gallery—big leaves coming alive to form a bed she crawled into, a bird swooping through the air, sending out a call, tragic and enormous.

Over and over, it was the cat, grown to a giant size, its head coming up to her waist, its green eyes the size of baseballs. It purred. She rubbed her hands into its soft neck, cooing something.

She woke up, fell back asleep. She curled with the cat, its body warming her from neck to knees. Slept, awakened to—

Her bedroom. Reality. She sat up, thirsty and sweaty. Pulling from the metal water bottle she kept beside the bed, she pushed hair out of her face and stared into the dark. The scene from the painting returned, faint shapes coalescing, all of it coming alive with depth and sound, a starry sky overhead. The murmur of voices she couldn't quite hear, in a language she didn't quite understand.

She blinked, rubbed her face. A dream.

Just a dream.

Dawn peeked in the windows, washing the walls with pink. Only when she swung her legs out and saw her tights did she remember fainting. Liam must have put her to bed. It scared her that she'd been so vulnerable, passed out with a man in her apartment. He could have done anything.

Except—she could trust herself . She wouldn't have allowed someone she didn't feel comfortable with upstairs with her.

But didn't everybody feel that way?

Stop. Clearly, she'd survived his help.

Padding into the bathroom, she traded her tights and dress for yoga pants and a T-shirt, splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth. She moved her head, her neck. The migraine was gone. Barefoot, she headed down an open corridor toward the kitchen.

And there, fast asleep on her couch, was Liam. He was insufficiently covered by a thin afghan, and she grabbed another one from the back of a chair to make sure he wasn't cold.

His face.

In the soft light of dawn, she gobbled up the details—his jaw and cheekbones and brow. His mouth and throat. His hand lax in sleep, hanging beneath the blankets.

Moving quietly, she picked up a sketchbook and charcoals from a nearby table and sat on the floor. Long windows above the couch let in the pinkish, silvery light that touched the round of his shoulder, the tangle of his hair. She sketched quickly, reproducing the angle of elbow and wrist, hip and knee. On a fresh page, she captured his hands and close-ups of his nails—square and flat and clean.

New page. Eyebrows. Elegant, straight nose. Sharp jaw.

Mouth. She remembered kissing him last night, the sense of his shoulders offering a bulwark. The echo moved through her body. She reached for a wry sentiment—it had been a while since she'd had anybody in her bed—but she couldn't find any irony. He wasn't just somebody, some guy. He was ...

She didn't know. Himself. Liam. Beautiful, yes, but unlike other men.

He slept on, oblivious of her attention. When she finished, charged by the pleasure of drawing him, she headed for the kitchen and set the kettle to boil, remembering he liked tea more than American coffee. For herself, she measured coffee grounds into a French press, and leaned a hip on the counter as she waited. From this angle, she could see his long, fit shape beneath the afghan her mother had crocheted by the fire in her cottage.

Her mother. The now-familiar, entirely unwelcome pang burned through her gut. Tillie missed Arlette terribly. She'd died five months before without any warning, and Tillie hadn't managed to get it ... what? In perspective? Was that even a thing if the person you lost was your mother?

It seemed impossible. She didn't know how to make peace with the fact that her strange and loving and reclusive mother was gone.

Tillie was alone. It had only ever been the two of them, living on a parcel of land tucked away upstate, where she raised goats for their milk and fine hair. She fed them with her garden, supplemented by visits to the health food store and the vegan café in Fox Crossing, the nearest town. Tillie grew up as feral as the cats who lived in the fields, homeschooled until she was nearly thirteen, when she rebelled and insisted that she wanted to go to a real school.

It didn't go as badly as it could have. In their little rural area, oddness was not unusual. Tillie had the luck of a long, muscular body and glossy hair and a vast talent for art and reading. When she realized what she'd missed, she gulped down everything in front of her, soaking up science, math, endless novels, and especially every art class available. Eventually, she won a scholarship to NYU for art. Her mother fought her on that, but she'd raised Tillie to be independent and think for herself.

In the end, she had to be at peace with her doing so.

And Tillie had hardly abandoned her mother. She loved being with her. Arlette's great love had been the old ways and old times. In one of her stories, she would have been the herbalist, called by some a witch, revered by others, who came to her begging for readings and spells and hope to cure broken hearts or bring back lovers. Tillie's friends had thought her odd. They didn't understand why Arlette didn't come to see her daughter's shows, celebrate her graduations, all the things a mother did.

But Tillie was more forgiving. Her mother had been wounded in some way that never really became plain, but she'd built a careful retreat in her farm and cottage, safe from the outside. Few places in the world had given Tillie the comfort the farm gave, even as she had to leave it to seek her own life.

