Chapter 4
4
Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
Bella prised open one eye and peered blearily at a near aerial view of Central Park in surprise, having forgotten that she was no longer in her childhood bedroom at her parents’ house, and craned her neck to squint at the alarm clock beside her bed.
Ugh .
Six thirtya.m.
Four hours. She’d had four hours of sleep.
She pulled a pillow across her face and groaned into it, aware that Good Bella didn’t do things like groan. Against the backs of her eyes, she saw slashes of paint, a large canvas, and an explosion of pigment.
Go away! she mentally yelled at Chase Miller, throwing the pillow across the room.
She’d been up late last night doing research; know thy enemy , Sun Tzu commanded. So, after scanning her copy of The Art of War for motivation, she had spent a few hours – okay, so maybe more like four hours – watching videos and interviews with him through different stages of his career.
Which was fascinating, because Chase the painter was very different from Chase the gallery director.
Chase the painter was dynamic. The early videos on YouTube showed a softness and a humour that she couldn’t quite equate with the man in the apartment opposite her. Later videos were of ‘the artist at work’, promo pieces for up-and-coming exhibitions that she felt he’d tolerated more than courted. But there was one that had kept playing over and over in her mind, in her dreams and into this morning.
He’d been in his studio, a large warehouse-like space somewhere in London. The music in the background was angry, furious beats played across a hypnotic baseline. It wasn’t the kind of music she listened to, but she could see the attraction.
He’d painted like he was trying to run from something, the noise so loud it could drown out the world. And for just a moment she’d found herself wondering if he’d succeeded in drowning out himself.
Because she knew that feeling. Recognised it from when she ran. The music so loud in her ears, almost to the point of pain, where she couldn’t hear herself think, where all she could do was hold onto the music and keep going.
And then, flashing against the back of her eyes, there it was: Chase staring at the camera dead on, a knowing glint in his eye, bringing her out in goosebumps. She’d scanned the first few of the nearly five thousand comments left on the video and choked.
@helmart23 He can paint me any day.
@BensJammin Loving his use of acrylic and texture to define…
@HeavenlyFather You can find God in your heart, if know where to look.
@CMWIFE I know EXACTLY where he can put that paintbrush.
Which for some inexplicable reason, reminded her of the book that Delia had thrust into her hands just before she got on the last flight out of O’Hare.
Bella had fallen asleep and been dragged headlong into strange dreams about having paint thrown over her by journalists because she was marrying Tej Nayak, and being chased by a book-waving Delia, until a larger lady with magenta hair offered her safe harbour in a piece of red velvet cake.
She glared at Delia’s book where it peered at her from her nightstand.
Read me.
No.
Instead, she picked up her phone and checked it for emails and sat up, seeing the one from Chase.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Website copy
You were right. It’ll need reworking.
C
Oh, that man!
She bit back a curse and just about managed to stop herself from hurling the phone across the room in the same path as the pillow. Throwing back the covers, she stalked to the shower and hoped she could wash him out of her hair as easily as Doris Day.
By the time she was out and dry, her parents had messaged, asking how she was getting on. Bella knew that they felt bad that she’d not been able to start her job at the family’s foundation because of the negative press attention following the wedding. Olly probably wasn’t even aware that it had cost her that too. The best thing she could have done – and did do – was leave. So, she’d spent the last six months of the previous year in France with her cousin. And she told herself that it didn’t hurt that her parents had been forced to send her away. Again. And she reminded herself that it wasn’t their fault. Again.
Snap out of it, she commanded herself. She picked her phone back up and wavered. Astrid wasn’t far away…
Bella
Fancy brunch?
It was something she’d done every weekend with her friends in Boston, after graduating. But it was strange to think of them as friends now because with Paige, Astrid and Sienna in her life, they felt like friends in a way the people she’d spent a significant part of the last five years of her life with didn’t. But she’d realised, in the weeks and months following the wedding debacle and her time in France, that out of sight clearly had meant out of mind for the ‘ladies that brunched’.
And if Bella was being brutally honest with herself, she could understand why. Because she’d kept herself removed from them in a way that she hadn’t with Paige, Sienna and Astrid. In just little over four hours, she’d been more honest and truthful with them than she had ever been in her life. And that thought made her feel both deeply uncomfortable and deeply thankful.
Astrid
Brunch IS fancy.
Bella
I know a place.
Astrid
And I would LOVE a place but my uncle’s pad looks like a clothes shop exploded in it and I’m still no closer to choosing what to wear for Operation Heartbreak.
Bella
Want a hand?
Astrid
Please! Though give me a few hours, no one needs to see this…
Bella put her phone down feeling better… for a moment. Yes, it was great to be meeting up with Astrid – brilliant even – but it didn’t quite fix the squirminess she was feeling. And she knew why. She’d thought that she’d feel just a little more satisfied by her act of revenge last night than she presently did. And, yes, she knew it was part of a longer game, and yes, the effects of it were supposed to be cumulative. But why was she so unsatisfied? Shouldn’t she have felt something about it? Success? Satisfaction? Where was the sense of accomplishment she’d thought she’d feel?
