I woke up smiling. Not just on the outside but from somewhere deep in my chest, in the place where breath meets memory. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like I had to brace myself before opening my eyes.
There was no ghost beside me, no shame crawling up my spine. Just sunlight pushing through the curtains and the pleasant ache of being wanted. Fully. Visibly. My muscles were sore in all the best ways. The good kind of ache. The kind that lingers to remind you something real happened.
I rolled onto my back and let out a soft sound, part laugh, part sigh. The pillow still smelled faintly of sweat and paint and something warmer I couldn’t name. Maybe the scent of possibility.
Last night’s phone call played again in my mind. The way Bryn had admitted Marianne knew. The way he’d pulled back and then pushed forward again, like a man who didn’t know which part of himself to trust. It should have worried me more. Maybe it did. But not this morning.
This morning I was choosing joy. Even if it was borrowed. Even if it had a ticking clock.
The coffee was stronger than usual, and I took it black and sweet, letting the caffeine cut through the sweetness rising in my chest.
Today I had a lover. Today I felt like the future was inching closer, finally shaping up like something I might want to touch. I felt so good that I decided to take a long drive to a nearby town. I dropped the convertible top of my little Porsche and drove her out in the beautiful sunshine.
The sky was a full bowl of blue, and the air carried the warmth of morning, bright but still biting softly.
It felt like the kind of day made for wandering. A quiet weekday morning, the town just beginning to stretch into itself. Shopfronts opening. A florist arranging stems in buckets outside. A waiter dragging chairs into sunlight. A few locals walking slow, like time wasn’t in charge.
I wandered without aim, ducking into two, then three small galleries. A mix of bold abstracts and local watercolours. Nothing wrong with them exactly, but nothing that pulled me. Nothing that made my ribs ache.
I didn’t linger. Didn’t pretend to be interested. I let myself move on.
The gelato stand was tucked between a bookshop and a florist, the kind of place you only notice when you’re in a good mood. I ordered pistachio without thinking, took the way too big tub and a wooden spoon, and crossed the street to the edge of the park.
I hadn’t planned to eat the whole tub, but here I was. Barefoot, sitting on the grass under a large oak, and I was sticky with sugar and memory. Bryn’s memory, specifically. The way his mouth had tasted the night before, warm and urgent, his hips rocking into mine with the kind of need that felt older than either of us.
I brought another spoonful to my lips, let it linger. Salt, cream, something floral. It made me think of his skin. His throat when he tilted his head back to laugh. The curve of his stomach, taut and trembling when I pressed kisses just above his waist.
I didn’t want to think about him. But the breeze carried his name.
I took another bite.
And then another.
Until I was scraping the bottom.
A storefront caught my eye across the street. Small. Dark. The words Antica e Preziosa were carved above the door in faded gold. I got up and wandered in.
The space whispered. Polished wood floors creaked underfoot, and dust hung in the slants of light like secrets of old needed to be told. The scent of yellowed paper and beeswax lingered in the air. Every piece had weight. A life. A lineage.
I drifted from cabinet to cabinet. Porcelain dolls with chipped cheeks. Silver candlesticks tarnished like storm clouds. Oil portraits of men with haunted eyes. And then I saw it. The chaise appeared, tucked in the back, like it had been waiting for me. Plum velvet, mahogany frame. A poem in furniture. I traced a hand along the carved wood and imagined what it would look like in my studio. Centred beneath the skylight. A place to rest. Or pose.
Under the skylight, afternoon sun pooling over the velvet like melted gold. Bryn lay across it, knees parted, his back arched just enough to meet me. I knelt between his legs, guiding him slowly down onto me, one hand at the base of his spine, the other gripping his thigh. No rush. Just the slow press of bodies already knowing. His lips parted but didn’t speak. His eyes held mine, open and trusting, the way they did when he wasn’t pretending. I moved deeper, steady, watching him take every inch. It wasn’t about fucking. It was about claiming the moment. About letting him know he was safe. Mine. The room held its breath as he wrapped his arms around my neck and whispered my name into the hollow where my shoulder met my throat.