There had never been anyone like Arlette, and now she was gone forever.

The kettle made a soft whispering sound, and Tillie pulled it off the burner before it could launch into a full whistle. Pouring water into the press, she inhaled the rich scent of coffee and felt it expand in her head.

The tiniest thread of pain, tinged soft purple, moved over the bridge of her nose. Echoes sounded from the base of her skull. Postdrome, it was called, the lingering wisps of the migraine episode.

Tillie was an expert, though she wished she were not. The headaches had begun long before she could remember, classic migraines that began with auras and progressed into brain-splitting pain, then receded a day or two later to disappear for months, sometimes even years.

As an adult, Tillie had sought treatment for the headaches, undergoing a battery of tests that revealed only that her brain was healthy, as far as they could see. Hormones, said one doctor; food sensitivities, said another. No one could make any significant difference, and honestly, they grew more and more rare, so she lived with them.

But since her mother's death, she'd had multiple episodes. Jared had blamed her grief, but he also blamed their breakup on grief. About that, he was wrong.

That reminded her of the text thread from last night, and her phone. Seventeen messages, all from her pining ex-fiancé. They followed the same pattern as always: Remember when ... I miss you ... I love you, and we are meant to be together.

The last message said, I don't know how to get you to understand this is the biggest mistake of your life.

A sharp annoyance pierced her, that he thought he knew better what was good for her than she did herself. It was part of the problem of the relationship—he pushed too far into her private self.

But truthfully, while there wasn't anything particularly wrong with their relationship—he would be an easy husband, a good partner, someone she could trust—there was also nothing particularly great about it. She had realized one morning as they drank coffee that she had no big feelings about him one way or the other, pro or con. That was no way to spend a life. At the very least, Jared deserved better.

Tillie's thumb hovered over the open message window, considering replies. Kind ones, thoughtful ones, ways to maybe make him feel better. It suddenly occurred to her that there was nothing she could do to make any difference to his pain. She was the source of it, and the only way to get over it was to feel it. Just as Tillie was struggling to feel and get through the grief of her mother's death.

She typed, This has to stop, Jared. I'm sorry I hurt you, but it wasn't a mistake that I broke up with you. I've asked you to stop texting, and you won't, so I'm so, so sorry, but I'm going to block your number.

Sorry.

Then she did it. Blocked him. A sense of relief poured through her, lightening the day. The cat from her dream suddenly popped into her imagination. She picked up her sketchbook and charcoals and sat down with a cup of coffee in her favorite chair—a big, overstuffed monstrosity that felt exactly like being cradled by a grandparent. Or what she thought it would feel like. She'd never had a grandparent.

Morning crept into the room, pouring golden light over the floor like a carpet. Liam slept on, shifting a couple of times. It seemed he would wake up at any moment, but he settled back in to sleep every time.

Whatever his work, it tired him.

She sketched the cat from her dream, big as a lion, then as a house cat with stripes around its face and a white back. Peering into the depths of her imagination, she spied a striped tail, too. The image was detailed—stripes up its legs, long white whiskers. A sense of love for the cat seeped through her, and she smiled to herself.

Liam stirred on the couch, sitting up abruptly. "What time is it?"

"Um ..." She squinted at the clock in the kitchen. "Nearly nine."

He was on his feet instantly, blinking. "Damn! I'm going to be late."

"Do you want some tea?"

"No time." He stretched, long and lean, and she gladly eyed the length of him, the slice of flat belly beneath his shirt.

"Sure?"

He dropped to the couch to pull on his shoes but looked up with a smile. "Wish I could. How's your head?"

"Okay." She shrugged, embarrassed. "A migraine, that's all. You were really good to me. Thank you."

"No worries." He leaped to his feet and stuck his arms through his coat, patted the pocket, and made sure his phone was in hand. Then he paused. A ray of light struck his irises, and Tillie thought again of an angel. Her chest ached at his departure—it was so sudden and felt all wrong.

"Can I see you again?" he asked.

Relief swept through her. "Yes, please."

He smiled, deep and wide, and to Tillie's surprise, he bent in to kiss her. His mouth was as luxuriously plush as she remembered from last night, and tasted of possibility. Again, she felt something bloom around them, as if roses were opening, scenting the air.

"I don't want to go," he said, mouth millimeters from hers.

"I don't want you to."

"Damn. I have a gig at ten." He brushed the tip of his nose over hers, raised his head to meet her gaze fully and without hurry. "Pleasure to meet you, Tillie."

"Same."

And then he was gone. She listened to his feet running down the stairs and sent a whisper out to the universe.

Please.