The Painter's Passion

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  Pierce swallowed the blood in his mouth, realizing that right now, there was no reasoning with Morgan. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him from continuing his resentful rant.

  “I’m not saying that I don’t believe in miracles, but your actions don’t match your words. If she meant more to you – and if I meant anything to you – you would have come to me first. And second, if she meant more to you, we wouldn’t have walked in on you with Tash tonight. So, no, I don’t believe that she means more to you because if she did, you wouldn’t have broken her like you broke your fucking promise.”

  Pierce felt his fists clenching as he watched Morgan drain the second glass of vodka. Still, he stood silent, sacrificing himself under the punishment he felt he deserved.

  “Which brings me to my last request – not that I have any hopes that you’ll listen to it. If you have led my sister to believe that you care about her, then walking in on you with Tash will have hurt her more than you will ever know. So, I will tell you this and you do whatever you want – I know you will anyway. If you care about her like you say, then you will leave her the fuck alone. You will get out of her life and allow her to get over you as quickly as possible for her own sake. You know as well as I do that in the long run, you’d only end up ruining her anyway; she’s already had to survive that once. Do you really want to put her through it again?”

  Their gazes locked and Pierce fought for the strength to fight back, to insist on everything that he felt, on everything that he’d done, and on everything that he wanted.

  Except he didn’t deserve her and he’d known that from the start.

  “No, I don’t.” The brokenness of his voice barely reflected that of his heart. “You can fly back with Tash tomorrow. I’ll find the painting on my own.”

  “Santander in Soho. Box 525,” Morgan responded, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a key that he slid down the counter.

  “How did you get these? Where’s the thief?” He stared at the tiny key in his hand.

  “She gave them to me. Before they took her.” Morgan took another drink from the bottle. “But, she deserves it right? She deserves whatever’s coming to her for stealing the damned thing in the first fucking place. So, why don’t you go get your precious painting and leave me in peace to come to terms with the fact that you’ve forced me to sacrifice someone else’s life for your mistakes.”

  Pierce was taken aback by the sudden change in Morgan’s tone and the self-deprecating laugh that followed his statement. If he didn’t know any better, it sounded like Morgan cared for this woman. The implication was clear; mistakes was plural – both letting the painting be stolen in the first place and then for sleeping with Ana. But what surprised him most was why Morgan was forced to make this choice – between him and the woman.

  “What? Did you trade her for the painting or something?” He should just take the keys and leave, but he needed to know.

  “Yes.” Another long drink from the bottle of liquor. “If I gave them the painting, they wouldn’t need her. But, if I gave them the painting, I wouldn’t have it to make you leave Ana alone. You’ve forced me to make a choice between helping my sister and helping someone I barely know. Of course, I’m going to save my sister. Every goddamned time,” he scoffed. “Consider this your reward for doing the right thing. Maybe you’ll try it again sometime.”

  Pierce grabbed the key off of the counter, taking two steps closer to the other man.

  “Let me be very clear.” His voice was deadly quiet. “I’m not doing this for you or because I give a flying fuck what you think about me or why I’ve done what I’ve done. I’m doing this because I care about Ana and because I agree that she deserves better than me. I’m doing this because I want her to be happy and I’m not willing to take the risk of hurting her. You don’t have to believe a goddamn word that I’ve said – or the ones that I haven’t; I have no desire to exonerate myself in your eyes because it would be at the expense of your sister. I’m not leaving because I care about any of the fucking bullshit you’ve thrown at me without even the slightest willingness as a friend to hear my side. I’m doing this because I’m in love with her; I love your sister, Morgan, and the thought of hurting her has done more damage to me than anything that you’ve said or anything that you could do.”

  “There’s only one person in the world who matters to you, Pierce. That person is yourself and I’ve known it for a long time. So, take the damn keys and continue to look out for number one before I change my mind.” Morgan didn’t even bother to look at him as he said the words, drowning in what seemed to be his own misery.

  “Fuck you, Morgan.”

  And then he spun and stalked upstairs to grab the duffel bag that was still half-packed from the other night.

  He couldn’t see her now; he couldn’t defend himself to her. He couldn’t because she would forgive him and she would tell him that everything was going to be ok; she would make it impossible for him to leave and act in her best interest. So, he grabbed the bag, leaving the door cracked open so that Morgan or Ana would hear if Tash started to have a nightmare again, but from the looks of it, she was completely passed out.

  Pierce tucked the key into his pocket and walked out of the house, into the night, and in search of the nearest pub that would be open long enough to get him completely, mind-numbingly drunk.

  He’d always wondered if he’d even had the damn thing. When Ana had come into his life, the way she’d made him feel had him believing – hoping – that he did. Now that he was choosing to leave her, he knew for certain that he did. It was the same pain as the night his mom had left. He had a heart.

  And for the second time in his life, it was being ripped from his chest.

  She should have listened. She should have listened to her brother. She should have listened to herself.