Then I imagined it in Bryn’s apartment.
No. Not his apartment. Ours.
The chaise sat near the tall windows. Afternoon sun spilled over the velvet like spilled wine. Bryn lounged on it, one leg bent, one stretched long. Naked. His body lazy and perfect. His skin bathed in gold. He looked up as I entered the room, eyes slow and knowing. He didn’t speak. He just held out a hand, and I took it, slowly sinking into the chaise next to him as I lowered my mouth on his erect cock.
A fantasy, yes. But one that felt dangerously close to memory.
The bell above the door jingled softly as I stepped out of the shop again.
I wandered two blocks down and ducked into a record store, mostly out of habit. The kind that still smelled of cardboard sleeves and dust and old wood polish. A quiet world of its own. An old man in the corner adjusted a display while soft jazz spilled from the ceiling speakers.
I flipped through the racks with no intention of buying. Just touch. Just texture.
Then I saw it.
Etta James – At Last.
My fingers stilled on the cover. Yellow background. Dangling silver earrings. Eyes like a woman who had survived love and still had room to sing.
I pictured the needle dropping. That slow swell of strings. And Bryn, again, on the chaise. But not lounging this time. Kneeling. Over me. His hands on my thighs. His eyes locked to mine. Moving slowly into me, with purpose. With awe.
The song filling the air around us like a blessing. Or a promise.
At last, my love has come along.
I closed my eyes and let it play all the way through in my mind.
The rise. The fall. The weight of him on me. The way I wouldn’t need to speak, because everything would already be there. All of it. In the rhythm. In the hush between breaths. In the way his lips found mine without hesitation.
At last.
My heart had no business believing in that moment. But it did.
And I let it. For once, I let it. I bought the album without thinking twice about it.
The record store door clicked shut behind me.
I stepped into the sunshine, the sky soft as butter and still humming with the dream I had spun inside. I held the paper bag like it held more than vinyl. Like it held a promise. I could still hear Etta’s voice in my head. I could still see Bryn on that chaise, moving into me with certainty. I carried the dream with me like a second skin.
I drove back slowly, as if speeding might shake the feeling loose. The convertible top was still down, the air syrupy with late morning heat and the scent of something blooming. Jasmine maybe, or wild honeysuckle tangled in a fence line. My hand rested lightly on the wheel, the record on the passenger seat like a secret I wasn’t ready to share. I let the hills roll past me, golden and generous, and watched the midday sun cast shadows under the trees that looked like they belonged in a painting I hadn't made yet.
Bryn was still with me. In my mind. In my skin. In the way my thighs still remembered the shape of his. The world felt hushed and radiant, like that moment in a gallery before the crowd arrives. Like everything was waiting. Or watching.
The road curved gently and I let it guide me home. Not just to my house, but to the version of myself I was starting to recognise again. The man who wanted more. Who was no longer ashamed of the ache. I pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment before turning off the engine, the song still playing in my head like a benediction.
I paused at the edge of the driveway.
The garden welcomed me with quiet ceremony. Lavender hummed with bees. My olive trees swayed gently in the late breeze, their silvery leaves catching the sun like scattered coins. The driveway between them like a path remembered by muscle. I had planted every shrub, every climbing vine, not for anyone else, but because I needed to know I could still nurture something.
My home stood calm and waiting, all clean lines and wide eaves, shaded by trees I’d watched grow year by year. It was everything Marcus had once promised me. Not sleek. Not dramatic. Just real. And I built it. He had no hand in it.
I let the silence hold me for a moment longer before opening the door.
The house was still in upheaval. I straightened it out a bit before making my way to the studio. Early afternoon light spilled through the tall windows, cutting across the mess of the night before. Bryn’s paint-covered tank top still lying on the tarp. A paint rag near the easel. The air was thick with the kind of stillness that settles after something beautiful has been taken too far.
