Chapter 16 #2
My hand stayed paused midair, not even bothering to turn that piece of chicken over as it sizzled.
The bolognaise on the other side of the kitchen was probably burning and burnt meant Gordon being mad, but once those pain killers kicked in, he’d most likely be delirious enough to shut up and eat it and enjoy it and sleep all through the night and leave me the hell alone.
Bridger was still a liar. I knew what he had done.
How he had taken that knife and slashed it right through that canvas.
Six feet long, a beach that stretched on forever, months of work, and my brain convincing me it’d be my ticket out of Chicago and the grasp of my parents.
I was meant to get out. Get that scholarship, because there was no way in hell my parents would ever pay for school.
I didn’t have a trust fund or a bank account filled with my parents’ wealth.
I didn’t want it or need it, because all I had ever wanted to do was find a new world with Bridger right next to me, to forget about high ceilings and galas and big empty rooms.
“Your actions say otherwise,” I said. “Your words too.”
“Why did you marry him if you don’t love him?”
I shrugged weakly. He wouldn’t get it. “What else was I supposed to do?”
He scoffed. “Not fucking marry him.”
“Well, it’s too late for that now.”
“I could always fix it for you.”
I finally managed to look back over at him. “How are you going to fix it?”
“I could take that knife and kill him,” he said, nodding at the sharp blade on the counter. “Do you want me to kill him for you?”
Yes, yes, yes, I wanted to say. Instead, I gave him a tiny smile. “You’d kill him and leave and blame it all on me. Is that why you came here? To frame me?”
His own smile stretched across his face, all perfect and crooked. I wish I didn’t miss it so much. “I came to see your painting.”
I blinked, cheeks suddenly feeling too hot. “Oh. Wait, you meant that?”
“Yeah, I mean it. You wanna show me or you wanna keep it a secret?”
“I haven’t painted in a long, long time. It’s not that good. It’s… rough.”
He shrugged. “Better than I could ever do. Better than most people too. Show me.”
Excitement shouldn’t have rushed through me when he said that.
I shook my head before making sure all the burners were off and guided Bridger upstairs.
We moved into the room I had all my art stuff set up in.
It was tiny and the only supplies I had were the ones Bridger had given me, but it all had been enough to make me feel like my old self.
I let him find the canvas. Let him look at it.
It had been a long time since anyone had looked at anything I had made.
It had been a long time since I made anything at all.
He stopped in front of the canvas, brows furrowing, head tilting just that little bit.
I watched as his eyes darted left and right.
“This is exactly what I imagined in my head,” he said. “This looks like the kind of stuff you painted back then.”
“Are you saying I haven’t improved at all in the last five years?” I laughed softly, but he was right. I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in years; it made no sense for me to be better.
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me. “I meant, looking at this takes me back to when…”
Even when his voice faded out, I knew what he was thinking. Back to when we were together.
“I remember how you’d have to hide all your stuff at my place so you could actually paint,” he said. “You kept it all in my closet. Could barely see my clothes some days.”
“You probably hated having all my stuff in your room.” My fingers fidgeted together, eyes finding the carpet as my head forced me to relive those memories.
Him lying on his little twin-size bed as I set up my stuff in his room.
Me painting, the both of us talking all afternoon long, before I had to go back home and make sure I had washed every last streak of paint from my hands.
Me shoving all my supplies into Bridger’s closet, because my pristine home wasn’t allowed to have a single sign of me in it.
Just the mask, just the girl my parents wanted and expected me to be.
“I liked it. I liked all of that.” He paused. “Having you there. Everywhere. Even when you were gone for the night. When I couldn’t see you… I liked every day with you…”
My breath hitched. We both stayed quiet after that, my fingers still dancing together as I tried my hardest to make it seem like those words didn’t make my heart ache in a way I hadn’t felt in years.
Since him. I wondered what Bridger was thinking.
Then I hated myself for even caring about that at all.
“There’s one you did,” he said, voice low and a little wistful, “of a beach. With a little house on stilts. You made it at my place. One afternoon. Right in the middle of winter. You remember how my place didn’t get good heat?
The whole house would freeze. You painted that thing with one of my mom’s blankets wrapped around you. ”
A smile tugged at my lips a second later. I couldn’t stop it, because I could practically feel that memory. An afternoon in Bridger’s room. Him lying on his bed, me painting, him asking me to tell him why I liked the beach so much even though I had told him a million times.
I just like hearing about things you love, he’d always say. Your eyes always look really pretty when you talk about stuff you love.
I kept smiling as I went back to that moment. Bridger’s mom’s handmade blanket heavy and snug and warm on my shoulders, my brush in my hand as I made the ocean and that house on stilts Bridger had mentioned. He didn’t know that I used to imagine us living in it.
“You probably don’t remember…” Bridger said, voice trailing off.
My brows knitted together, my head shaking. “No, I remember. I spilled some of that paint in your room that day. All over the carpet. My bad.”
Bridger snorted. “Yeah, but I managed to get that out. Most of it, anyway. You got that stain in there pretty good…”
“I told you to let me clean it.”
“Kinda liked having it there. Always made me think of you. Just like that painting.”
“What happened to it?” I asked. It had ended up on his bedroom wall back then, but now? Had he thrown it out? Burnt it? Slashed it like he did to my other one? “You probably forgot. Never mind. Silly question.”
His throat cleared, his eyes stuck ahead of him. “I had it. Kept it. I looked at that thing every night before I fell asleep… Until… Until I went to prison…”
I winced, because there was that image that kept haunting me: Bridger in that dark, cold cell.
