The Empty Studio
Chapter seventeen
The studio on The Cut became Andre’s entire world.
He slept on the small, narrow cot in the corner, wrapped in a paint-stained blanket. He ate only when his hands shook too badly to hold a brush, subsisting on stale bread from the bakery and lukewarm coffee. He didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t read the news. He simply painted.
He was supposed to be working on the Paris commission — three large canvases for a prominent collector, a project that was meant to cement his transition from athlete to serious artist.
He hadn’t touched them in weeks.
Instead, he was painting Blake.
He painted him from memory, his brush moving with a frantic urgency.
He painted the curve of Blake’s shoulder as he served, the tension in his jaw when he was losing, the soft, unguarded look in his eyes when he woke up in the morning.
He painted the way the light caught the gold in his hair, the exact shade of blue of his eyes.
But none of it was right.
The paintings were technically sound, beautiful even, but they lacked the soul, the vital, beating heart of the man he loved. They were just images on canvas, flat and lifeless.
Andre threw them into the corner with the others, a growing pile of discarded attempts, and started again.
It was a Thursday afternoon, the rain lashing against the high windows of the studio, when he heard a knock at the door.
Andre ignored it, his eyes fixed on the canvas in front of him. He was trying to capture the exact angle of Blake’s wrist when he hit a backhand slice, the delicate balance of power and control.
The knock came again, louder this time. “Andre, please. I know you’re in there.”
It was Talia.
Andre froze, the brush hovering inches from the canvas.
His stomach dropped, a sudden, sharp spike of anxiety.
He hadn’t spoken to her since the morning he had fled their flat.
He hadn’t spoken to Liam either. He couldn’t bear to hear their voices, couldn’t bear the reminder of what they had done together.
“Andre, please open the door,” Talia called out, her voice thick with emotion. “I’m not leaving until you do.”
Andre closed his eyes, taking a slow, shaky breath. He set the brush down, wiped his hands on a rag, and walked to the door.
He unlocked it and pulled it open.
Talia was standing in the hallway, dripping wet, her dark hair plastered to her face. She looked terrible. Her eyes were red and swollen, dark circles bruising the skin beneath them. She looked as exhausted and broken as Andre felt.
They stared at each other for a long moment, the silence heavy with the weight of their shared guilt.
“Can I come in?” Talia asked quietly.
Andre stepped back, holding the door open.
Talia walked into the studio, looking around at the chaos — the discarded canvases, the empty coffee cups, the unmade cot in the corner. She stopped in front of the easel, looking at the half-finished painting of Blake’s backhand.
“He’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“He is gone,” Andre said, his voice harsh and grating in the quiet room.
Talia turned to him, tears welling in her eyes.
“Andre, I am so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You cannot fix it,” Andre said, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to hold himself together.
“None of us can.”
“Liam is a wreck,” Talia continued, the tears spilling over, tracking through the rain on her cheeks. “He can’t sleep. He can’t focus on rehearsals. He feels like he destroyed your life.”
“He didn’t destroy my life,” Andre said bitterly. “I did. I made the choice. I could have stopped it. I could have walked out the door. But I didn’t.”
Talia took a step toward him, reaching out a hand, but Andre flinched away, taking a step back.
“Don’t,” Andre said, his voice trembling. “Please, Talia. Don’t touch me.”
Talia dropped her hand, her face crumpling.
“We love you, Andre. Both of us. We never wanted to hurt you. We never wanted to hurt Blake.”
“I know,” Andre said softly, the anger draining out of him, leaving only a profound, exhausting sadness. “I know you didn’t. But you did. We all did.”
He looked at her, at the woman who had been his friend, who had laughed with him in the cafe, who had taught him how to bake scones. The friendship was still there, buried beneath the wreckage, but it was tainted now, forever altered by the memory of that night.
“I need you to leave, Talia,” Andre said gently. “I cannot look at you right now. I cannot look at either of you.”
Talia nodded slowly, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Okay. I understand.”
She walked to the door, stopping with her hand on the knob. She looked back at him, her dark eyes filled with sorrow. “Don’t give up on him, Andre,” she whispered. “Fight for him.”
She opened the door and walked out into the rain, leaving Andre alone in the cold, quiet studio.
He stood there for a long time after she left, listening to the sound of her footsteps fading down the stairwell.
The studio felt cavernous and empty, the high ceilings amplifying every small sound — the drip of a faucet, the creak of the old building settling, the distant rumble of trains at Waterloo.
