The Living Canvas

by Pepper Winters

  Tearing open vegetable stock and pouring it over the risotto was suddenly fascinating. I kept my gaze well away from Justin’s. I’d told him where Olive had come from a week ago. I’d skimmed the details but gave enough that he looked even more fondly at Olive. As if being abandoned by her mother after raping her father made her even more worthy of being protected at all costs.

  It so happened I agreed with him.

  Olive didn’t have an evil bone in her body. She was my little firecracker. My tiny tornado angel. The fact that I’d soon be torn away from her brought as many sleepless nights as I’d suffered when she’d been torn away from me.

  Life could stop being a bastard.

  I just wanted simple.

  A job, some money, and freedom to keep my daughter happy.

  If I could have O to fix my broken heart, then that would be a dream come true, but if I couldn’t, I’d always been satisfied to put my needs aside and focus on Olive’s.

  “Answer me, Clark,” Justin muttered. “It’s the first and last time I’ll bring this up.”

  Spinning to face him, I closed the distance between us so I could keep my voice as low as possible. Olive didn’t know about her mother.

  I’d lied on that front.

  Again.

  I’d told her her mother had given her to me because she was sick and loved Olive far too much to put her at risk. That she’d moved to Japan to get treatment and could never come back.

  In a roundabout way, it wasn’t a lie. Jane Tallup had been sick...in the head. And she had gone to Japan for treatment...teaching other kids. Who I hoped to fucking God she hadn’t molested.

  “Fine, I’ll answer you. Yes, she took my virginity. What’s the problem?”

  He shook his head, asking me another question. “And have you been with any other women since her?”

  I froze.

  Where was he going with this?

  What was the point?

  “Just answer it, douche-bag.” He raised an eyebrow. “Any other women between you being raped as a kid and then falling into bed with the love of your life?”

  My hands balled.

  There’d been one other girl.

  Not that it could be classified as sex.

  I’d been lonely.

  Olive had been about three years old.

  Her tiny hugs kept my pieces together, but one night, it wasn’t enough. I’d missed O with every fucking fibre. I’d gone to a bar. I’d watched men and women drink while I’d stayed stone-cold sober. A tipsy chick flirted with me. She touched me. She laughed with me. She asked me back to her place.

  I went.

  I tried to be with her.

  I really fucking did.

  But I just...couldn’t. It wasn’t the fact she was tipsy—by the time we fooled around she was coherent and fully aware of her choices. It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t trust my babysitter to keep Olive safe—I’d used my elderly neighbour before when I’d stayed up all night painting.

  I just couldn’t move past being forced by Tallup.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about O.

  I sighed, my shoulders slouching. “What’s your fucking point, Miller?”

  Justin smirked, the beer bottle dangling from his fingers as he took a smug sip. “My point, Gilbert Clark, is you’re fucked if you don’t go and at least try to talk to O. You fell in love with her before the bullshit with your teacher. You don’t associate her with forced assault. You trust her. You don’t stand a chance with anyone else but her.”

  The stock started to boil, overflowing the pan.

  Giving him the finger, I returned to my job as chef, doing my best to ignore his twisted logic. I didn’t necessarily believe in the phenomenon of soul-mates. But I did believe that O was the only woman who fixed me. The only woman I could ever adore with all my being.

  But if I couldn’t have her, a life of celibacy and singledom was fine.

  I had Olive.

  I’d live through her.

  She would grow, fall in love, and have a family of her own.

  And I’d be there, on the outskirts, a desperate father begging for scraps of attention, pleading for them to come round for Christmases and holidays, slipping further alone as the years wedged us apart.

  Or you’ll just be in jail.

  A sad old convict with no one.

  Goddammit.

  Justin chuckled. “Once Olive’s in bed, I’ll stay and catch up on a bit of work while you go and see if you can fix at least one thing before you’re thrown in jail.”

  He meant it as encouragement.

  But it only made me hyperaware that even if I told O everything. Even if she forgave me. Even if we could somehow make it work, I would still let her down the moment I was sentenced and locked away.

  The monitor bracelet around my ankle said I couldn’t leave the street where I lived.

  The promise of fixing what I’d broken with O overrode the consequences.

  I should ignore Justin’s advice.

  I should let O continue to live without me.

  But I’d never been very good at doing the right thing.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ______________________________

  Olin

  TWO WEEKS HAD passed.

  By day, I returned to work and kept to myself.

  By night, I went home to an empty apartment and surfed the internet for news about the upcoming trial.

  Justin had popped round a few times to check on me, delivering little notes and paintings that Olive had done. She still wanted me to move in with them. Her hints with her drawings of happy owl families made that totally obvious.

  I missed her.

  I missed Gil.

  But he kept his distance.

  He respected my need for space, even though I tormented myself each night with thoughts and dreams of him. It didn’t help that each day there was a new article or slur about him. A new claim that he’d killed a hundred women. That he’d killed puppies and kittens and even had his eye on children.

  Two new GoFundMe campaigns had sprung up asking for money to hire a hitman to kill him before the justice system gave too soft a punishment.

  The amount of hate was insane.

