Lessons in Rule-Breaking

by Christy McKellen

  He could only just make out the profile of her face in the gentle glow of the morning light. Her arms and legs lay splayed towards each corner of the bed as if she’d been tied down, her spirit trapped in the amazing body she’d loathed so much. As he moved towards her his tired eyes played tricks on him in the low-level light and a double image of her appeared in his vision, as if that fighting spirit of hers had risen like a dark angel from where she lay trapped and was hovering above her body.

  He had a moment of pure, clear inspiration as his imagination twisted the image so her spirit was floating above her fully clothed and trapped human form as she lay bound to the bed.

  It was the final image he needed for the exhibition.

  A picture of her naked spirit, stripped of all her inhibitions. Beautiful and real and breaking free.

  Hands shaking, he picked up his sketch pad and pencil, sat in the chair at the end of the bed and began to draw.

  In that moment, he wanted things to stay like this for ever, but he knew, with a sinking feeling in his chest, that life wasn’t like that—he wasn’t like that—and when the time came for her to leave he would say goodbye without putting up a fight.

  He really needed to pull himself together and focus his attention on finishing his pictures for the exhibition now or he was never going to hit his deadline. He couldn’t go on the way he was, unfocused and unprofessional, or it would be the end of his career as an artist. People would forget about him, and he really couldn’t allow that to happen.

  The thought of running out of money and having to work a real job again, like the soul-destroying ones he’d done to stay alive as a teenager, filled him with cold dread. He was terrified by the idea of not feeling special or revered any more—of being ordinary again.

  He couldn’t let this thing with Jess get in the way. Whatever had happened between them didn’t feel like the usual artist-muse relationship, and it made him uneasy. This fling with her had rejuvenated him but he needed to step away from it now.

  This was the beginning of the end.

  * * *

  On their last morning together, he sketched her as she sat on the terrace sipping a cup of coffee, looking out across the lake. She looked so beautiful—her amazingly expressive face alive with the vitality that had first drawn her to him. She seemed like a different woman from the one he’d met only a couple of weeks ago. She was taller, brighter and somehow more real.

  She’d found her joy.

  When she turned and smiled back at him, her perfect white teeth flashed between her lips. Even her smile was more relaxed since he’d first met her.

  Was that because of him?

  He felt a swell of pride at the thought. He’d never made anyone less stressed before.

  The intimacy of the atmosphere tugged at his chest. The thought that this was just a fleeting moment in his life made him clench his jaw, and a low throb began to beat in his temple. Why did that bother him so much? What was this feeling? He wasn’t entirely sure. He’d never experienced it before, but he sure as hell didn’t like it.

  He’d been bored and frustrated when he’d asked Jess to come to Italy. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing—just for kicks—but he’d underestimated her ability to get into his head. To find out what it was that drove him. To discover his deepest, darkest secrets. And he’d let her probe and push until all the bad memories that he’d buried for so long had begun to rise to the surface.

  He didn’t want to feel like this. After spending the majority of his life pushing that anxiety and fear of rejection away, he didn’t want to have to face it now. He wanted things to stay the way they were: light and free and easy.

  He realised she was staring at him in confusion now and he adjusted the scowl on his face into a smile.

  The apprehensive expression in her eyes made him wonder what she was thinking, but he didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know. Ignorance was bliss.

  In retrospect, it had been a crazy move to ask a journalist to come and stay, then invite her into his bed. Of course she was going to push and push at his defences until she found a crack to get her nails into.

  It was her job.

  He needed to remind himself of that.

  She shifted in her chair, putting her coffee cup down onto the table with a shaky hand. ‘I guess I should go and write my article. Pamela’s going to kick my butt if I send it in late and I haven’t even started it yet,’ she said, awkwardly rising from her seat so that she banged her leg on the table.

  Was she feeling the same tension that he was?

  He shrugged off his concern and nodded at her stiffly. ‘Okay. See you later.’

  * * *

  Jess sat in the middle of the bed with all her notes spread around her. She was hyperaware that this was the last day they had together, but she had to get this article written. This was why she’d come here, after all.

  Xander had seemed to become increasingly distanced from her over the last couple of days, which had unsettled her, and she’d thought the best thing to do right now was to get away from the intensity of their situation for a while and try and get her head straight.

  This piece on Xander had to be the very best thing she’d ever written or there was a very good chance she’d be booted off the magazine as soon as she got back.

  As she scanned over and over all the notes she’d written since she’d arrived a stultifying fear started to grip her. What if she couldn’t do it? The words began to blur together and the more she read, the more panicked she got.

  After about half an hour of trying and failing to write one single usable sentence, she gathered up every piece of paper, shuffled them into one tidy sheaf, then threw them across the room in frustration.

  She watched as they floated down like overlarge snowflakes and settled onto the cold, tiled floor.

