Chapter 14
Deadly Thoughts
Christina
Painting was what I really wanted to be doing. Instead, I was tearing through my apartment, scrubbing every surface, trying to get a certain muse of a man out of my mind. It still didn’t make sense that I was so obsessed with his image, and now that I knew he was my best friend’s boyfriend, I had to try harder to get over it. The next step was to throw out the paintings and drawings of him that were stuffed into my guest bedroom. That was probably why every inch of space in my apartment gleamed and glowed from my cleaning efforts. The last step to purge myself of everything unhealthy in my life was throwing out my obsession. I could do it. Sure, but maybe after I checked underneath the kitchen sink for leaks one more time.
I tossed the rubber gloves I’d been wearing in the trash as soon as I heard my doorbell ring. “Who in the hell could that be?” I wondered. It wasn’t like I had anyone in my life who gave a shit about me. I’d made acquaintances with some people from work, but we didn’t know one another enough yet for a casual drop-in type thing. I opened the door without looking through the peephole. That was my first mistake.
“Oh my God! I have so much to tell you!” Lindsay shrieked as she basically tackle hugged me the moment the door sprung open. My second mistake was in not pushing her back out of the doorway. She barged right in, sliding me out of the way as she did. My third mistake was in looking up into the eyes of the image I had become obsessed with painting. Damn it. My purge wasn’t even fully realized yet, and here he was staring at me with those too-blue eyes of his. I swear, it felt like he could see the stains on my soul, and that knowledge pulled at something deep within me.
“Well, are you going to let him in or just stare all day?” Lindsay asked in somewhat of a snide voice.
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I stepped aside. “You guys caught me off guard.”
“What did you do, throw a party in here without inviting me?” Lindsay asked as she sniffed the air. “You’ve been cleaning up a storm. Aren’t new apartments supposed to be pre-cleaned when you move in?”
“I just like to make sure they did a good job.” The lie rolled off my tongue smoothly. I could have cared less how good a job they did. The last apartment I had, the one I got with my husband, had been a dump when we moved in. We had to clean, paint, and do a bunch of maintenance to make it habitable. We’d had fun doing all of it together though. The memory washed through me, threatening to make me sick to my stomach. It hurt to remember that we had been happy once – or at least I thought we had. “What are you doing here?”
“We came to share our good news!” Lindsay squealed and proceeded to jump up and down as she did. I glanced from her to the man she brought with her, my muse, as he stood there looking unaffected by her antics. No, that wasn’t right. He seemed annoyed rather than sharing in her joy.
“Well, are you just going to keep me in the dark while you exercise or are you going to share the news?”
That got Lindsay’s attention and she finally stilled herself, though her face fell into a pout as she did so. “Don’t ruin my good news with your Debbie Downer bullshit, Chris,” she hissed at me. I turned, ready to point her to the door because truthfully, I wasn’t in the mood. Instead, she beat me to the punch and dismissed herself from the room. “I have to pee!” She shouted and then ran from the room.
Since she was no longer there, I turned my glare on the man left standing there with me. “You know what this is all about?” He tipped his head slightly, which I assumed was an indication that he did. “Great. I don’t suppose you’ll let the cat out of the bag before she gets back in here?” He shook his head, still not responding verbally. “About the last time we met,” I started to say, about to ask him if he had informed Lindsay that he was the man his girlfriend kept telling me was my soulmate.
“We’re not discussing that.” His voice was quiet, and yet it resonated in the room as if everything inside the building stilled in order to hear him. I couldn’t blame the building. Gooseflesh bloomed across my skin at the sound. Never, in my entire life, had I responded to a person at such a level. I hadn’t even felt an inkling of the chemistry that seemed to pop between us when I had been with my husband. My hand raised, of its own accord, trying to move closer to him. I had to know what it would feel like… He stepped forward and the air in between us sizzled. It may have been all in my imagination, but I honestly felt like it was real in that moment.
“We’re having a baby!” Lindsay’s voice broke through my haze just before my fingers made contact with the flesh exposed on his forearms where he had his sleeves pushed back. Jesus. What the hell was wrong with me?
“You’re what?” I asked as the words she shouted finally started to sink in. I’m sure my face drained of color as the words came tumbling out of her mouth once more.
