Just You And Me (Obsidian)

Chapter 1

Lila Rose Thorne furrows her eyebrows as she studies the painting in front of her. She taps the end of the well-worn paintbrush, flecked with dried black and crimson paint, against her chin as she contemplates it.

Something just isn’t sitting right.

Most people describe her art as grotesque. Macabre. A style born from years spent dissecting the techniques of renowned expressionists and honed by letting her emotions guide her hands. The darkness in her work makes sense to anyone who knows where she came from. People often assume she’s a struggling artist from the beautiful West Coast when she says she’s from California, but her childhood was rooted in a suffocating rural town, miles from the ocean she hardly ever saw.

The move to the city has been everything she hoped for and more. Lila, with her quiet, meek appearance and sheltered upbringing, believed New York’s chaos would make her better. If she could make it here, she could make it anywhere.

Back home, Lila had been forced to hide her most cherished belongings from her quick-tempered grandmother. She stowed her favorite books and darkly themed paintings into every nook and cranny her grandmother would never think to search, all to avoid explosive rants about anything that might be deemed evil or “Devil-inspired.”

Here, in the tiny old apartment she shares with a roommate, she can paint what she wants, read what she wants, and love whom she wants.

She’s free.

“Eww! What the fuck are you painting?”

The sudden clatter from her dramatic roommate, Claire, in the kitchen behind her pulls Lila from her thoughts. The cheap coffee maker sputters to life, its familiar whirring mixing with the sound of Claire rummaging for a clean spoon.

“I’m going to get another freaking nightmare after waking up to this,” Claire continues. “Make sure you cover that shit up after you’re done so it doesn’t give me a heart attack when I come home tonight.”

“I can’t,” Lila says, glancing at her phone screen. Work doesn’t start for a few more hours, but the sun is already beginning to set, and there isn’t much daylight left to do anything else in the dim apartment. “It needs to dry more before I can do that. I’ll turn it around soon.”

Claire takes a small sip of her evening brew and steps closer. Lila catches the faint scent of cigarettes and alcohol clinging to her roommate, nearly masked by the strong, pleasant aroma of coffee.

Glancing sideways, Lila studies the profile of the woman beside her. Last night’s makeup is smudged around Claire’s bright blue eyes, appearing like faint bruises. Her hair, bleached to a pale platinum blonde, is gathered haphazardly into a messy bun. Even at her worst, Claire is still unbelievably gorgeous. Tall. Slender. Just like a model.

With her standing so close, Lila feels her insecurity flare, a simmering self-consciousness rising before she can stop it.

“Why don’t you paint more of that instead?” Claire asks nonchalantly, nodding toward the lone painting in the corner, basking in the fading sunlight as it dries.

The large canvas, filled with bright, vivid colors, reflects a period in Lila’s life when she was at her happiest. In the painting, a deeply tanned man sits beneath the shade of a sparse tree. Warm sunlight pours through the gaps in the canopy above, highlighting his long, sun-bleached, wavy hair.

“Who is he?” Claire asks. “An ex? He’s sorta cute. Like, in a golden retriever kind of way.”

“Yeah,” Lila sighs.

The ex.

At least… until their paths cross again. She hopes someday to give the painting to the one who got away.

“Is it done? It looks done,” Claire says, still studying the portrait as she sips her coffee.

“No,” Lila replies. “Something isn’t right. It’s missing something. So while I figure that out, I’m distracting myself by working on Sara’s commission.”

“Sara…?” Claire squints. “The blonde chick from work with the botched lip fillers?”

“Uh… sure?” Lila responds hesitantly.

“She wants a painting of… a sad clown?” Claire asks, her words slow, as if she’s trying to wrap her head around the idea of the bubbly bartender wanting something so disturbing. She examines the creepy painting, still wet with fresh layers of paint. “Yikes. I’m going to see her differently from now on. She does not give off an emo, serial-killer vibe.”

Her gaze flicks back to Lila, squinting as she studies the unassuming girl seated in front of the old easel.

“And you don’t either… Should I start locking my door when I sleep?”

