“Is there a difference?” Tristan retorted, his words coming out harsher than he meant them.
Jim didn’t answer the question, instead responding with one of his own. “Did I ever tell you how my son died?”
Tristan’s brows furrow in confusion. “Yes, he was killed in combat.”
A regretful smile crossed over Jim’s face. “No, no. He was injured in combat, that’s how he got started with the Wounded Warriors Project, but it’s not how he died.” He paused again, forcing Tristan to ask, “How did he die?”
“In a car accident. Here. Drunk driver ran a red light and smashed right into him – he never stood a chance.”
“I’m sorry to hear that…” Tristan replied, sincere sadness reflecting in his tone, surprised by the revelation.
“There’s a big difference, son, between losing someone and living like you are going to lose someone. The day my boy left to head overseas, I thought I was going to lose him and every day I lived and prepared myself for that reality; I was miserable all the time. I would wake up and think ‘today is the day.’ I hated answering the phone or answering the doorbell. Anytime anyone at work approached me with any sort of urgency, my heart would stop. My doctor had me on all sorts of blood pressure and anti-anxiety medication to try and compensate. When he finally came home safe, I finally let that fear go because he was home, and everything got better. I went of my meds, I was happy, care-free again.” Jim paused to take a breath, the memory overwhelming him in that moment.
“Then, one night, I get a phone call that he’d been in an accident and that he didn’t make it; they pronounced him dead on the scene. Part of me died that night, and I won’t lie to you, I’ve never felt anything so painful in my entire life, but I’ll also tell you that in that year that he was home from the war, I’d never felt so happy either, being able having him in my life and not living every day with the fear of losing him.”
Tristan just stared at the man who was baring his soul to him, who’d paused to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“His death was very hard, but it wasn’t the perpetual torture of living in fear every day. If I had the choice to have him alive, but overseas until the day I died, or for what happened to have happened, I’d still pick that year with him even knowing what loss is coming, and I know he would, too.” Jim sighed, his thoughts finally circling back to the question that had sparked them. “The difference, son, between losing someone, and thinking or fearing that you’ll lose someone, is the difference between living and not. Anything can happen to anyone, even people you think are completely safe from harm – we are all dying. When you ignore the difference, and choose to avoid the good things for fear of what bad might or might not happen, the only life you are sure to lose is your own.”
Tristan just stared wide-eyed at the man in front of him, his words soaking in, slowly penetrating the hardened wall he’d built around himself over all of these years, after his mother had died. The day he lost his mom, he realized what choice his father had made. Throughout her illness, his father had chosen to live in fear and when she died, he completely lost himself with nothing left to take care of his son that was still alive and well. Tristan had lost two people he loved that day, and had been building up walls ever since; their sole purpose to help him avoid love for the sake of preventing loss.
Ellie was the one who had put cracks in that wall, entire pieces of it starting to crumble off. Ellie had broken through; she had made the attempt at love seem worth it and for the past few weeks, he had dared to believe that it was.
“But, that’s just one old man’s opinion,” Jim concluded softly, patting Tristan on the back and walking out of the office quietly to leave Tristan alone with his epiphany.
It was his choice how he wanted to lose her. Sloane had said it to him days ago, but he hadn’t been in the right place to hear or consider it. His heart was always going to hollow without her, whether it was because he forced her away or because her disease did.
The devil you know versus the devil you don’t – Pierce’s words came back to haunt him. But, maybe there wasn’t always a fucking devil.
Tristan stared out the windows blindly – Jim was completely right. That choice wasn’t just about losing her, it was about whether or not he wanted to lose himself. Yesterday, losing himself wasn’t as frightening, wasn’t as painful, as losing her. Today – now, he finally realized that losing out on a life with her, whatever or however long that life was, was infinitely more excruciating.
He’d been such a fucking idiot this whole time – blinded by anger, hurt, and fear; he’d willingly given up on the only woman he’d ever loved, the only woman who had lit up his world with inspiration. And he didn’t know if, let alone how, he’d ever be able to get her back.
