The Living Canvas

by Pepper Winters

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You don’t have a concept?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “A feeling?” Her gaze snapped to mine, despite herself.

  I loved watching her study me, bowed at her feet.

  I wanted her to remember me like this, worshiping her, wanting her.

  “Secrets.”

  She frowned. “Secrets?”

  “The piece will be called Secrets.”

  Her eyes leapt from mine, fully aware of the connection binding us exquisitely tight together. I felt it. She felt it. Fate fucking felt it.

  Her eyes glossed. “Secrets are always drenched in pain.”

  I nodded, testing the spray before standing in front of her. “They are. That’s what you are.” I kissed her softly. “Love painted in pain.”

  She swayed as I pulled back and pressed the button on my airgun. The spray of midnight shot from the muzzle, instantly changing skin to canvas.

  I didn’t normally cover a girl in one shade.

  I didn’t usually allow creativity to control me.

  But this wasn’t a commission.

  This wasn’t prepaid and scripted.

  This was just us.

  A canvas and a body painter.

  Both in love.

  Both in agony.

  Both fighting goodbye.

  Time slipped between the silence, blending the two until the world no longer existed. All I saw was O. All she felt was my paint. Slowly, I covered her from head to toe in deep, distressing blue.

  The longer I painted, the tighter her muscles became. Her face strained and eyes full of memory. She was back in my warehouse the night I’d drugged and kidnapped her. She was back to cursing my existence.

  “Jeffrey was my real uncle...did you know that?”

  My voice snapped her from the past and did exactly what I hoped. Her eyes narrowed, locking onto me as I shaded the inside of her thigh. “What?”

  “Jeffrey...I know you would’ve heard Olive call him uncle.” I wiped the excess off, leaning in to spray again. “He was her great uncle. My father’s brother.”

  “What are you doing?” She shifted a little, breaking the position she’d chosen.

  Wrapping my hand around her ankle, I shook my head slowly. “Don’t move.”

  She locked in place all while her voice rained from above. “Why are you telling me about Jeffrey? Why bring his name into this...when you’re painting me?”

  “To distract you.”

  “Distract me.”

  “To talk to you.”

  “To confess.”

  I nodded. “To confess.”

  She shivered as I added a final lashing over her kneecap and reared back. The whites of her eyes and teeth popped from the darkness of her face, body, and hair. She wasn’t O anymore. She was a faceless secret with no substance. A white lie that hadn’t been told yet.

  As I added more depth and detail, the lie would grow, the secret would swell, and the damage it reaped would magnify.

  I no longer had frost around my heart. No icicles in my blood or snow within my voice. I was done freezing O out from my truth.

  I wanted her to ask.

  To know.

  Unscrewing the empty vial from my airbrush, I reached for quicksilver.

  She swayed as I added a splattering of stars on her leg. A twinkling galaxy over her stomach. The admission that secrets didn’t just affect a single planet but the cosmos.

  “Why did you sleep with her? You had to have known people would have helped you?” The question strangled in her throat. “Why did you throw us away?”

  Finally.

  Finally a question.

  A question shooting a dagger straight into the heart of all our problems.

  I looked up as I dipped a fine-tipped brush into blood-red pigment. “If we do this...no more secrets.”

  She held my stare, trembling beneath my colours. “No more secrets.”

  “Okay then.” I cleared my throat again. “I threw us away because I was a fucking idiot. Tallup threatened your future. I kept it to myself because I was afraid.” I drew a line over the top of her hipbone, tracing what felt right, but unsure what it would become. “I wanted to protect you, not ruin you.”

  “You ruined yourself.”

  I continued painting, half in the otherworld of creation where noise was muted and reality dulled and half with her in a dreamlike state of confession. “I was young and stupid.”

  “You were targeted and molested.”

  “I should’ve trusted someone.” I drew my brush down her leg. “I should’ve trusted you.”

  She shivered as I continued staining midnight with blood. “Instead you broke up with me.”

  “I kept my distance because even though I’d done what she’d asked, my freedom came with consequences.”

  Her stomach tensed as I swapped red for black. Soaking up the ink, I sponged sinister shadows above her G-string and along her belly.

  She breathed, “Consequences?”

  “One of her conditions was that I could never talk to you or any other girl in school.”

  She gasped as I left her skin and pressed my sponge right between her legs. Hard. Hard enough to squeeze black paint and watch it dribble over her knickers-covered core.

  “Why?”

  “Because she knew I loved you.”

  “But why didn’t you come to me when she left school? She wasn’t there to terrorize you anymore.”

  I fought back the lashes of regret as I traded black for magenta. “I was going to.”

  “What?” She froze, her eyes locking onto mine.

  “I had a plan. I waited to be sure she’d gone for good. I made up a script so I could talk to you without blurting nonsense. I had full intentions of finding you on Monday and begging your forgiveness.”

  Her face twisted; her eyes glazed with wetness. “But you ran away.”

  “Tallup visited me.” I painted faster, my brush becoming an extension of my pain, using my secrets as its colour. “She brought Olive.”

  Silence once again whispered in as O stood still.

