Yet, I cried for him and for me.
I cried for both of us because it wasn’t fake breakups, molesting teachers, or blackmailing murderers who’d broken us.
It’d been the lies.
The tricks.
The shadows that’d always surrounded Gilbert Clark and the ones he retreated to rather than staying in the light with me.
No matter what happened.
No matter if I died tonight, he died, we all died, this had died.
Us.
There is no more us.
His arms wrapped me in a cage, his love imprisoning me.
I tried to stop crying. To put aside my grief and wake up.
But slowly, stealthily, finality crept over me.
My eyelids no longer opened.
My brain no longer operated.
My head lay on Gil’s shoulder, needing support.
He clutched me closer as the final dregs of energy siphoned out of me. He stroked my hair and kissed my ear as I gave in to the cloud of unconsciousness. “Hopefully, by the time you wake up...this will all be over. You’ll be free. You’ll never have to see me again.” He angled my chin, his lips claiming mine.
I tried to pull back, to stop the kiss, to study his godforsaken eyes, but he caged me closer. He pulled heat and hunger from deep within, sending me into lullabies with his taste on my lips and his grief on my tongue. “I’m so sorry, O. So sorry for ever thinking I could make you happy. You deserve so much more. I love you. I love you with every fucking part of me, but I can’t stop this. At least sleep is a gift I can give you. The only thing I can give you.”
Voices were far away and not of my dream world as he lowered me down until I lay on the stage. My eyelids fluttered as he turned on the air compressor and the first lick of unwanted paint landed upon my skin.
But I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t fight.
Gil was an artist.
Art was his drug.
The creation of beauty helped him cope in the depths of his despair. He needed art to function, to survive.
And with his talent, he stole my function.
Brush by brush, he destroyed me.
Colour by colour, he sentenced me to die.
He snuffed out my survival.
He’d poisoned me so I’d sleep.
So I wouldn’t be awake when my purpose as his masterpiece was over.
Chapter Three
______________________________
Gil
-The Past-
“SO....”
I looked up from my untouched beer. My eyes met Justin Miller’s curious ones, and I wondered all over again what the fuck I was doing in a bar with him two weeks after the worst thing in my life had happened.
Olive had been taken from me.
Taken by someone I trusted.
I’d paid the first ransom.
The second had arrived this morning.
I’d been in my head, plotting and scheming, doing my best to figure out how to snatch Olive back when I’d bumped into my past on the street.
“So...” I gritted my teeth, tipping the pint to my lips and sipping wet froth.
Gross.
“This is random, huh?” Justin chuckled, glancing around the darkened pub that’d survived the days of witch trials, Saxon sieges, and sooty open fireplaces. The low ceilings made the dingy booths and low beams cocoon us like a cavern, while the stained glass windows refused to let twilight perk up the place.
The entire establishment matched my mood. My heart. My aching, useless soul.
I sipped again—despite my hatred of liquor—struggling to hold small talk when all I could think about was my daughter in the hands of my goddamn uncle. Why did I not see it coming? Why didn’t I do something before it was too fucking late?
Goddammit, Olive.
My chest spasmed as if a grenade had exploded and shrapnel dug into my insides, poisoning me, killing me.
How could I let this happen?
Sweet little Olive who’d I’d named after Olin. Adorable little Olive who’d named herself thanks to a children’s book I’d found on the bus in the first few weeks of parenthood. A dog-eared, well-loved edition of Popeye The Sailor Man.
I’d flicked through the pages, my heart aching at the images of Popeye in love with a feisty, perfect woman named Olive Oyl.
All he cared about was making her his.
Just like I’d done with O.
I’d read the tattered book to my nameless daughter as she’d cooed on my lap. She’d wriggled and blown bubbles each time I said Olive Oyl.
By the time the story was over, I knew what her name was.
Justin cleared his throat, dragging me back to the present. “So...are you a house painter or an artist...or something else?”
I scowled at my colour-stained hands. The clues of my trade. The signs of my failure. “Uh-huh.”
“What do you paint? Houses? Canvases?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I shrugged, my eyes trailing to the door and the street beyond. I had twenty-four hours to come up with the second payment. I had the cash. I had more than enough. Ever since I hit success with body painting, I’d squirrelled away every penny to pave a golden path for whatever Olive wanted to do when she was older.
Those funds had been for her college, travel, or passion dreams. Not to pay a fucking bastard not to kill her.
My mind once again lashed tight to my daughter. I couldn’t do much else these days apart from think about her, worry about her, stare at my goddamn ceiling at night and hate myself for failing her.
“Not very talkative, are you?” Justin chuckled, taking another sip. “How about we start with easy questions?”
I resented him for dragging me back. I hated this. I refused to live in this world where Olive wasn’t with me. I’d rather live in my memories where she was safe and happy.
My memories also held moments of another girl I’d loved.
O.
I growled under my breath.
Two loves of my life.
Both stolen.
“What did you get up to after school?” Justin asked, successfully breaking me from my past.
I forced myself to sit there, to give a generic answer of ex-schoolmates. “Nothing of interest.”
How could I tell him that I’d run from school and never graduated? That the weeks following my disappearance with a baby hadn’t been easy. That I’d managed to find a small studio apartment by paying cash and three months’ rent in advance—almost all my father’s ill-gotten money gone, just like that.
I spent the next week educating myself on how to feed, burb, clean, and soothe a newborn.
I kept her alive by some crazy miracle.
“Well, I went on to get my master’s in accounting. Loved math enough to make it my career.”
I grimaced. “Good for you.” I didn’t bother pretending to be interested in my beer. Alcohol repulsed me. The taste and smell were utterly repugnant after the beatings Dad gave me thanks to the violence found in a bottle.
“So...I’m going to say you’re an artist not a decorator. That fair to assume?”
“Assume away.”
“Okay then...how did you start making money with your art?”
I doubted the truth would be a good answer. To admit that while Olive slept, I painted. That I created a few original pieces, while others I copied previous masters, doing my best to have something worthwhile to sell on street corners for coins. Olive had rested in the satchel I’d stolen, and I’d swallowed my morals as I used her as a tool to open the wallets of dog walkers and women with their own children.