  Don’t fall for the devil in the dark suit, they said; he won’t just steal your soul.

  No, he’d stolen her body. Then, he’d stolen her heart. And now, he’d stolen her all.

  Sorrow suffocated her like a scarf wrapped too tightly around her face – constrictive enough to know that she was losing oxygen, but breathable enough to draw out her demise.

  She and Morgan had gotten home, barely made it into the kitchen for a drink of water before they both thought they’d heard a scream. Pausing, they’d waited, listening to the silence. And then there’d been a loud crash, followed by more yelling.

  Morgan had bolted up the stairs and she’d followed right behind. Her heart raced and dread pooled in her stomach as she could clearly hear a woman’s voice except that it was coming from Pierce’s room.

  When Morgan had opened his door, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw: Pierce and Tash – both naked from the waist up in the middle of a tossed bed, Pierce holding the other woman close, their legs tangled mostly underneath the piled covers. Her breathing stopped, watching as their chests seemed to rise and fall rapidly and in sync as though they’d just been engaged in the same vigorous activity.

  Images of Shane flashed before her eyes – naked, having sex with his assistant – quickly eclipsed by her reality which was must worse; she’d never truly loved Shane. Pierce, on the other hand…

  She couldn’t see anymore, turning blindly from the room, knowing what implication her action must have given Morgan, but she didn’t care. She fled to her room and locked the door behind her, not willing to deal with any chastisement from her brother. She was in shock and she needed to be alone to clean up the pieces of her shattered heart.

  She’d thought that whatever was between Pierce and Tash was over; they’d both indicated as much. Maybe Pierce had been the one that Tash was alluding to – the one she’d been preoccupied with. And Pierce, well, maybe she had been wrong all along; maybe she really was just like every other woman that he slept with.

  You knew this, Ana. You knew this was a probability, not a possibility.

  But, it was the fact that she’d walked in to see them in be
d. It made her question everything that Pierce had ever said to her. Had any of it been true? Or had he just been curious as to how much she had fixed him?

  Tears fell furiously down her face.

  You said you didn’t care, that you just wanted the pleasure that he could give you and that would be enough.

  Ana began to sob into her pillow.

  Yeah, well, whatever she’d told herself had been a lie. From the moment he’d shown her that she was beautiful, not broken, he’d captured her heart.

  Chapter 34

  Numb.

  He didn’t know what shot he was on, but it was past the point where his entire body had gone numb – his entire body except for his heart, that is. That damn thing still burned a hole into his chest, destroying him from the inside out for what he’d done.

  “Another,” he rasped at the bartender at the Sherlock Holmes Pub. The younger man just stared wide-eyed at him for a moment before doing as he was told.

  Sherlock Fucking Holmes. He didn’t need a fucking detective to tell him what was happening to him. Agonizing pain, complete disinterest in any other member of the opposite sex, feeling like he’d lost whatever purpose there was for his godforsaken life… There was no mystery to solve.

  His heart was breaking.

  And he certainly didn’t need a detective to tell him that it was his own fucked up fault, too.

  “Hey there, handsome.” A woman approached him through the fog of his vision. He couldn’t tell if she was pretty or not. More importantly, he didn’t care.

  He downed another shot. “Fuck off.” She turned and stormed off in a huff and he just looked at the blurry bartender with an expression that he hoped conveyed that he needed another shot.

  He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.

  With every shot he swallowed, he swore to himself that, for her sake, he’d never love her again. With every breath he took, the air whispered back to him, ‘Until tomorrow.”

  God, he was so pathetic.

  Pierce fumbled as he felt his phone ringing in his pocket, half-tempted to drop the damn thing into the glass of water the bartender had put suggestively on the counter in front of him.

  “What?”

  “Pierce?” Sloane’s surprise was evident. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “What do you want?” He could barely get out a coherent question, let alone explain the Pandora’s box that was his life.

  There was a pause where Sloane was probably trying to decide whether to push him further or just ask him the question he called to ask.

  “Did you tell Tash? Is she good to go?”

  “Yes,” he bit out, caving and taking a long drink of the cool water from the glass. He could hear Sloane cover the phone and talk to someone, probably Cyn. He took another sip, setting the cup down to pinch the bridge of his nose. “If that’s all—” He was about to hang up and return to his intoxicated wallowing when he was cut off.

  “Pierce?” Ellie’s voice came on the phone.

  What the fuck.

  Just his fucking luck that Ellie happened to be there when Sloane called him.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on?” Her calm voice washed over him. He rested his forehead on his hands. She was the last person he wanted to talk to, mostly because she seemed to be the only person in their group who could talk sense into any one of them.

  “You mean you don’t know, oh wise one?” he scoffed. Ellie, somehow, always seemed to know what was going on and what a person was feeling. Even over the phone, Pierce knew that she could read him like an open book.