“You have nothing to worry about from me.” Lila adds with a brief giggle, “Maybe it’s her ex. A sad, sad clown.”

Picking up a liner sable brush, Lila begins adding a touch of lighter color to highlight the wailing, weeping man.

“Um, yeah. Whatever, sis,” Claire yawns as she walks away. “I stink, dude. If you need me, holler. I’ll be in the shower…”

Across the other side of Manhattan, a frail old man lies in a hospital bed as the lead oncologist speaks to his sons about their father’s prognosis.

Glioblastoma. An inoperable malignant tumor is growing in his brain.

As the doctor delves into medical jargon, Max Anthony Cooper feels too fatigued to fully grasp her words. His brother, Matt, looks equally exhausted, nodding along as she speaks in a hushed tone, careful not to disturb the usually cranky patient. Max wonders if his brother understands her any more than he does.

Standing beside the bed, Max gazes down at the elderly man drifting in and out of sleep. The tyrant who once ruled with iron arms and cared for nothing but expanding his empire now looks nothing like his terrifying former self.

His father’s parched lips and leathery skin, dotted with liver spots, paint a false picture of another ordinary, frail old man, insignificant and easily forgotten.

In reality, his very name commands a state-of-the-art suite and the world-class doctors who flit around him.

Michael fucking Cooper. The monster who built CTEC, a billion-dollar empire with an iron grip. Word of his worsening condition has been spreading like wildfire as the fate of the world’s largest engineering giant hangs in limbo. Though he now serves only as chairman and Matt plays the public role of CEO, everyone knows who has truly been pulling the strings behind the scenes.

After years of torment and imagining the day he would receive news of his father dying—or already dead—Max finds the reality strangely disorienting. The sight before him stirs conflicting emotions he never expected to feel.

Max once imagined celebrating with a grand party to mark the fall of the man who kept everyone under his thumb for decades.

For as long as Max can remember, Michael made his youngest son’s life an unbearable nightmare. He yelled, cursed, and spat at anyone who got in the way of him disciplining his son. It seems almost unfathomable that the man on the sickbed, barely clinging to life, is the same cruel figure who once screamed in his face for eating “like a damn sissy” before violently upending the dinner table.

Now, Michael appears weak. Reserved. Fragile.

A stark contrast to the man who once uprooted a teenage Max from his life, shipping him off to military school to “man up.”

The same man who, years later, refused to acknowledge Max’s successful stint in rehab. Instead, he forced him to choose between being disowned and cut off entirely or leaving the country to prove he wasn’t his father’s greatest “fuck-up.” To add insult to injury, Michael sent him to Singapore to manage a dying subsidiary that he had already written off as a total loss.

Max always believed it was his father’s low-risk way of getting rid of two things he never really cared about.

To Max, there’s without a doubt that Michael is still that man, even if now he’s only a physically degraded version.

Expiring like unrefrigerated milk, Max thinks as he looks away from his resting father and turns his attention to the heart monitor. Finally.

When the doctor leaves, the air in the suite seems to loosen, no longer as heavy or suffocating. Once the door clicks shut, silence quickly takes hold, broken only by the low hum of medical equipment and the distant shuffle of footsteps in the hall.

Two to six months. That’s what the doctor estimated.

Everything Max has spent the past half-decade building will finally come together in just two to six months.

The thought makes him giddy, not the celebratory relief he had been expecting for so long.

“Max,” the old, ailing man whispers hoarsely, breaking the silence.

“Shit—fuck! I thought you were asleep,” Max sputters, clutching his shirt in surprise.

“Always the damn drama queen,” his father sighs heavily, prompting Max to narrow his eyes at the implication. Though both brothers are startled, only Max catches the stray comment that follows.

“I have plenty of time to sleep once you both leave,” Michael murmurs. “Even more when I’m gone…”

“Dad,” Matt interjects wearily.

“You haven’t come around to visit,” Michael croaks, ignoring Matt as he tilts his head up to look at Max. Max’s face is fixed in a perfect mask of detached stoicism. Despite the effort it takes for his father to make even that small movement, Max’s expression betrays no worry, sorrow, or pity. Instead, it remains cold and unreadable, as if carved from stone, concealing the storm churning beneath.