Chapter 33
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Each pound on his front door was punctuated with a distinct pause; Pierce always liked to make a statement. Tristan had just gotten home from work. The afternoon had been a blur after Jim had left, unable to shake the idiocy that he’d chosen to pursue this past week. From the depths of his depression, Jim’s words had pulled Tristan into acceptance; he’d finally begun to accept that he’d been motivated out of fear and not anger and he’d finally begun to accept that because of his actions, he may never get Ellie back no matter how desperately he apologized. He’d made his bed, but that didn’t mean he was giving up just yet.
It was in this state of acceptance that he’d texted Pierce, telling him that they needed to talk, if he could come over first thing after work. He hadn’t received a response, but he assumed that meant Pierce would be showing up; he was right.
Opening the door, Tristan gave his darkly brooding friend a tight smile, moving aside to let him enter.
“You called, I’m here,” Pierce began, slightly annoyed. “This better be important – I had three prospective models waiting for me.”
That meant nothing. Pierce was just trying to give him a hard time. “I’m withdrawing from the competition,” Tristan offered bluntly, giving his friend the directness he desired.
Pierce turned to glare at him, black fire burning in his eyes. “No, you’re not.”
“Seriously?” Tristan laughed incredulously. “Yeah, I am.”
“Why? Because of a stupid—” He stopped here, catching himself and Tristan venomous stare before continuing. “Because of the girl?”
“Yes, and no,” Tristan sighed, grabbing his water bottle and heading for the couch, assuming Pierce would follow him. He did, but wouldn’t sit, instead leaned casually up against the window waiting for a better explanation. “I love her.”
“Yeah, already knew that,” came the bored response.
“She has cancer, Pierce,” Tristan admitted, the words still sounding funny on his tongue even though he’d repeated them over and over to himself the past several hours, waiting for the bone-deep fear to sink it and tell him to run; it hadn’t.
“Yeah, I know that too,” Pierce said, looking away from Tristan now.
“Did Sloane tell you?”
“No, she did. Sloane just confirmed it.”
What? Tristan gaped at his friend, dumbfounded by his statement.
“Don’t look at me like that, Tristan,” Pierce sneered. “I didn’t know it was cancer, or I’m sure I would have told you.” Yeah, that sounded convincing. “I knew she was sick the day that I met her. I was trying to scare her a little, you know, see how tough she was. I told you I was going to kill her and she told me that I’d have to get in line.”
After the first second of shock wore off, Tristan let out a bark of laughter. Only his Ellie would be able to calmly reply to someone trying to threaten her life.
“You know if you do something like that again, I’ll have to kill you though, right?” Tristan said.
“You could try,” Pierce replied nonchalantly, “but, you won’t need to. I’m more afraid of her than I am of you.”
“Funny.”
“So, what th
e fuck does her having cancer have to do with anything, let alone this competition?”
Tristan sighed, his lips thinning at his impending answer. “I fucked up Pierce. Really fucking bad.”
“Yeah? Which option did you chose? I’m assuming you told her the truth and it backfired,” he surmised. “You knew there was that chance.”
“No, I didn’t pick either choice,” he began, regret filling his tone. “I told her a lie, but I told it to her with an anger that made her believe it was the truth. I told her that I never cared about her; I told her that I had only used her heartbreak as revenge and that I no longer needed her nor did I love her.”
“Wow,” Pierce said, almost at a loss for words. “And everyone thinks I’m the fucking heartless asshole.” Tristan eyes flared at him. “Right, sorry. I’m just shocked and that’s not typical for me. Continue, please.”
“I was angry that she’d kept it from me so I lashed out. More than that, I was afraid of having to watch her die; I didn’t think I could survive losing another person I love that way. Now, I know that I can’t survive without her, however long that is.”
“That’s some fucking sappy shit, Tris,” Pierce laughed, “but, I know how painful that can be.”