  “Let me guess. You fell in love with Ana. Morgan found out. You feel like the asshole that you try so hard to be, and now you’re drowning yourself in some kind of expensive vodka so that it’s easier for you to believe how you don’t deserve her and how you completely deserve her brother’s wrath.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic. Sounds like you’ve got the gist of things.” He had nothing further to add. “I’m hanging up now, Ellie.”

  “You can’t. You swore that you would hear me,” she replied sternly.

  Mother of shit.

  “I—”

  “Don’t even try to pretend like the day hasn’t come.” He had promised. She was right and he knew it.

  Months ago, Tristan had broken up with Ellie in the most asshole way possible, shoving her fears and her disease back in her face. He’d been hurting, blah, blah blah. Long fucking story short, Tristan had needed Ellie to come to an exhibit so that he could apologize publically to her and Pierce had sworn to him that he would get her there.

  And he did.

  But it had cost him.

  Of course, she’d initially refused to go – but not because Tristan had broken her heart. Worse than that, she was afraid of hurting him even more in the future and she couldn’t bear the thought.

  She refused to go, not for her sake, but for his. And he’d had the impossible task of convincing her to act selfishly instead of selflessly.

  How? He laughed stupidly to himself at the memory.

  “I can’t go, Pierce. I can’t do that to him. I can’t take the risk of putting him through that again.” Ellie had looked resigned, accepting of her heartbreak because she believed it was the only way to heal Tristan.

  “Ellie, this is what – the second… third… time that the cancer has returned?” He hadn’t bothered to wait for her answer. “When the doctors realized, what did they do?”

  She looked confused, but she answered. “Well, they ran tests, they immediately put me on medication while I waited for the results. When the results came back—”

  He cut her off there because the little details didn’t matter. “Yeah, all that shit, what were they doing?”

  “Pierce, I don’t understand what—”

  “What. Were. They. Doing?” Her eyes had widened at the anger in his tone.

  “I… umm... helping me? They were trying to heal me.”

  “Exactly.” He’d leaned against her kitchen counter. “They didn’t say to you, ‘oh, sorry, there’s a chance that even if we do this – even if we try to stop the cancer – it will still come back and we don’t want to have to put you through that hope and then disappointment again.’ They didn’t say to you, “SOL, Ellie, we can’t take the risk of putting you through this again, so we’re not going to try to cure your cancer.”

  “No,” she’d murmured quietly from her couch, staring out past him in a daze.

  “No, they didn’t. You know why? Because some things are worth fighting for.” He broke off and then without knowing where the words came from, he said, “Fear and hurt are like a cancer, Ellie. Fear of not being loved, fear of losing love – they are the cancers. And when you placate them, they slowly eat away at you until there is nothing left but the shell of an asshole who couldn’t care for anyone or anything to save his life.”

  “Pierce…” It wasn’t his story in detail, but it was no less the truth about himself.

  “And you sitting here, saying that Tristan will appreciate this in the future, that it might be easier for him in the future for you to sacrifice yourself and your love now, would be like your doctor telling you to live with your cancer because you might be disappointed by its return or you might be hurt worse by the treatment that they use to try to heal you. Is that what you would want?”

  “Sometimes, the right thing is the risky thing. Sometimes, the right thing means willingly putting yourself or someone you love at risk of being hurt, at risk of losing. Sometimes, the right thing looks like the wrong fucking thing, but it’s the only thing that can ever have a chance at healing you.” Ellie’s voice came back over the line, serene and quieting, as she repeated the final words that he’d spoken to her that day. Their truth boomed through the sound of the blood pumping through his head.

  His mind flashed back to the end of their conversation and the reason why he was forced to sit and listen to her – or himself – right now.

  “I do
n’t know you. I don’t know that I even like you. And I don’t know if I should believe you,” Ellie had replied, standing up and moving in front of him, her perceptive gaze narrowing into his. “But, I do. So, I will go with you,” she’d stood and walked right past him to the door, “on one condition.”

  He’d just raised an eyebrow.

  “There will come a day when you will want to forget that you said these words to me because they will be exactly what you need to hear, but don’t want to. When that day comes, I want your word that you will hear them when I repeat them back to you.”

  “Fine,” he’d ground out.

  He’d honestly believed at the time that that day would never come – that he was too far gone past the point where he could be healed. And then Ana had come into his life and now, here it was. His day of reckoning.

  “Fuck, Ellie. What the fuck did I know?” He downed the rest of the water, slamming the cup on the bar. “I had no fucking idea what I was saying.”

  “Bullshit. You did know and you were right. You can play the asshole with everyone else – including yourself, Pierce, but not right now and not with me. You knew exactly what you said because it came from the heart that you do, in fact, have.” He groaned, spinning the empty glass on the wood. “I don’t need to know the details. You’re in love with Ana.”

  “Not the problem.” His hand moved to his temple, rubbing the clenched muscles on the side of his head. The bartender returned, quickly refilling the glass with more water and walking away before Pierce could think to order another drink.