Watercolour Smile Read Online Free Page B

didn’t suddenly vomit.
    My negative reaction to Quillan had grown violent in its intensity ever since we had formed the bond, and that troubled me greatly. I had been hanging on to the hope that forming the bond would banish my strange reactions to him—and the others.
    “It’s a little obvious,” he said, looking down at me.
    There was regret in his dark expression, and I knew better than to assume that he had been offended by my reaction. His regret mirrored my own.
    We didn’t want to be connected this way.
    I swayed, fighting off the darkness, because it shouldn’t have attacked me so viciously. He was only holding my waist. Cabe and Noah had done worse, and the blackness had only come when they tried to kiss me. Silas sometimes crowded my personal space—mostly when he was angry—but I’d never almost fainted around him.
    “Seph,” Quillan said.
    I felt him tense up, and I quickly gathered my wits about me, feeling as though I had to scramble around the floor as they danced away from me.
    What a mess .
    I pushed against his chest, and he let me go. I took several steps back, my eyes averted to my sneakers. I was suddenly struggling to breathe, and I knew that the bond was unhappy with me. Ignoring the churning emotions that warred for recognition inside my mind, I walked straight to the canvas set up in the corner of the room by the window. It was my own little spot.
    “Seph…” Quillan repeated gently, trailing off, as if he didn’t quite know what to say.
    “Don’t worry, Bossman.” I lifted my eyes, managing to smile at him, and he seemed to relax a little bit. “I get it. You were trying to prove a point.”
    I fiddled with the watch around my wrist as we stared at each other. It was weighted, scratched enough to indicate that he had owned it for a very long time. The brand was Rolex, and apart from looking expensive, it also looked odd—since the watch-face was almost the entire width of my wrist. It was the only thing we shared that was wide open for the world to see.
    Naturally, nobody noticed.
    “Use the watercolours today,” he finally said. “You get more details outside of the painting when you do.”
    I nodded and prepped my workstation, staring at the blank paper all the while. There were a bunch of paintings rolled up in a basket beside my easel, all of the same scene: a girl floating in water. I had drawn it before, but had been interrupted before I finished the picture, and ever since, I had been terrified that the girl was yet another person that I could have saved, but didn’t.
    The memory of Aiden’s face still haunted me.
    Once again, I brought the girl to mind, and my paintbrush stubbornly refused to budge. I had fought the same battle every single day for the past few months. Quillan called my ability forecasting , but lately, I had simply been painting. I painted the girl by memory, sometimes embellishing on my own, sometimes willing my stubborn mind to fill in the blanks. I sighed, staring at the white space. It wasn’t going to happen; the forecasting simply didn’t work that way. It showed me what it wanted me to see and nothing more.
    Today, I would let go of the girl.
    It was with a heavy heart that I tore away the paper and replaced it with a blank roll of canvas before I started painting, and the feeling only grew worse as the image blossomed before me. The green eyes formed first; bloodshot and bleary; they gazed at me, damming me. I started shaking but my fingers held firm to the brush. The watercolours melted into the colour of skin, sloping upwards into the hollow of a sunken cheek. I could feel the tears pricking my eyes as one of my greatest fears came to life right before me. It was a bleak outline, nothing but washed colours over a washed-out face. I finished my first coat with a mop of inky-black hair, and then stepped back, my heart wrenching as I stared into my brother’s face.
    “Tariq,” I cried softly, and Quillan stood up immediately, rounding my