Chapter 154: Red lipstick and rain
It hadn't rained since morning.
It came down in a soft, silver wrap, dropping down the windows like a lullaby I never knew I'd miss. It was rain that made the world compact, softened it up, like the sky itself had decided to put pause to the whole thing. The kind of day that led you to ache for soft things—books, memories, lips you could trust.
Maybe that was the reason I pulled open the bathroom drawer where I kept expired makeup—the kind I wore less and less. My fingers passed over the familiar black tube, the ribbed edges worn down. I twisted it open.
Red. Deep, uncensored. A color I hadn't worn in months.
I looked at myself as I put it on. The color changed something—not my lips only, but my posture. My back straightened itself. My chin went up. I remembered who I'd been the very first time I'd ever worn it on. Daring, wild. Starving for power. I wasn't that girl anymore.
But I wasn't afraid of her, either.
When I moved out into the corridor, Caspian was at the door. He'd just buttoned his coat, his hand still adjusting the collar. His eyes caught mine—and stalled.
He looked at me like I was something from out of the past centuries. Something dug up. Not that I was perfect, but something had shifted. His eyes traveled over my lips, and some tension in his jaw.
You look like the owner of the world," he said at last. His voice was low, gravelly at the edges.
"Is it lipstick," I said carelessly, even though my heart had stuttered.
"No," he repeated, moving forward. "It isn't.".
His fingers swept across my wrist, so light it was barely there, tracing the skin like he needed something to hold onto. He didn't kiss me. He didn't need to. The way he looked at me was the sort that laid your soul naked, not your body. That seared away pretension and left only truth.
I swallowed and lowered my eyes, catching my breath in my throat. He hadn't touched me evenly and I was already falling apart.
"Ready?" he whispered.
I nodded.
We stepped out into the gentle rain, the two of us under one umbrella. I held the handle in my free hand while his fit inside mine, warm and snug. The world outside was watercolor wash of umbrellas and wet pavement. Rain warped everything—the buildings, people's edges, sound.
At the museum, the quiet descended upon us like a change in the weather. Vast windows let in the wet light, gray and gentle. Footsteps echoed off marble floors, but the galleries were nearly deserted. I liked it that way. The quiet allowed room for all the things we weren't talking about.
We started in the sculpture wing. I had liked the weight of the work there—the stone, the quiet. Caspian halted in front of one of a woman seated on a block, her head thrown back to the heavens, eyes closed.
"She looks like you," he said softly.
I looked at the statue and saw the gentle curve of her jaw, the curve of her mouth. Not her face. But something else. Something inside.
"Perhaps," I said to him.
We strode on, shoulder to shoulder. In the next gallery, Impressionist paintings lined the walls, their perfect skies and smudged brushstrokes a soothing contrast to the storm outside. I stood before a familiar one—a woman on a balcony, bathed in light, peering out as rain poured over a garden. Her expression was unreadable.
"She's waiting," Caspian said in back of me.
I turned to him.
"For what?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Something she desires. Something she fears."
I looked at the woman. "They're the same sometimes."
He didn't respond. Just kept holding my hand. His thumb reached out slowly over mine. A still anchor. A silent vow.
In the next room, we stood in front of a canvas seething with matted color, thick strokes reminding me of cacophony. Chaos. What it had been like to have Nathaniel's voice trapped in my head for too long.
"I used to think love sounded like that," I said to her, gesturing toward the painting. "Noisy. Complicated. Out of balance."
"And now?
I gazed at him. "Now I think maybe it's really supposed to be quieter. More like. walking around a museum on a rainy day."
Caspian's eyes never left mine. "I like the way you love," he said softly.
And there it was again. That feeling of being in a place I'd built with my own two hands—brick by brick, day by day—safe enough to show him. All of me.
When we came to the last room, Caspian stopped in front of a portrait of a woman looking straight out at the world. Her face was empty. Stubborn. Her lips were scarlet.
"She reminds me of you too," he said.
I laughed, low. "Because of the lipstick?"
"No," he said, his voice slightly grittier now. "Because she looks like she's waiting for no one's okay."
I turned to him fully.
"You make me feel like that," I confessed.
He drew closer. We weren't in contact, but I felt as if we were. I leaned toward him, inch by inch.
"I never want to make you feel smaller," he said.
"You never have."
His hand came then, fingers against my jaw, my cheek. He looked at me like he did when he wasn't sure if he should kiss me or just stand there. I liked the uncertainty. Sometimes waiting was the best.
The kiss was soft. One alone. But it was like a vow. Like he was kissing not just my lips, but all it meant to be the red again.
We went out again. Walking. Quiet. Being.
Outside, it was still raining. More softly now. The kind of rain you let fall across your face so you can sense something true.
When I was getting to the car, I lifted my face to the sky. The rain touched my cheeks, moistened my hair, and I didn't care. The lipstick was still intact. Even if it hadn't been, though, I think I would have worn the red anyway.
Caspian stared at me as if I were magic.
"You know," he said, pulling me back under the umbrella, "you don't need red lipstick to look like that."
"Like what?"
He touched a thumb along my cheek. "Like someone who already knows she belongs."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"Maybe I'm starting to think so," I said.
"Good," he whispered. "Because I've never had any doubt."
We didn't say anything else. We just walked. The city glinting wetly around us. The world dulled in its grays. My fingers threaded through his. The red on my lips a quiet rebellion.