In some distant part of her mind she thought about Paige and Olly in Cornwall together. The pictures Paige had shared of the apocalyptic-level chaos she’d wreaked upon Olly’s pristine kitchen had been incredible. Bella could just imagine his eye twitching and his barely suppressed wince, even now. And Bella couldn’t help but wonder whether Paige might be feeling a little less lonely than she was.
One thing she could categorically say about Olly Prendergast was that he was no holds barred, good company. Even for people who were determined to see him at his worst. And a part of Bella missed that. The way that Olly would make her feel a little less… serious. Which was why it had hurt so much that it was exactly that seriousness he’d relied on when he’d unceremoniously dumped her in the proverbial and high-tailed it out of America.
And perhaps she was a little uncomfortable with just how much she did actually want Olly to get his comeuppance. Even if it was at the hands of someone else. She wandered to the kitchen and made herself a coffee.
Her phone beeped. And then beeped again. And again. And she couldn’t help it, but her lip curved into a side-smile and she reached for her phone knowing that it was from the girls.
And no. They weren’t girls , but together they were GIRLS. Friends. A group. A gang. And knowing that, took a little of the sting out of being a little lonely.
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 07.42EST.
Paige
[picture attachment]
Bella stared at the picture and was thankful she hadn’t taken a sip of her coffee, because it would have certainly been promptly spat back out. All over the white sheepskin.
Sienna
Is that Pavarotti?
Astrid
The singer??!
Bella
It’s the hamster.
Astrid
Is it a Richard Geer kind of hamster, or…
Paige
It’s the ‘or’!
Sienna
Paige
[picture attachment]
This time the photo attached was of the most glorious layered red velvet cake that looked so good, Bella’s mouth watered.
Paige
A café in NY makes them.
B, can you find it? Please?
Sienna
So that one day we can all meet there to celebrate the downfall of these bastards.
Astrid
You say that like she’d not busy making ‘destroy Chase Miller’ plans!
Paige
With replacement back-up plans.
Sienna
And a list to back up the back-up.
Maybe they did know her better than she thought, Bella decided, smiling and feeling just a little better.
* * *
Chase was still breathing hard as he exited the elevator. He swiped at a bead of sweat that ran down his temple and then nearly tripped over his own feet as he saw Bella coming towards him dressed in running gear.
Eyes up. For the love of God, eyes up.
But it was too late.
Chase knew, right then and there, that the image of Bella encased in black, figure-hugging workout gear would be indelibly printed on his brain for the rest of his life. It didn’t matter that there was barely an inch of the pale skin that never failed to make him think of Dutch Golden Age painters.
There she was, looking fresh, vibrant and practically glowing, and he felt like an old, haggard, unfit, has-been. And with his reputation already hanging by a thread, he didn’t need to add sexual harassment in the work place.
She acknowledged him with a tight smile as she passed.
He nodded in return, pretending that the nine-mile run hadn’t nearly killed him that morning. Of course, it wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been able to run his usual five, and not been detoured after one particular part of the park had been closed. He opened his mouth to let Bella know, but what if she wasn’t planning to run that way? What if she wasn’t actually planning to run at all? She could be on her way to a gym. She could be on her way to pick up coffee for all he knew. Maybe that was the kind of thing socialites liked to do.
But she was more than a socialite, wasn’t she? She’d certainly sounded like it when she was hauling his ass ever so politely, if not quite angrily, over the copy for the website.
He looked up to find her staring at him.
‘Did you want something?’ she asked, peering at him strangely.
No, he was the one that was behaving strangely as he realised he’d just been caught staring at her while his slugging brain clunked its way through a thought process.
Jesus, get a grip, Miller.
‘Nope,’ he said, the word leaving his mouth on a pop as he spun on his heel and continued down the corridor to his apartment door, resolutely refusing to look her way again. At least until the elevator dinged its departure. He banged his head against the door, once, slowly, before inserting the key and nudging the door open with his foot.
Chase still had that moment of jarring surprise not to find himself in his apartment back in Muswell Hill. The sheer difference between the very British London flat and the swanky New York apartment was as jarring as jet lag.
He missed that strange damp smell that the hallway had had. He missed the small stained-glass windows in each of the building’s apartment doors. He missed the highly illegal ginger cat from one floor above, who would try to trip him by winding through his feet like it was a game. He missed the age of the building. He missed the dry sarcasm of the Brits, and the fact no one here knew what Marmite was. He missed the silly Britishisms he’d collected in his time there and he even missed the God-damned tea.
He missed a time when he didn’t question things, took everything for granted, where what he’d had had been enough. Now he just seemed to be playing out someone else’s life because he couldn’t do what he did before.
Twelve months ago he’d have already been in his studio, knee-deep in a painting, or prep for one. He’d be covered in paint, chalk, pigment, PVA glue, and whatever else he could get his hands on to create the textures he liked exploring in his artwork. But ever since he’d accidentally walked in on his wife and his best friend – and agent – going at it on the sofa, his entire world had changed.
Chase threw his keys onto the breakfast bar and crossed the room to look out the window.
The betrayal had been such a shock that he’d been numb to pretty much everything and anything. At least for the first few months.
