Free Forever & Always: The Ever Trilogy (Book 1) by Jasinda Wilder Page B

waist. My right hand was outstretched as well. Reaching for him. Our fingers didn’t quite touch. It was painful to paint it that way. Literally, physically painful. I wanted our hands in the painting to touch, to tangle and twine, but they didn’t. A breath of wind blew between them, in the space between our fingertips. I could feel the wind, and so I painted the leaves skirling around our feet, autumn reds and yellows and oranges, broad maple leaves.  
    I stepped back and stared at the painting, head tilted to one side, trying to figure out what it was missing.  
    Oh.  
    Two doves, flitting between the trees, almost invisible through the foliage. Two doves, side by side, flying away from Caden and me.  
    He’d know what that meant. He’d get it.  
    It was done, then. I took off my paint shirt, washed my hands and face, as I inevitably got paint on myself, then re-dressed and left the piece to dry. For once, I hated the length of time it took to let oil paint dry; usually I didn’t care, as I only painted for myself. I had stacks of paintings in the corner of my studio, dozens and dozens of unframed pieces, with others lying face up on my drop cloth to dry. I left Caden’s piece on the easel, knowing I’d want to look at it later, perhaps adjust it or correct it. I preserved my mixed colors and washed my brushes, closed the window, and left the studio.
      For the next few days, though, I couldn’t get the painting out of my head. The next time I looked at it, I knew it was complete, needing no alterations. I saw it when I closed my eyes to sleep, the way Caden’s and my fingers didn’t quite meet. It was torture.  
    What did it mean? Why did I want our paint-selves to hold hands?  
    I even dreamed of the painting. I was on a bluff overlooking a too-blue lake. Everything was that too-colorful, too-vivid brilliance of dreaming. I felt wind blowing, a stiff, steady breath smelling of pine needles and distant campfire. I wasn’t quite standing, either; I was floating a few inches off the ground, just high enough for my toes to point at the leaf-strewn forest floor. It wasn’t odd, in my dream, that my feet didn’t touch the ground. It was perfectly normal, and I simply noticed and accepted it, the way you do in dreams. And then something changed. The peace of the moment vanished, leached away without warning. I twisted my head, and the motion took a year to complete, the ninety-degree rotation lasting for minutes and minutes, as if I was moving through thickened water.  
    Caden. He was beside me, floating like me, staring out at the water and the green needle points of the pine trees. He knew I was there. I could sense his awareness. He turned to look at me, and this action, for him, was unfairly normal and quick. His eyes pierced me, deep brown and heavy with sadness.  
    And then he was several feet away and reaching for me. I reached for him, stretched, seeing the sadness in his eyes and knowing that if I could just take his hand in mine, he would be okay. But I couldn’t reach. It was like there was an invisible force field between our hands keeping us apart. As soon as our fingers neared, they would shear off, slide away, unable to quite meet.
    I woke up sweating, heart pounding in my chest, sadness washing through me. It was almost like it had been a nightmare, rather than merely the inability to hold someone’s hand in a dream.
    A thought struck me and I left my bed, tripping over my feet as I rushed down the hallway toward my studio. I flicked on the light switch and stood in front of the easel, staring with my mouth open. Even as I painted it, I hadn’t realized what I’d done.
    In the painting, neither Caden’s nor my feet were touching the ground.

    ~ ~ ~ ~
     
    Caden

    The funeral was the second worst day of my life. Gramps had called Dad to say he and Gram couldn’t make the trip. They couldn’t leave the ranch for that long. Uncle Gerry showed up, though, red-eyed and silent and stoic as