  It sickened me.

  It worried me.

  Social media had so many positive applications, but where Gil was concerned, it was worse than a witch hunt. They didn’t care about the true story, only about blood. They didn’t want facts, only carnage.

  Even Gil’s Facebook page dripped with venom. The hostility in the comments on his posts gave me nightmares that he truly might be hurt before he could face trial and the truth could protect him.

  He needed to address it.

  He needed to douse the flames of malevolence with honesty before it got dangerous.

  I shivered and pulled the fake-mink blanket tighter around my shoulders. The TV mumbled in the background, and a library book of the best places to live in the world rested on my lap. The edition was from the 1990s so I was sceptical about some of the claims like Australia’s cheap housing and Thailand’s low taxes. If I had skills in finances or trades, I could’ve travelled and found it relatively easy to relocate overseas, but with nothing more than menial labour and a failed dancing career, I doubted I could settle anywhere long-term.

  And I didn’t know if I had the gumption to waitress in foreign places or live in backpackers with travellers far younger than me.

  Why couldn’t I make a decision?

  Why couldn’t I just book something?

  Why couldn’t I stop researching Gil and worrying about his future?

  Because you’re a sucker, that’s why.

  A spineless, stupid fool who still wants the boy she shouldn’t have.

  A fist hammered on my door, wrenching my head up.

  Who on earth?

  I cuddled deeper into my blankets. I hated unannounced visitors, especially late at night. Justin had made a habit of popping by, and I’d grown used to it
, but tonight, I wasn’t in the mood.

  It might be those awful police again.

  The knock came a second time.

  Dammit.

  Hauling myself from the couch, I placed the heavy book on the coffee table and padded across the small apartment to open the door. I didn’t have a peephole, so risked unlocking and opening it a crack.

  “Gil.” My heart hammered against my ribs. “Wh-What are you doing here?”

  He rubbed his face with a shaky hand. “I’m not here to hurt you.” The tormented vow in his voice made my stomach squeeze.

  “I know you won’t hurt me.”

  “I’ll stay out here if you’re more comfortable.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” I opened the door wider. “I know you won’t hurt me now that you have Olive back. Is she okay? Do you need anything?”

  He grimaced. “You’re still so kind, even after everything I’ve put you through.”

  My fingers latched tighter around the handle. “It’s not kindness, Gil. It’s concern. How are you...and her? You guys safe?”

  “Safe?” He scowled. “Why wouldn’t we be safe? Jeffrey is dead.”

  “I mean the online stuff. I don’t know if you’ve looked, but it’s getting scary. For me at least.”

  His green gaze searched mine. “You’ve been reading up about me?” His tone stayed carefully neutral.

  I’d never been one to play games or pretend I didn’t care when I did. I knew I should tell him to leave, close my door, and book that damn plane ticket out of here. Instead, I fell into old patterns and backed into my apartment in invitation. “We haven’t been in touch. I research a little at night to see if you’ve been granted a court date.”

  His black sneakers crept over my threshold as if he couldn’t believe I’d invited him in. Where were his paint-spattered timberlands? Had the police confiscated them as evidence?

  Most likely, yes.

  They were the same size as those found by the body of the last girl.

  A clue to the crimes committed.

  “I haven’t heard when I’ll go to trial.”

  “I can imagine the not knowing is driving you crazy.” I closed the door. “Have you got things arranged...for Olive?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “How can I have another home ready when I can’t bear the thought of not being the one to take care of her?”

  I nodded, backing away for my sanity.

  It was so, so hard not to reach out and comfort him. Not to honour old promises to always be there in times of trouble.

  I was his friend.

  But that friendship now came with uncrossable boundaries and restrictions. “I’m so sorry, Gil.”

  He sighed, raking a hand through his messy hair. “It’s nothing I don’t deserve.” His head tipped down as he followed me into the kitchen. His teeth sank into his bottom lip before he blurted, “I shouldn’t have fucking come. I know that. I’ve done my best not to contact you, even though I think about you every damn day. I know I have no right to be here...but I need to talk to you. I can’t end it like this.”

  Goosebumps exploded all over me. “End it like what?”

  “Like this.” He spread his arms as if incorporating our twisted, tangled lives. “Not able to have an honest conversation because Olive is there. Not able to be truthful and finally have the guts to give you answers to your questions.” He held up his hands in surrender, looking healthier than the last time I’d seen him. His colour was back and his wound no longer draining his energy. He looked ready to tear open his secrets and purge.

  And as much as I wanted to finally understand, I didn’t trust what I’d do if I finally knew.

  I shook my head, pulling the blanket that still caped my shoulders tighter around me. “It’s fine. We don’t need to—”

  “We do.” He stormed right into me, shoving me back and pressing me against the countertop. His hands clamped on my hips, his forehead nudged mine, and my entire world combusted in a rain of comets.

  I couldn’t swallow.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t blink.

  “Gil...”

  His fingers dug harder into my hipbones in denial of touching me. His nose brushed mine, his eyes closed, his lips came so, so close to kissing me.

  We stood like that for an endless trembling second.