He ignored Pierce’s snarky comments, knowing they came from a similar place of hurt. “I’m withdrawing from the competition because I need to get her back. I have no fucking clue how I’m going to do that, but worrying about a competition is not it.”
“You don’t have her portrait done, do you?” Pierce antagonized him, refusing to believe that he just saw no point in participating.
“Yes, I do, and that’s not the reason,” Tristan replied firmly.
“Let me see it.” His nostrils flared in annoyance, but rather than drag this on, Tristan stood up to uncover the easel that was sitting in the living room, turning it to face his friend.
Now, Pierce was speechless. He walked up to the drawing and just stared in awe.
“Believe me now?” Tristan demanded.
“You have to submit this,” Pierce whispered, his hand reaching out partially before he pulled it back to cover his mouth. “Tristan, you have to submit this.”
“No. Why?” What difference would it make?”
“Because you’ll win.”
What the fuck was wrong with Pierce? Never in a million years would he admit to something like that.
“I don’t understand.”
“She loves you,” he began, “I knew that. Now, I know just how much you love her. I see it all over her face because she saw it in you.” Tristan’s eyes widened in shock; he’d never seen Pierce this emotional about anything. Ever. “This is incredible, Tristan. If I didn’t know better, I would tell you that my fucking non-existent heart hurts seeing just how much love she has for you. You can’t not show this,” he finished on a whisper, practically begging Tristan to do as he asked.
“I…” he didn’t even know how to respond. “It’s not going to help me get her back. And now I think she’s leaving the country. Fuck,” he cursed, remembering that he was running out of time.
“No,” Pierce said harshly, “it will. And she’s not fucking leaving in the next two days, not if I have anything to say about it.”
Floored by the sound of his own feelings reflected in Pierce’s voice, he asked, “what do you mean?”
“Any woman who looked at you like this, knows that you are just as in love with her as she is with you. That means she also knows just what a huge fucking pile of bullshit everything you told her was. The only reason she isn’t here is because she knows how much it would hurt you; she’s running away because she loves you, not because you’ve made her hate you,” Pierce explained, irritation laced in his tone for having to explain something that seemed so obvious.
How did Pierce even know what love looked like? Or what it looked like reflected from him? Now was not the time, but there was so much more to what that thief had stolen than Pierce had led them to believe.
“I don’t know,” he replied hesitantly. Even though he knew just how perceptive Ellie was to peoples’ true feelings, he couldn’t give himself that much hope of forgiveness.
“Christ, Tristan, if she sees this – if she sees you, it will be enough,” Pierce continued, pausing in annoyance at the still disbelieving look on his friend’s face. “If you can stand there and tell me that your work hasn’t made her see the truth in herself, then I will drop this and walk right out the fucking door – but, you can’t, can you?”
Tristan just stared, knowing he couldn’t deny what Pierce was saying.
“Just submit the fucking piece and let me handle getting her there. You’ll know what you have to do when you see her.”
Tristan dropped his head, perplexed by what was happening right now. “Why are you doing this? I know we’re good, but you hate feelings. Why would you help me?”
“Now that,” he laughed, “that doesn’t make any fucking difference. There are truths about life – that you love her, that she loves you; you can’t change those truths. The dares though, the dares of life are all yours to fuck with. So, either you trust me and dare to get her back or you don’t.”
Tristan clenched his teeth; staring hard into the dark abyss of his friend’s unwavering gaze, he said the words everyone knew better than to say to Pierce – “I trust you.”
A smile spread over Pierce’s face, not dark this time, just determined. “Good.”
Chapter 34
This was not a good idea.
Tristan’s déjà vu was really fucking with his head – standing at the Met, again, waiting for the exhibit to begin, again, and wondering what the fuck Pierce was up to… again.
He’d heard nothing after Pierce had left on Thursday or all day Friday – not a word. He’d been about to call the whole thing off Saturday morning when Pierce had texted him
- You better fucking be there.
