Page 105 of My Sweetest Agony

An hour…

People stream past us.

More school groups.

Couples with their hands clutched or arms linked.

And still, I can’t look away.

The longer I examine it, the more I see those little details and expert precision that make it so breathtakingly spellbinding.

Cam finally squeezes me, breaking the spell, and I glance back at him.

“Is that what you wanted to show me?”

He shakes his head and drags his lips over mine so softly it makes my knees quiver. “No. Come on.”

When I climbed onto the back of his bike, he was very cryptic about why he was bringing me here, and even now, he seems tense, like whatever his reason, he isn’t quite sure he wants to expose it to me.

Given everything he’s revealed since I showed up at his studio last night, thinking about what that could be has left my stomach churning even more than it did earlier at the diner.

Cam takes my hand in his again and leads me around a few more corners until we pause in front of a massive canvas that drags my eyes up and up and then across its vast size. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

It takes me a few seconds to truly take in what’s hanging in front of us, the macabre scene tightening my gut the longer I stare at it. “What is this?”

A naked man sprawled out…

Chained to a rock…

With a hawk yanking what appears to be intestines from a cut in his side…

Cam stands behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Prometheus.”

“The titan?”

He nods, pressing his cheek to mine. “This is Prometheus Bound by Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders. It depicts the torture Zeus inflicted on him after he gifted man with fire and the arts.”

I slip from his hold to move closer, examining every facet of the breathtakingly disturbing piece.

Despite the violent imagery, there’s something so beautiful about it that I can’t tear my eyes away.

Cam shifts to my side, staring up at it. “It’s my favorite painting.”

“Here?”

He shakes his head. “Anywhere. I’ve been to the Louvre more times than I can count, and to just about every other fine art museum in the world over the last fifteen years, but I still come back here, to this one, to this painting, for the feeling I have right now.”

I glance over at him, the way his eyes rake over the image with so much fascination, reverence, and appreciation. “Which is what?”

It’s what I’ve been wondering all day, ever since I woke in his bed and his arms…

At breakfast, he pushed me to face the questions that were plaguing me, spent an hour trying to get me to accept that the life I thought I knew with Drew was real.

But he must be feeling something, too.

About me.

About what happened.