I didn’t clean the studio. Not yet.
Instead, I moved through it, my steps slow, bare feet brushing against cool wood. Past the easel. Past the place on the floor where Bryn had gasped my name. I let my fingers graze the side of the old cabinet in the corner. The one I never opened unless I felt brave or foolish. I wasn’t too sure which one I felt today, but I opened it nonetheless.
Inside were all that remained of a life I once thought was the real one. A few unfinished studies. Architectural pieces. Not even the best of them. The good ones were long gone.
Marcus made sure of that.
He had been an art dealer with decades of pedigree. Well-connected, beautifully spoken, and always just a little bored. He knew the language of collectors, the tastes of gallery owners, the whims of old money and their curated hungers. When we met, I had just begun to show. Small shows. Modest praise. Enough to feel seen, not enough to feel secure.
Marcus changed that. He called my work “refined” and “subtly aching.” He told me I was the future of restraint. That my buildings spoke volumes. That it was “like watching loneliness from behind glass.”
And I believed him. I believed in us.
He said if I transferred the paintings into his name, he could build a proper market around me. Keep them safe. Release them carefully, to the right buyers. Protect the mystique. The legacy. He made it sound like love. I signed every piece of paper he gave me.
Within six months, the paintings were sold.
He didn’t tell me to whom. At first, he said it was all part of the plan. Discreet placements. Private collectors. The long game.
And then it all came undone.
His wife found the messages. The ones where I called him mine. Where he promised me the rest of his life in words too beautiful to be harmless. The fallout of the affair wasn’t quiet. It tore through their world like a brushfire. Gallery partners pulled back. Collectors paused. My name, once whispered with intrigue, now carried the weight of scandal.
He didn’t walk away. He was dragged. Back to his wife, to the marriage he swore was hollow. To the life he claimed he’d already shed. There was no goodbye, no apology. Just silence. The echo of my name, now a liability in the circles where it once opened doors.
What he left behind wasn’t a lover. It was a man gutted by the truth. That I had never been anything more than a beautiful risk.
After the fallout, I heard through a former gallerist that the works had been selling for seven figures, auction after auction. Marcus had rebranded me as a vanished genius. A fragile talent who had disappeared too soon. He spun my silence into myth and made a fortune doing it.
He walked away with my paintings, my heart, and my money. What he left behind was a shell of a man too ashamed to pick up a brush.
I stood now in front of the cabinet and looked down at the few studies he hadn’t taken. Half-finished scenes of doorways and rooftops. They weren’t good enough to sell, not polished enough to hang. But they were mine. They were what was left when the illusion had cleared.
I had wandered this house like a stranger back then. Moving from room to room as if grief had made me weightless. For months I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t touch my paints without feeling like I was holding a knife.
Until Adam & Steve. My ode to Tamara de Lempicka.
That canvas saved me. Two male figures. One standing with his back to the viewer, turned away. The other behind him, touching, watching, wanting. It was a nod to my architectural studies. A nod to symmetry. An exercise in proportion. I had admired the structure. The elegance. The detachment. There’s something arresting about the way their bodies glow against that cold, unforgiving skyline. The figures feel close, almost touchable, all heat and skin, while the city around them stays distant and sharp. It’s like watching two people trying to stay tender in a world built for speed and surfaces. A kind of Eden, not in nature, but in steel and silence, where connection feels both dangerous and necessary.
But this time, I painted it differently.
The lines softened. The angles blurred. I didn’t render it in cool distance or classical light. I let the tension stay. I let the heat rise through the paint. I gave the man with his back to the viewer a gaze that burned. I gave the watcher a hunger he wasn’t trying to hide. The pose was the same, but the meaning was different. It wasn’t about architecture anymore. It was about intimacy. About the quiet violence of being seen.