  “The moment I saw her, O...I couldn’t stop it. I fell in love.” I painted harder, cursing the design that only now I recognised. “I fell in love and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that her life came before mine. I didn’t have a choice.”

  O continued to shiver silently, giving me far too much space to fill. “I stole from my old man that night, and ran away. I didn’t say goodbye. I made it work in London for a bit. Made enough cash with painting and selling my work to get by. Then I earned a few bigger jobs. I was hired to graffiti a local hostel and its dorm rooms with images of downtown. While Olive grew, I tried to find a more reliable income. However, time passed. Olive went to preschool. Then kindergarten. And I kept painting.”

  I looked up.

  I ignored the scene I’d painted on her thigh.

  A scene of a boy holding a fleece blanket, the blanket trying to escape on a kite string, hiding something priceless. “I’d already given you up, O. I couldn’t give up my art too.”

  She trembled again. Her stomach fluttering as I once again traded brushes for the airgun. I didn’t have control anymore. My body bypassed my mind and painted purely from my heart. Whatever masterpiece O became tonight would have no input from me, just instinct, just hope, just pain.

  “But you became the Master of Trickery.”

  “I did.” My voice sounded rough, strangled. “Thanks to Jeffrey.”

  “What?”

  “He appeared one night, knocking on my one-bedroom apartment. Olive was asleep. He claimed to be my dad’s brother. He’d been looking for me and heard my name at a local market where a wholesaler sold my paintings.”

  “Why had he been looking for you?”

  I continued painting, switching methods and mediums, trading pigment and metallic. “Dad died. Alcohol poisoning. He told me the whores left town, and the bank seized the house
and sold it. Jeffrey was the one listed as next of kin.”

  “So...he came to give you an inheritance?” She sucked in a breath as I took her hand, painting a row of dying blackbirds up her arm.

  “No. He’d already spent what pittance he got from the foreclosure.” I swallowed, bowing my head over her shoulder as I traded birds for feathers, mimicking her tattoo, dressing her in a cape of them. “He tracked me down ‘cause he thought I might have more money.”

  Her body swayed as I went behind her, tracing my brush over her scars, adding another picture to her ink. “He blackmailed you right from the start?”

  My heart hurt. I didn’t want to tell this part of my tale. It once again showed how gullible I was. How stupid. “No. To begin with, he was the perfect uncle. It took a very long time for me to drop my guard. To stop throwing the door in his face or walking across the street if he tried to talk to me. I kept Olive away from him at all costs. I told him to leave me alone.”

  I bent my knees, and my eyes became level with her gorgeous arse. The muscle definition and sexiness of her grace fogged my thoughts, conjuring more explicit designs. It was easier to tell her this way. Where she couldn’t see me. Judge me. “A year passed, and he still stuck around. My resolve to continue hating him just because he was my father’s brother faded a little. I let him buy me lunch. I actually listened to what he had to say. I began to trust.”

  My lips pulled back in a snarl. My brush slipped down her crack with temper.

  She flinched and went to move away, but I grabbed her hipbone, smudging my previous work. “Don’t. Don’t move.”

  It took a few heartbeats until I could uncurl my hand and continue. “I learned we were more similar than I wanted to admit. He painted cars for a living. Doing decals and pinstripe, special one-of-a-kind commissions on boy racer’s wet dreams.”

  I made my way around to her side again, drawing a tiny car on her foot. “He let me set up an easel in the back. I painted there while Olive was at school. It was...nice.”

  My voice once again slipped into unbridled rage. “He was the one who taught me to paint other things than walls and paper. He showed me how to do bold lines on the panels of a jeep and airbrush wings on a Ferrari. Anything was paintable. Cups and plates. Glass and fabric.”

  “Women,” O murmured.

  I nodded. “Women.”

  “Is that how you got into painting girls?”

  “Yes.” I moved onto her calf, not caring what I painted just that I did. That I bled out the pain in purple and blue and grey. “He joked about it, showing me other artists who’d transformed human into landscape and animal. The moment I saw the pictures, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to create magic. To twist reality. To form an illusion just like others had.”

  I forced myself to chuckle rather than fucking cry. “The first few I did were terrible. The next were passable. Woman after woman. Night after night. I dabbled with camouflage and shadow. Olive was kept safe with a babysitter. I told myself I did this for our future. So I could afford to buy any dream she desired. I grew better. My skills improved. Until one night, I nailed the perfect illusion.” I let my brush hypnotise me for a moment, needing a break.

  O waited for several heartbeats before asking, “What illusion?”

  “I made a girl vanish into a backdrop of vineyards and wine barrels. A huge movie poster for some rom-com that had been thrown out.” I swallowed hard, chasing back the acid in my mouth. “Jeffrey congratulated me. Took me out. Praised me. And I let down my fucking guard. I told him about Olive. I offered to let him meet her. I invited him into our lives.”

  O stayed quiet but tangled up enough in my story to ask, “If he spent all that time helping you, why did he start hurting you?”

  I shrugged. “Jealousy? Hatred? I never found out.” Changing to my airbrush again, I went to her other side, allowing the vibrant aqua to highlight her skin. “Thanks to him, I started painting women all the time. Most of them for free, salvaging paints from second-hand suppliers, begging for finished tubes to do as much as I could on the cheap. One girl brought her friends to watch. They filmed me painting, and put it up on social media. The rest...is history.”