“I’ve been busy,” Max answers coolly. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Busy is good,” his father replies with a faint nod. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s been weighing on my mind for months…” He pauses, then continues, “I’m proud of you, son. You came back better than ever. Stronger. Wiser. I had my doubts, of course, but you proved me wrong over the last few years. I know I’ve always been hard on you, but I wanted a future where you’d be able to look in the mirror and like the man reflected.”

Max fights the urge to roll his eyes. His dark eyes, once capable of warmth, are now as cold as his father’s. Like a starless winter night.

What is this? An apology?

If this is Michael’s attempt to make amends for decades of abuse disguised as “molding” him into someone acceptable, then it has failed spectacularly. Max clenches his jaw, suppressing the surge of rage threatening to burst forth.

Did his father expect him to be overjoyed at the first scrap of acknowledgment he’d ever received? To express gratitude?

No. That’s not Michael.

The words ring hollow and empty, lacking genuine remorse or any true understanding of the damage inflicted over the years.

Sensing the tension simmering beneath his half-brother’s skin, Matt speaks up again. “I’m feeling pretty hungry, Pops. You need your rest. We came straight from the office, and we haven’t eaten dinner yet.”

Michael grunts in response, dismissing them with a weak wave of his hand.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Matt says. “I’ll bring the kids next week.” His molten brown eyes drift to Max. “Let’s go.”

“Hooray,” Max replies flatly.

Once they exit the room and hear the soft click of the door closing behind them, Matt exhales. “I need some fucking coffee.”

“Just a cig for me,” Max says. “Thanks.”

“I thought you quit.”

“I did,” Max concedes wistfully, letting out a long sigh. His tongue sweeps over his bottom lip as the familiar urge creeps in.

“Max. Buddy,” Matt says after a brief pause.

Max glances at his older brother, faintly amused by the pet name he hasn’t heard in years. Despite being half-brothers, they were never close. By the time Max was born, Matt was already eighteen, following their father’s footsteps at Yale.

Max is tall and broad, dark-featured like their father, while Matt is shorter, with mahogany hair inherited from his late mother. As far as Max is concerned, Matt was always treated more gently, whether because of the resemblance or because their father carried lingering guilt for cheating on a dying wife.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were younger,” Matt says, scratching his cheek as he searches for the right words. “And… for not keeping in touch.”

“You were busy,” Max replies with a nonchalant shrug. He knows Matt is trying to make nice, for the company’s sake, and, in his own way, so was their father. But it’s far too late. Their apologies are thin, unable to fill the void inside him.

“I’m sure it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine for you here either,” Max adds.

“Still…” Matt hesitates. “Results aside, you know Dad really did everything out of good intentions and love, right? He just came from a different time.”

Here we go again, Max groans inwardly as he begins to tune him out.

As they leave the hospital wing and head toward the parking garage, Matt fills the silence by shifting awkwardly from hollow apologies to CTEC’s future. He rambles about expansion plans and revival strategies, his tone wavering with uncertainty before growing animated as he launches into stories about his snooty wife’s latest pet projects, the kids’ school events, and carefully curated weekend getaways.

Matt’s attempt at normalcy only deepens the dark shroud settling over Max. Beneath the heat of his skin, emotions churn quietly, feeding the ever-hungry void gnawing at his insides. Matt clearly escaped childhood mostly unscathed. He’s free to build a life beyond their father’s shadow, to play happy family man. Max, on the other hand, still carries scars that never healed.

They step into the nearly deserted parking garage, each echoing footfall heavy with unspoken history. To Max, it feels like he had to prove himself first to earn the acknowledgment and apologies that should have come freely. He can’t shake the thought that it all would have meant more years ago, during the endless rehab cycles, when he needed support the most.

“No dinner for me,” Max says as he heads toward the waiting car. “I’m meeting with some people tonight. I’ll see your old ass at work on Monday.”