It was the beginning of everything that came after. The first time I stopped hiding behind form and let feeling guide my hand. The first time I painted the body not as a symbol, but as a truth.
From there, the shift was slow but certain. The buildings fell away. The men remained.
Not one nod to Tamara again though. No clean lines. No stylised elegance. From that day forward it was only men. Real ones. Caught in private, aching, human moments. The in-between places where lust meets honesty. Where nothing is posed. Where nothing hides.
Collectors noticed. Galleries called. A new market opened and this time, it was mine. My name returned, sharper and harder than before. And my bank account followed.
Marcus had broken every promise. But he had also made one thing possible without meaning to.
He burned the path behind me so I could never go back.
The studio holds the whispered memories of Marcus, Bryn, the countless models who came to pose, and the breath of oil, turpentine and acrylic. It’s the kind of quiet that lets you hear the dust settling.
I close the cabinet and stand there for a moment, my hand still on the wood. I feel hollow, rinsed out by memory, but clear in a way I haven’t been for a long time. I turn.
The easel waits, exactly where I left it. Sunlight has shifted across the floorboards. The tarp beneath it is still crumpled, still stained with paint and cum. I glance at the work in progress.
Bryn.
I cross the room before I know what I’m doing, reach for the charcoal without hesitation. His figure is already there, loose and hungry. The pose catches me in the throat. His thighs slightly parted, head tipped back in that moment of surrender. I see it so clearly. The tension in his jaw. The way his fingers curl. The way his eyes flutter just before release.
I deepen the curve of his cock. Bolder now. Then I add what’s been missing.
The spill.
It arcs across the canvas in a burst of motion, dark and deliberate. Not crude. Just honest. I smear the edge slightly with my thumb, blur it like breath, like heat, like lust caught in motion.
It’s beautiful.
I sit back, heart racing. I want him. I hate that I want him. I love that I can admit it here.
I haven’t even dipped my brush yet. But already, I can feel him breathing through the page.
The first ring of my phone doesn’t register. Neither does the second.
I’m still staring at Bryn, at the bold, unflinching version of him I haven’t yet finished. The charcoal sketch and base layers of acrylic hums with heat. My hand itches to mix the first layer of the actual painting. I’m inside it now. Deep. That place where nothing exists except skin and colour and breath.
The third ring breaks through.
I blink, drag myself out of the trance, and reach for my phone without looking. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” my agent says. “And yes, I know I’m interrupting genius, but I’ve got someone for you.”
I groan. “Really? Another bored trust fund baby that just ‘has to have’ an original Bruno Mitchell?”
“No. This one’s… different. She didn’t say much, just that she needs something that’ll tear her up. Her words. Something that will make her cry and rip her insides out. In a good way.”
I pause, caught by the edge of that. Something in the phrasing lands exactly where it needs to.
“She asked to come to the studio,” she continues. “Today. In half an hour.”
I sigh, but the truth is I already know I’m going to say yes. “Fine. Give her the address.”
The line goes dead. I set my phone down, turn back toward the work, and try not to wonder.
A short while later, I open the door when I hear a soft knock.
She stands on the porch in cream linen and soft gold earrings, her dark hair swept into something elegant and quiet. There’s nothing theatrical about her. She’s polished, composed. Beautiful. But it’s the way her eyes move across my face that makes me pause. As if she’s bracing for something. Or offering something she isn’t sure will be accepted.
“Bruno,” she says, and her voice is softer than I remember. “May I come in?”
For a moment, I can’t speak.
I recognise her immediately. I’ve watched her from across a room, from behind Bryn’s shoulder, always half in shadow, half in control. And I met her, awkwardly, but I never expected to see her here. Not like this.
“Marianne,” I manage. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know. I need to apologise,” she says. “For coming under false pretences.”
I step back automatically, still watching her. “You're the commission.”
She nods. “Not really, and I apologise for that. But we need to talk.”