  I looked up for the first time in a while. I needed to see her now. “The post went viral. I can’t even remember what I’d painted. But a few weeks later, I had a business profile, email account, and companies asking me to paint for them.”

  Rocking back on my heels, I shrugged again, helpless beneath the truth. “The money they offered, O? It was ten, twenty, forty, a thousand times more than what I could get for a hanging canvas. I accepted every gig. I gave half of everything I made to Jeffrey to say thank you. I introduced him to Olive, believing I’d finally found someone I could trust.”

  I dropped my eyes, unable to hold her stare. “I was lonely. I’d done my best to raise her as a single dad, but I knew I was lacking. I didn’t know shit. I wasn’t enough. She needed a bigger network to rely on so she didn’t turn out like me.”

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “For a year or so, things were fine. He came round for dinners. He helped me source the warehouse. I offered to let him move in with us. But then, one day, I got a gig worth a fortune. Almost a hundred thousand pounds to do three girls camouflaged into a peacock. It took twenty-four hours, but it was one of my best pieces. Jeffrey popped by after his shift to see, and something switched in him. I felt it. I didn’t know what it meant, but by the next week, he asked for a substantial loan.”

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my painted hand. “I gave it to him. Of course, I did. I was nothing without him. But the week after, he asked for more. And again, I gave it to him. I wanted to share everything because he was the reason I had such success.”

  “You were very generous.”

  “I was looking after family.” I threw myself back into painting, my eyes glazed and colours finding homes upon her flesh. “I couldn’t look after you, so I was determined to look after those I could.”

  I shook my head, rushing now, needing this over. “One night, he asked for everything I’d made on a recent commission. I’d already put it into a savings account for Olive’s education and I couldn’t withdraw it due to the terms of the account. He left in a rage. Came back drunk. I kicked him out and told him to return sober and tell me why he needed the money, then we’d talk.”

  Scowling at O’s foot, I hunched into myself, finding it unbearable to admit. “The next day, he took Olive.”

  O sucked in a breath. “He took her because you refused to give him what you’d saved for her?”

  I nodded, painting furiously up her leg, bringing to life little fishes of truth, swimming bright in a sea of secrets. I hadn’t gone to the police because I didn’t want them to know Olive’s origins and risk having her taken from me. I’d stupidly thought I could handle it.

  That this family spat would resolve itself without a fight.

  I’d slowly fallen further and further.

  Bankrupt.

  Broken.

  Until finally, an accessory for murder.

  “How did blackmail turn into killing four young girls?” Olive asked, tears smudging her midnight cheeks.

  I dared look up, embracing the agony. My hood cut out my peripheral, keeping my attention locked on her. “He was always a psychopath. I found out later that my father’s whores hadn’t left...he’d killed them. Jeffrey constantly moved because he couldn’t restrain his thirst for death. And I introduced that fucking animal to my daughter.”

  “That’s why you let him beat you up.”

  “Anything to keep his temper away from Olive.”

  “That’s why you gave him every penny.”

  “Anything to keep her alive.”

  “That’s why you were filthy the nights I came over.”

  “I was out looking for Olive, trying to stop another girl getting hurt.”

  O cried openly now. “And that’s why you drank.”

  “To try
to forget what I’d caused.” My voice cracked. “It was my fault he took her in the first place.”

  Her entire body shuddered.

  She collapsed to her knees beside me.

  We were kissing before I realised a fucking tear ran down my cheek.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ______________________________

  Olin

  HIS BODY CRASHED into mine.

  His hands flew up, grabbing my cheeks and holding me firm. He didn’t care about the paint, the art, or the confessions he’d strewn around my feet. He kissed me hard, tilting his head and licking me with twisted desire.

  Dragging me closer, we bowed to each other, his body still towering over mine. We kissed savage and unforgiving. Gentle and tender weren’t welcome here.

  I’d had my dose of violence, and this was his. This was him doing his best to destroy me and remember me all at once.

  This was a punishment.

  Punishment for himself and the future he faced.

  My hands shot to his face, skimming into his hair and pushing away the black hood. I tore off his mask, revealing the tortured painter, the broken lover, the boy I would always miss.

  His teeth clacked on mine as he kissed me deeper, pushing me down until I sprawled on the black sheet on the floor. Bottles of paint spilled, oozing their vibrant contents into the fabric. A tub of rhinestones tipped over, scattering brilliant sparkles and sticking to my skin.

  We didn’t care about any of it.

  He pressed himself on top of me the moment I lay on my back. His hand cupped my breast, squeezing and claiming, making them heavy and throbbing.

  His touch smeared his art without a thought.

  I arched my back, demanding more.

  Needing more.

  I moaned as he spread my legs and settled between them. Once again, he was fully clothed and I was gowned in just his creation. No words were exchanged. No soul-stealing stares. Just the urgency to connect.

  He kissed me deeper, stealing our final shreds of sanity.

  His taste erased everything. His touch deleted the outside world. It was just us. How it should’ve been. How it could never be.