Five, hardly-explanatory, words were all he’d gotten. But, for the dumb little light of hope in his chest, it was all he needed. Putting on his favorite, custom Armani suit, he’d taken one more look at the drawing he’d done, silently praying he would soon see that face again, before wrapping it up and heading to the museum.
Now, he stood in front of the portrait hung in the exhibition hall, scanning the crowd for either Ellie or Pierce. It had been an hour and they were about to start counting the votes, and there was no sign of either of them. His jaw clenched in frustration.
If Pierce was wrong…
His foot tapped in impatience as he heard the sound of the microphone turning on over the speakers.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Bernard’s voice boomed through the room as the crowd began to migrate towards the small podium, “thank you for coming to this special exhibit here at the Met. We’ve just finished collecting all of the votes, but while we count them, I would like to invite each of the ten artists present to come up here and give us a little bit of background to their pieces.”
Tristan rolled his eyes, annoyed that there was suddenly a public-speaking component to this event.
More annoyed that the only reason he’d even fucking come here had yet to walk in the door.
He heard the voice over the microphone drone on as the other participants went up one by one to give a small blurb about their work. Pulling out his phone, he opened up his message to Pierce.
Where the fuck are you? This was a mistake.
No response. Shoving his phone back into his pocket, Tristan turned to head towards the door just one second too late.
“Mr. Black!” Bernard exclaimed, “If you would like to share with us a little about your piece?” He stared Tristan down with insistence and expectation.
Tristan sighed, his first instinct was to just turn and leave. But that was what had started this mess. In that moment, he finally reached the culmination of his last stage of grief at losing Ellie; he accepted that she wasn’t coming, that whatever Pierce had done or said hadn’t been enough, and th
at was understandable given what he’d done to her. At the same time, he also accepted that no amount of space or distance or time would ever change the fact that he loved her with every fiber within him. And because of that, instead of running, he felt the overwhelming urge to at least let the world – or just those guests here – know just how much the exquisite woman in his drawing meant to him.
He strode towards the podium, taking in the awe-inspired and expectant faces around him; they’d been waiting to hear from him.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” he began hoarsely, uselessly scanning the crowd one more time from the slightly higher vantage point. “My name is Tristan Black, but some of you might know me better as Titian.” A collective gasp rung through the substantial audience. He hadn’t been prepared to reveal that, but somewhere along his path to the stage he realized that he couldn’t go on in that capacity with the Guild any longer. With Ellie, definitely not, but even without her, he couldn’t stomach the thought of continuing at least in the same way as before.
“If you know the Guild, you know our sole focus has been to master our love of art. Over the past several years, I think you would agree that we’ve managed to accomplish that. This piece, however, that I’m presenting today was the hardest portrait I’ve ever tried to make. The woman in it changed my life. She stumbled into my studio and had the audacity to tell me that she didn’t think she was beautiful enough to be there.” He stopped to laugh and wipe his eyes at the memory. “As you can see, she had no idea what she was talking about.” The crowd chuckled at that. “Sorry, I’ll keep this short. Somewhere in the process of convincing her just how exquisite she really is, I was mastered by the art of love. It crept inside of me and slowly began to spread and it was just when I lost her that I realized how completely it had consumed me.”
He stopped again to wipe his eyes, still no sign of Pierce or Ellie in the room.
“I created her portrait from memory; it was the first time that she told me that she loved me, and it’s the one thing that I wanted to immortalize. Drawing this was the only thing I could do to cope with losing her, it was the only thing I had left to show her just how much I loved her. She was the first person to love the real me, she was my light, a constantly burning source of inspiration to love and live, which is why this is the first piece I’ve ever shown that I’ve signed with my own name. And that’s why it’s here today – not because she loved me, but because I want the world to know that I, Tristan Black, love her.”
The Artist's Touch (The Gentlemen's Guild Book 1) Page 39