Something about her is different. Not confrontational. Not dramatic. There’s a gentleness in her I didn’t expect. Something held in check. Something almost... broken.
I nod, and she steps inside without speaking, her heels soft against the floor. For a moment, she doesn’t move far. Just stands there, brushing an invisible thread from her sleeve, her eyes roaming the room like she’s trying to memorise it. Or trying not to look too directly at anything.
I close the door behind her.
She takes a few steps forward, then stops. Her hands knit together. She doesn’t want to seem nervous, but it’s there. In the way her shoulders sit just a little too high. In the way her eyes keep drifting to the sketch near the easel.
“Would you like something?” I ask. “Water? Coffee? Tea?”
She hesitates, then glances at me with a small, brittle smile. “What do you have that’s stronger?”
I nod and walk to the sideboard, uncork a bottle of Chenin without asking more questions. She doesn’t strike me as someone who drinks during the day, but here we are. I pour two glasses, hand one to her. Our fingers don’t touch.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asks.
“Not at all.”
I fetch an ashtray from the studio shelf. Old, but clean. She lights the cigarette with practiced grace, draws in deeply, then lets the smoke curl from her lips in silence.
She doesn’t sit right away. She walks a slow circuit of the room, looking but not reacting. Then she returns to the leather chair opposite mine and sinks down carefully, like sitting too fast might give her away.
When she meets my eyes, something shifts. Not hardness. Not defiance. Just a kind of quiet resolve. Like she’s finally ready to stop pretending she isn’t scared.
“Bruno,” she says quietly, voice steady now, “How much do you know?”
I wasn’t expecting that.
There are so many things she could have asked. Are you sleeping with my husband? How long has it been going on? Even just why? All of those would have made more sense than this.
But how much do you know?
That lands differently. Not like an accusation. More like an invitation. Or maybe a test.
I take a slow sip of wine, buying myself a second I don’t really need. Her eyes stay on me, steady and unreadable. She’s not here to perform. She’s not here to break things.
Still, I’m cautious.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking,” I say gently. “Are you talking about you? About Bryn? Or about your marriage?”
Her lips part slightly, but she doesn’t speak. Just nods, almost imperceptibly. Like the fact that I didn’t assume has earned me the right to stay in the room.
“I know he’s not who he says he is,” I continue. “Not entirely. I know there’s a weight he carries. I know he’s trying to outrun something, or maybe someone. I know you know about me. And I know he lied to you.”
Her cigarette burns at the edge, the ash growing long. She doesn’t flick it. She’s still watching me, as if trying to decide whether I’ve just confirmed her fears or offered her relief.
“But that’s all I know,” I finish. “The rest... he keeps to himself.”
She exhales slowly, a long stream of smoke drifting toward the skylight. When she finally speaks, her voice is almost a whisper.
“Then I think it’s time someone told you.”
And for the first time since she arrived, I see something crack behind her eyes. Not anger. Not betrayal. Just grief, wearing the face of someone who has waited too long to speak.
She stubs out the cigarette, carefully, like the act requires precision. Then she leans back in the chair and wraps both hands around her wineglass, steadying herself.
“He was never faithful,” she says. “Not even in the beginning. I used to think that made me modern. Strong. Like I could handle it if I just didn’t ask questions.”
She takes a small sip, then continues.
“Men. Always men. Some were strangers. Some were friends. A few I even liked. Of course I know that he was in a gay relationship before I met him. I was there when Kane tried to stage his comeback. I saw him fall apart when Kane died. But I told myself he was just... restless. That it didn’t mean anything. That what we had was bigger than sex.”
Her eyes drift toward the floor, unfocused. “But it wears you down. Every hotel receipt. Every shower taken too soon. Every pair of eyes that lingered too long when I walked into a room. I stopped asking questions. I stopped dressing up. I stopped touching him.”