His life had become unrecognisable. He had no wife. No home. No best friend.
So, it hadn’t been until somewhere around the third month that he’d realised he had a problem. A serious problem.
Creative block.
The word echoed scornfully around Chase’s brain.
Such an innocuous way of describing the slow and very painful desecration of everything he’d ever known. Painful in that heart-pounding, breath-stealing, needle-poking, sharp stabbing panic kind of pain. The terror, genuine terror, that his purpose in life would forever remain just beyond reach. That he’d never find the success his mother had wanted for him.
It had been the last conversation they’d had before she died. He’d been pressed up against her thin body in the too-small hospital bed. As if he could attach himself to her, so that she couldn’t leave. As if he could keep her with him.
Make something of yourself, Chase. You have too much in you. Talent, generosity heart.
I promise, Ma. I’ll make it happen.
And he had. He’d thrown himself into it all.
Before he’d lost it.
Chase searched the streets below, his gaze scanning the tops of heads until he found what he was looking for. He followed the blonde cap of hair across the road and into Central Park, already regretting not having told her about the diversion.
He turned back to the apartment when Bella finally disappeared from view and made his way towards the shower, peeling off sweat-soaked gym clothes and tossing them onto the floor as he went.
But by the time he had realised he had a problem, Chase had wanted to find a dark hole and crawl into it. But he’d still been booked into a final show in Amsterdam that he couldn’t decline, because he’d also agreed to an interview with a magazine as part of it. If he failed to turn up, he’d be in breach of contract which would cost him a shit tonne of money. Which wouldn’t usually be a problem, but for the fact that the majority of his money was tied into a joint account that his wife had locked him out of.
Tej would have loaned him the money, but if there was one thing that Chase was not, it was a freeloader. Hell, he’d go back to Secaucus and go work in his dad’s garage before that happened.
By that point he had been living in a Premier Inn for nearly three months, only having gone back to the flat when he’d known Annalise would be out, so he could pack a bag of clothes. He’d wanted nothing else. Nothing of her, nothing of what they were supposed to have had, no pictures, no memories, nothing. He’d left his wedding ring on the dresser where she’d see it, and an envelope with the first round of what would prove to be many rounds of legal papers from his solicitor.
Everything had hurt. His mind, his body and his soul. But he’d still got on the plane to Amsterdam with the hope that maybe, just maybe, being around creative types, being around his own art was what he’d needed to paint again.
And that was when he’d met Astrid.
Chase turned on the spray in the shower.
Astrid. Man, he’d fucked up big time with her.
She had been such a surprise to him. A genuine, honest-to-God surprise and the very fucking last thing he’d expected from his trip.
He’d been a grumpy, monosyllabic bastard, partly because the visit to Holland hadn’t been the proverbial magic bullet and being around people admiring the art he could no longer do, expounding the virtues of technique and inspiration – all of which had frankly been a load of bollocks – had just made him angrier.
By the time Astrid sat down to interview him, he was ready to explode. And he did just that. He launched into a rather impressively disparaging diatribe against everything that was wrong with commercial art, the lack of originality, of true authenticity, of the failures of successive government funding cuts, and how social media had lobotomised a whole generation of young people into thinking that fucking NFTs were a genuine way of owning art. By the time he’d stopped to catch a breath, he’d thought she’d have bolted. But instead, she’d looked up at him like she wanted to rip his clothes off and had asked if he wanted to get out of there.
Yes. Yes, he damn well had.
But what was only supposed to be a short-term thing had rolled into an exchange of messages and happy coincidences in travel plans. They’d met several times over the next few months in different cities. Chase, happy to get as far away from the fact that he still hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in months, was drowning in denial. Half-finished legal paperwork and a readily dwindling bank account didn’t matter when you could lose yourself in an intelligent, beautiful woman who seemed to find you quite fascinating.
He’d been a fucking coward, that’s what he’d been.
But it had come to a head when Annalise, incensed that her increasingly extreme attempts to get his attention weren’t working, had managed to track him down the first time he’d tried to use his joint credit card to pay for the hotel he’d booked in Paris for him and Astrid.
He’d come out of the shower to find Annalise staring somewhat victoriously at him from the doorway beside a truly horrified Astrid.
‘You’re fucking married?’ she’d rightfully demanded. ‘You’re… I…’
Chase swallowed even now at the memory. She’d never been lost for words. The passionate, near constant, jubilant stream of words that poured from her like no one else, had been completely stopped by his actions.
She’d tried to mask the hurt she’d felt, but it had been too late. He’d felt it. And he’d deserved to, too. He’d behaved like a selfish bastard and there was absolutely no excusing it.
Guilt and shame twisted painfully in his gut. And while he’d genuinely believed that his marriage was over the moment that he’d walked in on his wife and his best friend, legally he’d still been married. And while he’d also known that Annalise had painted a less-than-true picture of the state of things when confronting Astrid, it hadn’t mattered, because legally he’d still damn well been married.
His dad had brought him up better than that. Christ, his mother… he wouldn’t have been able to look her in the eye.
He dropped his head to the cold shower tile. The look on Astrid’s face. He’d never forget it. And he never deserved to forget it.