All on his own, without his parents. Eighteen and scared and alone.
It sounded like we were both terrified at that age, both of us dealing with our own demons.
But he remembered. He remembered just like I did: that little house, standing tall by the ocean.
I dreamt about that. Him and me, by the beach, in love forever and away from my parents.
“You know, for a long time…” he said, pulling in a deep breath. “For a long time, that was the only thing that would get me through the day.”
“What?”
“Those thoughts of us. You and me in that home. You painting…” He shot me a look over his shoulder. “Me being annoying.”
Laughing, I stared down at my hands. There used to be a time when my skin was almost always streaked with paint.
Those days at Bridger’s home? I’d never have to wash up.
Bright colors would dry on my skin after I was done making whatever I was working on that day, and then I’d sit in Bridger’s kitchen eating dinner with his parents with my messy hands, and then he’d drive me home in his beat up Chevrolet Cobalt and it would break down halfway, but I kind of loved that, because that just gave me more time with him.
“You ever think about that?” he asked. “What living in a place like that would be like? I know you’re used to something a little more extravagant than a house on some shaky ass stilts, but… I’m just curious. You ever wonder, Juliette?”
Yes, I wanted to scream out. Yes, yes, yes.
Every day. Every night. I went to bed and thought of that and woke up and wished it hadn’t just been a dream I saw in my head.
That life with Bridger? I could imagine it so vividly, so clearly that it almost felt real.
A simple life of sea breeze and fresh air.
When I was in love with him, that was all I craved.
“Do you?” he pressed, but his voice was soft, gentle. No roughness tonight. Nothing mean. Just the Bridger I knew and fell in love with.
Eyes on the floor, I let out a breath. “I haven’t thought about that in so long.”
“But you did? You thought about it? Imagined it?”
I couldn’t say anything and just kept my lips pressed together, tight and secure, because I didn’t trust myself around him.
There was a good chance I’d just blurt it all out: that when I was eighteen, and I was his and he was mine, all my heart longed for were days of us and the sea and the beach, where we could be in love and in peace. That was all I wanted for my forever.
“I used to dream about it,” he said, and he spoke the words so softly, so quietly, that I wondered if he knew he let them out at all.
My heart thumped in my chest and I could have sworn those words had me feeling a little dizzy.
Dizzy and scatterbrained as my chest got all warm from those memories and days with Bridger.
The both of us stayed quiet. Just standing there, just being in each other’s presence without the other wanting to start barking and biting and screaming.
It was good. Nice. It felt like the past.
It was Bridger who broke the silence by clearing his throat. “Are you gonna paint some more? You can’t just do one and stop again.”
“I didn’t realize how much I had missed it,” I said, taking a quick glance at the canvas. “As soon as I picked up that brush, it felt like I was doing what I was supposed to.”
“Then maybe you should keep on doing it…”
He said it like it was so easy. Like Gordon wasn’t one stroke of a paint brush away from grabbing me by the hair and telling me what a stupid hobby it was. But while he was injured? While he was stuck downstairs, away from me? I had some freedom.
“I, um…” I let my hands land on either one of my arms, rubbing at my skin that felt too warm. “I planned on making another one, actually. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
I chewed at my bottom lip. “Will you come see it? If I make a new one, that is?”
“If or when?”
“When, I guess.”
“When sounds better. And yeah, if you make one, I’ll come see it.”
My lips twitched a little. “You aren’t going to be busy with whatever illegal activities you seem to love getting up to?”
He chuckled, the sound low and rough. “No. I mean, I’ve got some of those activities on the schedule, so I’ll be a little busy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come and see the stuff you make.”
“Where are you going this time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ever pick the houses. My guy does.”
“Your guy…” My eyes narrowed as I thought back to the other night. “The one who seems to hate me?”
He laughed again. “He doesn’t hate you. He’s just… very suspicious of you, but he’s also suspicious of everyone. But no, he doesn’t pick the houses. He’s more the brawn of the operation.”
“And what are you? The brains?”
“Nah.”
“I guess that puts you into the beauty category then…”
He shot me a grin. Quick, crooked, stupidly charming. It made my heart flutter. “If you say so.”
I blushed, avoiding his eyes for a moment as I stared back at the floor. The floor was safe. His eyes? Those deep ocean blue ones? They were dangerous. They were deep, and I knew how easy it was to drown in them.
“Everyone else but you seems to want me to do anything but paint…” I said.
“Makes no sense that I’d destroy your painting then, right?” he asked.
My eyes closed tightly. “Can we not talk about that? It’s easier when we don’t. When we just pretend like none of that ever happened.”
“It’s too painful for you.”
“That whole time was too painful for me,” I said, eyes still shut.
“Yeah, me too.” He let out a long, exhausted sounding breath, his footsteps heavy in the air.
He walked by me. I could feel it. Sense it.
His cologne hit me too, woodsy and deep, with that little hint of cigarette smoke that made me fidget on the spot.
And there was that gentle brush of his fingers.
Just a hint of his fingers on my hand. A featherlight touch so quick it was a wonder the sensation registered at all.
But I felt it. That spark of electricity and light and heat. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”
“When will…” I opened my eyes and I turned around to find him in the doorway. “Later be?”
“I don’t know. Gotta deal with some stuff, but it doesn’t mean I’m disappearing.”
“Oh.”
“Doesn’t mean you’ll never see me again…”
“Oh,” was all I could manage to say again.
His eyes landed on something behind me. The canvas. He gave it a slow, lazy nod before turning back around, taking long strides away from me. “Don’t let anyone take that away from you, Juliette.”