I don’t interrupt. Her voice isn’t bitter, and it’s not rehearsed. It’s quiet and stripped bare, like someone speaking from the soft, worn place just beyond heartbreak.
“I’m not here to punish you,” she says. “I’m not even angry. Not at you, anyway.”
She finally looks at me again. “When he met you, I knew it was going to be serious.”
“He spoke about you differently. Not like the others. Not like it was something he could shake off. And he lied to me when I asked if he was seeing you. He’s never done that before.”
I set my glass down. I don’t know what to say to that.
“I think he’s trying to change,” she adds. “I really do. But it’s like asking a river to stop moving. He doesn’t know how to love without leaving a trail.”
There’s no venom in her voice. Just exhaustion. And something else.
The hope that maybe I’ve seen something in him she no longer can.
I watch her, trying to decide what this is. A confession? A warning? Some final, graceful revenge?
Her voice is too steady for malice. Too sad for strategy. But still, it catches me off guard. How much she’s telling me. How easily she’s opening the door I thought I’d have to force open someday. If ever.
I take another sip of wine, let the silence stretch just long enough to feel the weight of it.
“Are you telling me this to scare me off,” I ask quietly, “or just to warn me?”
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away.
I wish I could say I’m ready for either answer. But the truth is, I’m not sure which would hurt more. That she wants to protect him. Or that she wants to protect me.
She looks down at her glass. Turns it slowly in her hands.
“I always knew a man would come along that he really wanted. Really desired. I don’t mean the flings. The one-nighters. I mean the one he couldn’t compartmentalise. The one who made it impossible for him to pretend he was just playing.”
Her voice doesn’t waver, but something in her eyes dims.
“I think you might be that man.”
I shift in my seat. I want to ask her how she knows, but I already do. I know it too.
She inhales sharply, like saying the next part might break her ribs. “But you need to understand something. Bryn is a broken soul. Beautiful and bright and so full of charm, but broken. I thought I could be the one to fix it. I really did.”
Her mouth pulls into something like a smile, but it never reaches her eyes.
“And we’ve just had the baby.”
Those six words hit harder than anything else she’s said. There’s no anger in them. Just ache. Like she’s finally hearing the truth of it out loud for the first time.
“I was stupid enough to believe that maybe, just maybe, that child would be the thing that rooted him. That he would look at her and find a reason to stay still. And for a while, it worked.”
She pauses, then lights another cigarette with hands that aren’t quite steady.
“But only for a while. Because I don’t think it’s just you that he’s seeing, Bruno. I don’t think he knows how to choose. Or maybe he does, and he just doesn’t want to.”
She exhales slowly. Watches the smoke of her cigarette rise toward the skylight like a prayer she no longer believes in. She stands and walks slowly around the studio, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other.
Her eyes move across the space like they’re gathering evidence she already knows how to interpret. She stops at the easel, tilts her head slightly as she looks at the unfinished painting. Bryn. Head thrown back, cock arched, the spill rendered in smudged charcoal.
She studies it for a long moment.
She doesn’t speak. Just looks. Long enough for the silence to start pressing against my ribs.
Then her eyes drop to the tarp.
She kneels. Runs her fingers gently across the hardened stains. Paint. Sweat. Something else.
She stands slowly and takes a step back.
“That tank top is his,” she says. “He was wearing it yesterday when he left home. And I assume that the grey hoodie he came back in was already here.”
Her voice is even. Almost quiet enough to miss.
She looks at me now. Direct. Calm. Almost too calm.
“And there,” she adds, gesturing to canvas, “it’s him.”
I rise slowly from my seat. I don’t speak.
She takes one more glance at the tarp. Then looks back at me.
“This is where you fucked last night,” she says. Not a question. Just the truth she carried with her before she even stepped inside. “When he told me he was at the gym.”
It isn’t a question.
Just a line she’s been waiting to say. A truth she already carried in her body before she stepped through my door.
“Yes,” I say.