  A second where our hearts pounded against each other. Where cymbals and castanets replaced my ribcage and stomach. Where we fought fate and battled with decorum.

  “I can’t stop myself,” he groaned. “Not anymore.” With a belly twisting growl, he stumbled away from me, shaking out his hands, no doubt suffering the same surge of heat and chemistry I did. “Fuck.”

  I shuddered, desperate for him to deliver on his threat, but grateful that he’d pulled away before he did.

  My blanket lay abandoned on the floor.

  My hands shook and body quaked, and I tripped to the fridge for something to do.

  With my back facing him, he confessed, “I can’t sleep at night with wanting you, O. I’m fucking hard just at a single memory of you. I feel sick that I’m so goddamn hungry for you, because what sort of monster thinks about sex after he willingly betrayed your trust and prepared to trade your life for another?”

  He laughed coldly. “I don’t know why you haven’t tried to shoot me yourself. Why you’re still standing there, listening to my bullshit, when you should call the police and have me arrested for intruding on your life all over again.”

  Grabbing the cheap supermarket wine that was my guilty pleasure, I poured two generous glasses. “I know that’s the logical reaction. And I know I’m being stupid by not doing those things. But...I’ve asked myself the same questions, and I don’t have any answers. Why can’t I move on after what you did? Why can’t I just forget about you? God only knows, I should.”

  Gil shook his head gently as I tried to pass him the glass. “I can’t drink alcohol.” He pointed at his stitched-up side with a self-conscious sigh. “Not while I’m healing. And now I have Olive back, I doubt I’ll ever turn to liquor again. It didn’t solve my problems; it only made them worse.” His eyes shadowed. “If I hadn’t been drinking that night, I would never have fucked you on my living room floor, and we might not be in this mess.”

  My insides clenched at the crudeness. And the barbarity and the fact that my heart might be bruised and my common-sense in tatters, but my body most definitely had its priorities.

  And it wanted rough.

  It wanted anger, violence, passion.

  It still craved a fight.

  A rough, dirty, hot-as-hell fight.

  Swallowing a big mouthful of tart courage, I whispered, “Maybe that was the only honest thing we did.”

  “What?” His voice turned dangerous. His body went loose and rigid all at once. “What do you mean?”

  My skin blazed with fire. I didn’t recognise myself. I didn’t know this demoness who thirsted at the thought of tearing at his body, scratching his scars, and taking from him like he’d taken from me.

  I was hungry.

  Hungry, hungry, hungry for the blunt, basic truth that came from wild inhibited sex.

  “You let down your walls that night. You gave in to the years of build-up between us. Maybe you should get drunk again and see what else happens.”

  He made a strangled noise. “If I got drunk again, I’d probably have you spread-eagled on the floor and so far deep inside you we’d both die of pleasure.”

  I shivered. I grew wet. “Do it then.”

  He choked. “Do what?”

  “Fuck me.”

  He groaned long and low. “O...what are you doing?”

  “I’m avoiding facing what has to happen.”

  “What? What has to happen?” He stepped toward me almost unwillingly. His hands opening and closing, his body tight and predatory.

  “We need to walk away. There is no future for us. There can’t be. Not after everything that’s happened.” I dran
k back the rest of my wine, welcoming the buzz, the lightheaded recklessness. “Words can only do so much. Conversation can grant sentences and paragraphs and finish this mess with a full stop, but only sex can grant us an ending.”

  “You want us to end?”

  My heart wanted to shake its head.

  My soul screamed for him to call me out on my lies.

  I nodded instead. “Yes.”

  He crowded me against the countertop again, bringing fire and regret and the deliciousness of the forbidden. His eyes blazed with lust and love. “I came here trying to prevent an end.”

  This was wrong.

  This was dangerous.

  But I was through being good and safe.

  I wanted this.

  I wanted a clean, corruptible goodbye.

  “It’s inevitable.”

  “It’s salvageable.” His hand cupped my chin, jerking my head to the side so his mouth could latch onto my throat. His teeth unsheathed and sank into my skin, sharp and unforgiving; his tongue lapped at me a second later, soft and pleading. “It has to be.”

  I moaned and puddled into his chest, wanting my brain to turn off and my body to take full control. I wanted to be used, abused, and then I wanted him gone.

  I wanted him gone for my sake and for his.

  We were toxic to one another.

  He’d always screw up and I’d always forgive him.

  He’s going to jail.

  Even if I did agree to try, our futures had already been decided.

  “Shut up and kiss me.” I arched for his mouth, desperate to stop talking.

  “Don’t command me, O.” He bit me again, yanking at my cotton pyjama top, popping the buttons holding the cute pink umbrella fabric together. My bare breasts ached to be bitten, squeezed, claimed. “Don’t force me to do something I don’t want to do.” His voice rippled with history. Of another time when sex had been used against him.

  A flush of guilt made me lucid, but then vindictiveness made me nasty.

  Perhaps, by using Gil’s demons against him, I could sever this infernal link between us. Maybe by pushing him too far, I could push him into admitting that we just couldn’t work.

  I could break us both so we could finally walk away without constantly looking back.