Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Great. Just let me grab my purse.” Jo scooped up the Birkin bag she’d carried to work that day.
“We should probably leave that here.” Cam plucked the bag from her hands, setting it back onto the couch. “Nothing says steal me like a seven-thousand-dollar purse.”
Jo wouldn’t correct him, but good luck finding an ostrich-skin shooting star Birkin for seven thousand dollars. Now that would be a steal.
* * *
An hour later, Jo assessed the neighborhood they rode through. So this was Barfield projects. The first thing she noted was the almost complete absence of green. No trees. No plants. No flowers. No life. Not even daylight would improve this neighborhood much.
Cam drove deeper in, weaving through streets and side alleys like he’d only been here yesterday. After a few minutes, he pulled alongside a building that looked like it literally might fall over any minute. If buildings had legs, this one would be on its last.
“It’s condemned.” Cam threw one leg over the seat and unstrapped his helmet.
“Looks the part.”
Cam turned to her, tipping his mouth up at a corner. With gentle hands, he pulled off her helmet and brushed his fingers through the loose waves spilling around her shoulders. Jo climbed off the back of Cam’s Harley (he’d looked at her like she should be committed when she asked if they were taking his Ducati).
“You sure you won’t get bored? We won’t stay long. I just need to get some of what’s in my head on a wall.”
“No, I’ll be fine.” Jo climbed off and dug into his saddlebag, pulling out her knitting kit. “See, I brought something to do.”
Cam looked from the knitting needles to Jo’s face, maybe four times before a laugh barged past his lips.
“Babe, you brought your knitting to Barfield projects? That’s what you’re going to do while I paint?”
“What did you think I was going to do? A crossword puzzle?”
“I don’t know. Candy Crush?” Cam pulled out spray cans and started setting them on the ground close to the building. “It goes without saying that you are never to come around here by yourself, right?”
Jo observed the trash cans, the sole occupants of the alleyway. Her eyes drifted to the package store, just beyond the street, and the surreptitious hooker working that corner. Don’t come back alone? He didn’t have to tell her twice.
Cam found her a crate to sit on, propping it along the wall facing his stone canvas. There wasn’t much light, just what the streetlight provided a few feet away. She pulled up the pattern on her phone, determined to finish this scarf for her father. Knitting Harvard’s coat of arms was no easy task and required her complete focus. She concentrated so hard on getting it right, an hour had gone by before she realized it.
She glanced up, doing a double take at the colors and shapes overtaking the wall. How did he do that? Transform a slab of cement mediocrity into a Technicolor marvel? He’d painted a jungle war zone but occupied by demons and angels instead of wild animals. He’d depicted a battle, but the combatants wielded fruit and vegetables instead of weapons—hand-to-hand combat with bananas. An angel pulling the key on a pineapple grenade. A corncob held execution style to the head of a demon on his knees. It was a vivid courtship of whimsy and violence, so typical of Cam’s trademark style.
Only there was nothing typical about him. An imagination this rich. A gift this rare, and he barely acknowledged it.
He was shaking an orange can when he noticed she had stopped knitting and was gaping at the wall. The first time Cam had ever shown her one of his drawings on a napkin he’d worn the same look on his face as he did right now. Uncertain, vulnerable.
“So…what do you think?”
If she gushed, he wouldn’t believe it, so she tempered her awe, put down her knitting, and crossed over to the wall he’d transformed into an aerosol opus. She tilted her head as if considering. It was brilliant. It was museum-worthy. It was breathtaking.
“I like it.”
Those three words, not even a fraction of what she felt, wiped the anxiety from Cam’s face. He relaxed into a smile, stepping back to assess his work as if for the first time.
“You do?” He shook the can of paint but made no move to spray.
“What does it mean?” Jo scooted a few inches closer, linking their pinky fingers and laying her head on his shoulder.
“I guess it’s a commentary on how ridiculous and senseless most violence is.” Cam narrowed his eyes on the images he had sprayed on the wall. “A contrast between the foolishness of ego and agenda and all the twisted things that lead to wars and the actual cost of it. The lives. Growing up here, it was nothing to see someone shot for the sneakers they’re wearing or the jersey on their back. Sometimes I don’t think our world leaders are much more sophisticated than that when they make choices that cost people’s lives.”