No excuses. No apologies. Just the truth, sitting between us like an open flame.
Marianne doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to. We both stand there, suspended in something heavier than confrontation. There’s no yelling. No accusations. Just a slow, quiet understanding settling over the room.
We love the same man.
She’s carried him for years. Through the weight of marriage, of promises, of a child. She knows the rhythms of his silences, the shape of his damage. She’s seen him at his weakest, and still, she stayed.
And me. I barely know him. But he’s in my blood already. In my work. In my skin. I haven’t had time to build defences. I don’t even want them.
She looks at me then, and there’s no anger in her eyes. Only exhaustion. Only something like grace.
“Let’s give him time,” she says, voice low but steady. “To figure out how he wants to do this.”
I nod.
Because what else is there?
We’re not enemies. We’re the collateral. And now we wait.
I walk her to the door.
She doesn’t say much, and neither do I. There’s nothing left that words could fix. As I open it for her, I reach out and touch her arm. Just lightly. A gesture. An apology.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She looks up at me, eyes tired but kind. Then she offers a small, uneven smile.
“I always knew this day would come,” she says. “Maybe not like this. But somehow, I did.”
She steps outside, the light catching in her hair, and pauses just before the stairs.
“In a strange way... I’m happy for him,” she adds. “He’s never looked at me the way I’m sure he must look at you. But be careful, Bruno. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
That lands hard. But there’s no resentment in it. Only a soft ache. Something like letting go.
“Do me a favour please, and don’t mention this conversation to him”
I nod, agreeing to keep it quiet. Then she walks down the path and gets in her car without looking back.
As the sound of her car fades down the street, I close the door and let the silence settle. My chest feels tight, like I’ve been holding my breath since she stepped inside. I turn back toward the studio, unsure whether to return to the easel or pour another glass of wine.
Then my phone vibrates.
The screen lights up with Bryn’s name.
A video.
I hesitate for half a second before pressing play.
He’s lying on his side. Naked. Lit by the soft amber glow of a bedside lamp. His hand moves slowly, deliberately, stroking himself with a rhythm that’s almost lazy. His eyes are half-lidded, lips parted. The camera is steady, like he wants me to see every detail. Every twitch. Every breath. He moans once, low and raw, as he spills across his stomach. Then he winks into the lens, sweat-slick and undone.
The video ends.
My hands are shaking.
A single line follows, clean and precise:
Something to remember me while we can’t see each other.
I stare at the message, the room still heavy with the scent of Marianne’s cigarette, her sadness still clinging to the corners. My mouth is dry. My body is awake.
And I have no idea what to feel.
I text him back before I can stop myself.
Can I see you? Soon?
The three dots appear, hover, then vanish. When the message finally comes through, it’s brief.
Not tonight. Big pitch I need to prep for. Work stuff.
I stare at the message. The heat from the video still hums in my chest, but already it feels far away. The shift is too sudden. A door that was open just a minute ago, now closed without warning.
I don’t text back.
I grab my keys and head out, needing air, needing coffee, needing anything that doesn’t carry his name.
The coffee shop is quiet, the sun spilling across polished floors. I step inside, the bell overhead barely audible. The moment I do, I see him.
Bryn.
He’s in the back corner, tucked against the window. And he’s not alone.
The boy with him is young. Wide-eyed. Dressed like he’s trying not to look like he tried. There’s an ease between them that says this isn’t new. Their coffees are barely touched.
Bryn sees me.
His face stiffens. He blinks once, straightens slightly.
“Bruno,” he says. “Hey. I didn’t think you’d be—”
“Out?” I say. “Neither did I.”
The boy shifts uncomfortably, but doesn’t move. Bryn half-turns, as if to block the view.
“This is just. He’s a friend. From the gym. We were talking about design stuff. He’s trying to get into architecture.”
I nod slowly, eyes still on their linked hands under the table. The boy notices and pulls away. Bryn flinches.