  This was ridiculous. How the hell was she ever going to be able to write a thing? Closing her eyes, she took a moment to think back over the time she’d spent here with Xander, about his passion and fears, and his determination not to be beaten down by them and finally how he’d made her feel by including her in his life. How he’d brought out a side of her she’d never known was there.

  A deep, bolstering warmth pulsed through her.

  Pulling her laptop towards her, she let her fingers move over the keyboard, writing whatever came into her head without letting conscious thought intrude, without giving in to her fear about whether what she was writing was any good or not. Instead, she concentrated on how Xander made her feel about herself.

  And the words began to flow. It was as if she’d finally keyed into something—opened a previously locked door in her brain; now all these intense thoughts and feelings, which she’d been suppressing for so long, began firing round her brain.

  She wrote and wrote and edited and wrote some more until there it was—the best thing she’d ever written. Reading it back, she had tears in her eyes. It had warmth and humour and, best of all, fire and life. She knew in her gut that Pamela was going to love it—that it might just save her career.

  She also knew without a doubt that she was totally and utterly in love with Xander.

  And that she’d failed to follow the most basic rule of all: don’t fall for a guy who’s incapable of loving you back.

  Somewhere in the back of her brain she’d harboured the hope that the time they’d spent together had meant more to him than any of his previous nonrelationships, and that this time he wanted more.

  That he wanted her as she wanted him.

  But she knew she was kidding herself—just look at how detached he’d been with her this morning. This relationship was only ever a temporary thing for him. For both of them. A whimsy, a folly, a lark.

  What had he called it?

  A blip in their timeline.

  He’d m
ade that very clear.

  She had to pull herself together.

  Not giving herself time to fuss and start fiddling with a word here and a word there, she attached the document she’d just written to an email to Pam and hit send, and it was gone—her future—off into the ether.

  Her time here was finished.

  All she had to do now was say goodbye.

  Feeling as if her feet were made of lead, she searched the house for Xander, finding him painting madly away in his studio, in what seemed to have become his usual zoned-out state over the last couple of days. She watched him for a few minutes, taking in the graceful fluidity of his movements as he swiped his brush across the canvas. He was frowning hard in concentration, his handsome face shuttered and drawn as he poured his soul onto the canvas.

  He barely glanced up as she moved into the room.

  She understood his utter absorption in what he was doing—she’d felt the same about her writing—and it was amazing to see him in such a frenzy of excited activity after being so agitated about not being able to make the magic happen before now. She liked to think she had something to do with that, in some small way.

  Finally, he glanced up from what he was doing and noticed her standing there.

  ‘Hey, Jess, how long have you been there?’

  ‘Only a couple of minutes,’ she said quietly.

  He nodded distractedly. ‘The exhibition’s taking shape. It’s all coming together.’ The look in his eye was almost manic.

  ‘Well, I’m really pleased for you,’ she managed to force past the lump in her throat.

  ‘Jess?’ He was looking at her as if he was worried she was about to cry—which was pretty much on the money.

  Pull yourself together, woman.

  She didn’t want him to see how upset she was about the inevitable end of their time together.

  Glancing away, she smoothed her hair down against her head and fought against the growing tension in the back of her throat. She couldn’t look at him any more. If she did he’d see just how much she was struggling to keep it together.

  ‘I finished my article,’ she said, attempting to keep the misery out of her voice.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He looked at her, his eyes blank, his mind obviously still on his painting.

  ‘Don’t worry, I gave you a good write-up and I didn’t include anything too salacious.’

  He smiled. ‘Great, that’s great, Jess. Congratulations.’

  He looked back at his painting as if he’d said all there was to say.

  She was being dismissed.

  So this was it, then. The end of the affair.

  ‘Okay, then, I guess I’d better let you get on with finishing your picture. Will you let me know when you’re exhibiting? I’ll leave my contact details on the hall table. I’d love to finally get to see what you’ve been working so hard on.’

  He looked up at her again, the hazy look in his eyes clearing as if her words had finally penetrated through to his brain.

  ‘Hell, Jess, sorry, I was right in the middle of a thought here. Yes, of course I’ll let you know.’

  There was a steely look in his eye now, as if he’d hardened himself against her.

  A hot wave of despair crashed over her.

  She needed to get out of there before she made a fool of herself and did something stupid and crass like asking him to be her boyfriend.

  ‘Okay, then. Well, it’s been a blast. Good luck.’ Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, before he could see how much she wanted him to ask her not to go.

  All the way through packing her suitcase she wondered whether he’d come and stop her.

  As she walked down the corridor, then out of the villa, then got into her car, with her heart hammering against her chest, she wondered whether he’d come running up at the last moment and say, ‘I want you to stay.’

  Then as she drove the car slowly out of the driveway and crept down the lane to the main road, her breath short and a hard pressure behind her eyes, just waiting to spill over into tears, she wondered whether she’d see him in her rear-view mirror, running after her car.