He walked back to the easel and looked at the half-finished painting of Blake’s backhand. It was technically accurate. The anatomy was correct, the proportions accurate, the light falling exactly as it should.
But it was dead. There was no life in it, no soul. It was a photograph rendered in oil, nothing more.
Andre picked up the canvas and threw it across the room. It hit the far wall with a hollow thud and clattered to the floor, joining the growing cemetery of failed attempts.
He sat down on the cot, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. The smell of raw canvas and mineral spirits surrounded him, the familiar scents of his creative life now tainted by association with this terrible, empty period.
He thought about Blake. He thought about the look on Blake’s face that morning in the living room — the way the light had drained from his blue eyes, the way his jaw had tightened, the way he had pulled away from Andre’s touch as if it burned him.
Andre had seen Blake hurt before. He had seen him lose brutal, heartbreaking matches, seen him face the cruelty of his father, seen him navigate the harsh, public exposure of their relationship to the world.
But he had never seen Blake look at him with that expression — not anger, not even betrayal, but a kind of bewildered, bone-deep disappointment that was infinitely worse.
He reached for the small notebook he kept on the table beside the cot. He opened it to a fresh page and began to write. Not a letter — not yet. He wasn’t ready for that. But words, fragments, the raw material of an apology he didn’t yet know how to make.
I was supposed to be your safe place. I was supposed to be the one person in the world who would never hurt you. And I failed.
He wrote until his hand cramped, filling three pages with his small, precise script. Then he closed the notebook, lay down on the cot, and pulled the thin blanket over himself.
He didn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling, listening to the rain, and waited for morning.
Blake was in Rome.
It was the middle of the clay-court season, the red dirt a stark contrast to the hard courts of Dubai. He was playing the best tennis of his life. He had won two tournaments in a row and was closing in on the top spot in the world with relentless ambition.
He was a machine again. The press praised his focus, his discipline, his unyielding mental toughness. They didn’t know that the focus was a survival mechanism, a way to keep the silence in his head at bay.
He was sitting in his hotel room, the television playing a match on mute, when there was a knock at the door.
It was Doug, holding a thick, cream-colored envelope.
“This came for you,” Doug said, handing it to him. “It was forwarded from the agency in London.”
Blake looked at the envelope. His name was written across the front in a familiar, elegant script. The handwriting was slightly shaky, the ink smudged in one corner, but he would recognize it anywhere.
It was from Andre.
Blake felt pain lancing through his chest, a physical ache that made him catch his breath. He stared at the envelope, his breath catching in his throat.
“Do you want me to throw it away?” Doug asked quietly, watching his face.
“No,” Blake said, his voice tight. “Leave it.”
Doug nodded, turning to the door. “Match is at two tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.”
When Doug was gone, Blake sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the envelope in his hands. He traced the letters of his name with his finger, feeling the slight indentation of the pen on the heavy paper.
He shouldn’t open it. He knew he shouldn’t open it. It would only bring more pain, more confusion, more of the agonizing grief he was trying so hard to outrun.
But he couldn’t throw it away.
He slid his finger under the flap, tearing the paper, and pulled out a single sheet of folded stationery.
Blake, I do not expect you to forgive me. I do not expect you to ever look at me again. What I did was unforgivable, a betrayal of everything we built together, of everything you mean to me.
I was high. I was stupid. I was weak. But those are excuses, and you deserve better than excuses. You deserve the truth.
The truth is that I love you. I have loved you since the day we met on that back court in Paris. I loved you when we were hiding, and I loved you when we stood in front of the world at the US Open. You are the only thing in my life that has ever made sense.
I destroyed it. I know that. I live with that knowledge every second of every day. The flat is empty without you. The studio is empty. My life is empty.
I am not asking you to come back. I have no right to ask that of you. But I needed you to know that I am sorry. I am so profoundly, completely sorry. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for the pain I have caused you.
You are the best thing that ever happened to me, Blake. Please, do not let my failure make you doubt that.
Yours, always, Andre.
Blake read the letter three times.
His vision blurred, the elegant script swimming before his eyes. A single tear escaped, tracking hot and fast down his cheek, splashing onto the heavy paper, blurring the ink of Andre’s name.
He folded the letter carefully, his hands trembling, and slipped it back into the envelope. He placed it on the nightstand, next to his phone, and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
But for the first time in weeks, the silence in his head was broken. The cold, hard knot in his chest had cracked, just a fraction, letting the pain and the love bleed through.
He missed him. God, he missed him so much it felt like he was dying.
He closed his eyes, pulling a pillow against his chest, and finally, mercifully, allowed himself to weep.