“The coffee shop, huh?” I say, my voice low. “Is this your hunting ground?”
Bryn swallows. “That’s not fair.”
“No. But is it true?”
He doesn’t answer.
For a moment, neither of us speak. The boy looks down at the table, trying to disappear.
“I’ll leave you to your pitch prep,” I say quietly.
“Bruno - ”
But I’m already walking away. I don’t look back. Not because I don’t want to.
Because I know what I’ll see. And it’ll stay with me anyway.
I drive without a destination, letting the city dissolve behind me. Street by street. Memory by memory. I don’t check the rearview mirror. I don’t need to. The image is already etched into me. Bryn’s fingers brushing someone else’s skin. The quick flush of guilt when he saw me. The words that meant nothing after everything we shared.
It’s not anger that blooms in my chest. It’s something quieter. More hollow. A kind of sorrow that doesn’t scream but lingers, settling in my bones like cold. I should’ve known. I did know. Marianne told me the truth in every carefully measured word. But the heart doesn’t obey warnings. It wants what it wants. Even if it bleeds for it.
By the time I reach my house, the sun has dipped low enough to send golden slants across the pavement. I don’t linger. I pull the Porsche into the garage, step out, and head straight for the Jeep. The old one. The one that’s taken me away from the worst days before. Maybe it can carry me through this one, too.
I pack with the efficiency of someone trying not to think. Jeans. Jumpers. Hiking boots. My sketchpad and easel. A jar of brushes. One album - Etta James - and a case of red I’ve been saving. I throw in a blanket. A thermos. A small tin of Bryn’s favourite tea, though I pretend I don’t know why.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. I pause in the doorway of the studio. His tank top still lies on the tarp, crumpled and stained with paint. I pick it up. Hold it. Inhale without meaning to. Then I fold it and leave it behind.
I need to go. I need space. I need to remember who I am without him.
The cabin waits, two hours out. Past the reservoir. Through the thinning map of city roads. Into the quiet.
I bought it after Adam & Steve sold. A strange, perfect storm. The painting that changed everything. The one that turned my grief into form, into heat, into something beautiful enough for someone to want. The money landed in my account and I didn’t think. I just drove. Followed a recommendation from a gallerist friend who owed me a favour. Turned down a gravel road and found it.
One room. One fireplace. One perfect hush.
I paid in full. No negotiations. No hesitation.
It’s dark by the time I reach the clearing. The cabin glows soft under the moonlight, porch light humming low. The forest leans in, a blanket of branches holding the night close.
I park. Don’t get out right away. My fingers grip the wheel, knuckles white. I tell myself I’m fine. That I’m okay. But the ache in my throat betrays me.
I step out into the stillness. The air is pine and damp earth and the faint scent of woodsmoke left by the last fire I built here. I open the back of the Jeep, pull out my bag and the wine. No rush. Nothing here needs rushing.
Inside, the cabin is just as I left it. A woven rug. A battered couch. My old record player waiting on the shelf. I light the fire. Open the wine. Pour a glass that I don’t drink.
And then, finally, I let it break.
Not all at once.
First a sound. Small. A breath caught sideways.
Then a sting behind the eyes.
Then the collapse.
I sink to the floor, the wooden boards cool beneath me. My head in my hands. My heart unravelling in quiet, private devastation.
I loved him.
I loved the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. I loved the sound he made when he came. I loved that he asked me to paint him not like a lover, but like a truth.
And he gave himself to me. In pieces, yes. But those pieces felt real. Felt sacred.
Now I don’t know what was real and what was just habit. Just hunger.
I lift my head and stare into the fire. The logs crack softly, filling the room with warmth I can’t feel.
I whisper his name once. Just to hear it.
Then I close my eyes and let the tears come. Quietly. Without shame.
This is where I’ll stay for now.
In the house I bought with Bryn’s Adam & Steve money.
Trying to forget him.
Or maybe remember him just enough to let him go.