  But she didn’t.

  He wasn’t coming. He was letting her go.

  NINE

  Xander spent the next couple of days trying to convince himself it was a good thing that Jess had gone. He needed to concentrate on getting the paintings finished and having her around would have been disruptive.

  But he couldn’t convince himself.

  The loneliness bit at him, sinking its teeth deep and leaving him on edge and distracted.

  After a couple more days of failing to summon the energy to finish the final painting he decided that Italy and seclusion weren’t working for him any more. He needed sparkiness and life again and that meant going back to London.

  As soon as he arrived back he went straight out to a party some friends were holding at a bar in Sloane Square, expecting the buzz of the city to perk him back up, but it didn’t work.

  He felt tired and drained and ended up going home unfashionably early, telling his friends it was because he’d expended so much energy on his art recently, but even as the words left his mouth he knew that wasn’t the real reason. Normally when he was excited about a piece of art he was working on he was full of adrenaline—wanting to talk about it with everyone he met—but he felt protective about this exhibition for some reason.

  He couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

  * * *

  Jess had returned to London in a state of bewildered confusion.

  Walking back into the buzz of the Spark office had been a shock to the system after the peace and tranquillity of Lake Garda and it took her a few days to get back up to speed with the London pace of life.

  To her annoyance she’d found Pamela was off sick with the flu when she first arrived back and so hadn’t even looked at the piece she’d written yet—perhaps it was karma catching up with her for playing hooky. The thought that she could have stayed for a couple more days with Xander flittered through her mind, but she knew that would have only prolonged the anxiety of having to say goodbye.

  Despite her determination to get over Xander and move on with her life, she was having an awfully hard time getting him out of her head.

  Spending time with him had been life-changing—letting loose without the fear of being judged had excited her more than she’d ever felt possible and she’d loved being touched and explored and worshipped, and having his delighted permission to do the same back to him. He’d woken something inside her that had been slumbering for years.

  For the first time in her life she’d felt desired, sexy. Beautiful.

  She found she was walking around now with her head held higher, making herself look at the world around her instead of staring down at the floor as she had before she’d met him. He’d opened up a whole world of possibility in her mind. Sex was something she could enjoy, and while it wasn’t the be-all and end-all, it added an edge of excitement to her life that had previously been missing. Now she’d experienced great sex, she could barely believe she’d gone without it for so long.

  The world seemed full of new possibilities, alive with promise.

  But on the flip side, no Xander making her heart race and her blood pump with excitement just by being close.

  She realised, of course, that she’d run away from him again, only this time he hadn’t chased her. Perhaps he’d thought there was no point, that she didn’t want him to ask her to stay? He wasn’t a mind reader, after all, so how could he have known what she wanted?

  She should have told him how she felt.

  If she’d learnt anything over the last couple of weeks it was that she needed to put herself out there, to open herself up to new experiences if she
wanted the opportunity for something good to happen. She couldn’t just sit back any more, with her head in the sand, and wait for things to happen to her.

  Pamela finally came back after a couple more days off sick and Jess waited, nerves jumping, to be summoned into her office.

  ‘Well, Jess, I’ve read your piece on Xander Heaton,’ Pamela said as Jess perched carefully on the edge of the seat facing the editor’s desk. Jess managed a smile despite her jaw being clenched with anxiety.

  She just wanted it to be over with so she could move forward. If Pamela still thought she couldn’t cut it at Spark and she had to go back home and start again she wanted time to come to terms with the toe-curling horror of it.

  ‘Well, you did it, you impressed me,’ Pam said, and Jess felt a lightness in her chest battle with the heaviness that had been keeping her company since she’d left Italy. ‘This is exactly the kind of writing I’d been hoping to see. I don’t know what happened out there, but whatever it was it’s had a big effect on your style. I like it, Jess, well done.’

  It was a big deal to her to hear that kind of praise from someone as tough as Pamela, and her eyes welled with grateful tears.

  ‘So I get to keep my job here?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Pam replied.

  Jess breathed a huge sigh of relief. At least that part of her life was on the right track again.

  ‘The only thing it needs before it can go in the magazine is a mention of what he’s working on at the minute,’ Pamela said as Jess began to stand up, thinking she was home and dry.

  She went hot, then cold in the space of a second. ‘I—I don’t know what he was working on,’ she stammered. ‘At least, he never let me see the pictures. He was really insistent about that.’

  The look of displeasure on Pamela’s face made her stomach sink.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to go and see him and tell him you have a couple of follow-up questions. See if you can get a gander at the pictures while you’re there,’ her boss said flippantly, as if that would be the easiest thing in the world. ‘From the tone of the article it sounded like you got to know him pretty well.’ She raised a discerning eyebrow. ‘Use your influence, Jess.’