Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) Read Free

paint with?”
    “Oils,” she said. “But you don’t have to do that.”
    “What’s it called?” I asked. “If I bring you white, will you promise to stay off your feet and let your sprain heal?”
    Her lips twisted, amused again. “Beacon Art Supplies. They were staying open late for me tonight. It’s up the block on the left.”
    I bolted out of her apartment, practically running down the two flights of stairs and out past the spot where she’d slipped and fell ten minutes prior. Five minutes later, I’d arrived.
    “Hello?” I called, poking my head in. The “open” sign was unlit, but the door was unlocked and the lights were still on.
    “Yes?” a woman’s voice called from the back.
    “I’m here to pick up some paint for, uh, Sophie,” I said, realizing I didn’t yet know her last name.
    “Oh, yes,” she said. “Be right there.”
    A blonde woman about Sophie’s age with a braided ponytail hanging over her left shoulder strutted to the front. She was wearing a paint-covered smock and holding a giant bottle of white paint in her hand.
    “She slipped on the way here,” I said. “I told her I’d grab it for her.”
    The woman’s nametag identified her as Mia. She rolled her eyes and laughed. “I told her I’d stay open late. Must’ve been in a big hurry.”
    “Sidewalks are slick,” I said, pulling out my wallet. “Be careful out there tonight.”
    Mia waved her hand. “It’s free.”
    “Free?”
    “She works for me.”
    “Oh,” I said, slipping my wallet back into my left back pocket. “All right, then.”
    I hurried back to Sophie’s, knocking before letting myself in. She was still right where I left her, lying across the couch with her leg propped up on a pillow, half asleep.
    “Here’s your paint,” I whispered, sitting it next to the easel on her coffee table. I clicked off the lamp that lit the space above her sofa and showed myself out, pausing to look at her one more time before locking the door from the inside and shutting it tight.
    So that’s her.
     

 

 
    SOPHIE
     
    I hated the cold. Hated it. Having lived my whole life in upstate New York, I should’ve known better than to dash off to Manhattan the moment I graduated from art school. The twenty-two-year-old me was trying to go legit back then. That was where all the artists lived. That was where people set up shops and galleries and sold their paintings for unthinkable amounts of money. I dreamed of making enough money to buy a quaint little apartment and travel the world in search of new inspiration.
    I also wanted to escape my past, the horrible memories, that horrific night when the unthinkable happened. “The Incident,” my parents called it, though “Worst Nightmare” would’ve been more fitting.
    My fingers twisted around the delicate gold charms dangling from my neck as I entered Beacon Art Supplies. Beacon was my second favorite place, right after my apartment. If I wasn’t at home, I was usually at Beacon’s. It was my safe place. I could lose myself there. I could drown out the rest of the world. And when I needed a bit of human interaction or when my thoughts became too loud, I had Mia to bring me back down to earth.
    “Morning,” I called out as I hung my puffy coat on a rack in Mia’s office. I hated that thing. Whenever I wore it, I looked like a bloated, blue marshmallow.
    Mia popped her head out from a back room, her smock covered in fresh blue paint. Mia Beacon was quite possibly the only girl I knew who loved art more than me.
    “Ankle feeling better?” she asked, eyes dropping down to my feet.
    It still throbbed, and it killed when I walked on it. But I choked down enough ibuprofen to make it manageable. I had to get to work that morning. Mia needed me, and it felt good to be needed.
    “Okay, so who was that guy last night who came in here?” Mia asked, a curious smirk growing on her round, pretty face. “Can we just talk about how freaking gorgeous he was for one