“I’m pregnant! We’re having a baby together!” She had come to stand beside Jay and grabbed hold of his arm in a proprietary manner. She hadn’t missed how close we had become while she had been in the bathroom. A pang of guilt made my stomach feel queasy, or maybe that was her announcement. How could my best friend be having a baby with a man she proclaimed to be my soulmate? Granted, she didn’t realize that was who he was, but still… Could the fates hate me so much that first my husband cheats on me with some unknown woman and supposedly gets her pregnant, and now my best friend is pregnant with the beautiful stranger I became obsessed with? What had I done in a past life to deserve this kind of torture? My lungs were not filling with air the way they needed to. A panic attack was not the proper response to your best friend telling you she was about to have a baby.
“Shit! I need to run to the store for some drinks so we can celebrate!” I snatched my purse from the hook by the wall and ran out the door. I barely heard Lindsay shout after me.
“I’m pregnant and can’t drink anyway, silly!” I ignored her and ran. I ran until it felt like my chest might explode because I also wasn’t breathing well. By the time I got outside the building, the brick façade had the honor of holding me up until I could gulp in enough air to stave off the oncoming black out.
“Are you okay?” A woman asked. The smile that I turned her way was strained and wary but did its job.
“Just some bad news,” I informed her, and she moved on immediately. I guess bad news wasn’t worth someone’s time when it came to strangers. At least she had planned on maybe calling 911 before running off if there had been something physically wrong with me. Why weren’t people willing to be emotional heroes too? Was that even a thing? Hell, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that my best friend just dropped an enormous bomb on me, and I needed to go buy some celebratory juice, get my shit together, and get back up to my apartment. Then, I needed to put on a brave face and behave as if I was happy for her and the baby she would be having.
Suddenly, my move to Savannah didn’t feel like a big enough leap. Why in the world hadn’t I applied for other jobs out of state, far out of state? One state over wasn’t enough. New York didn’t want me, but there were still 48 other states to choose from. I would have to start applying to different places tomorrow. That could definitely work.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I wheezed out loud, startling an old man as he passed by me on the sidewalk. “Sorry,” I muttered the apology as he sped up. Chuckling to myself, I ran into the little corner store and grabbed some sparkling juice off the shelf before checking out and heading back to my apartment. The same apartment I’d only moments ago contemplated running away from in order to never have to be faced with the reality that awaited me there. “I can do this!” The words became a chant I spoke softly to myself the whole way back. “I will be happy for her. I can do this.” I hoped like hell I could. Too bad I didn’t realize ahead of time that there would be no preparing for the hell that awaited me when I got back to my apartment.
When I opened the door, it was to a completely different apartment. I took a step back, glanced at the num
ber by the door and made sure I had walked to the right one. There was no doubt it was mine, but the spotlessly clean-living space I once had was now littered with canvases, sketches on paper, and all of them contained one subject. Three guesses as to which one that was, and yeah, the first two don’t count.
“What the hell kind of a sick and twisted individual are you, Christina? I’m happy again, for once, and you have to go obsessing over my man like some lunatic?”
“Lindsay,” I breathed out through the ache in my chest. I couldn’t believe she would jump to that sort of assumption. “I can explain,” I tried again before she started yelling.
“There’s no explaining this! You’ve been painting and drawing my boyfriend for God knows how long. This is sick.”
“Two years,” I murmured.
“Come again?” Her eyes snapped away from the one painting I’d actually framed of Jay back over to me. “What did you just say?”
“I said I’ve painting him for two years now.”
Her jaw nearly hit the floor when it dropped in shock. Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she shifted her focus to the man himself who was standing there taking in all the pieces, I had done of him. “You knew her all this time and never said a word?”
“He didn’t know me,” I explained.
“Then how…” she stopped and glanced around at all the images one more time before looking back up at me with tears swimming in her eyes. “No! No, no, no, no! This isn’t. He can’t be…” I let her attempt to come to terms with what she was already realizing. Her current boyfriend had been my muse for two years, making him the man from the cemetery. The man she had been calling my soulmate for that same length of time. “How cruel is this world going to be to me? First, you had him. Now my boyfriend, the father of my baby, is the man I’ve been telling you was your soulmate? How does this happen?” I didn’t know what to make of her mumbling, so I just stood there and took in the fact that my work, my labor of love for the past couple of years was on display. People were seeing it for the first time ever. One of those people was the man who was the focus of my work, and who probably now thought I had a screw or twelve loose in my head.
I was mortified to say the least, but I still risked a glance his way. He was studying each piece, cataloging them in his mind, and not once did he turn his focus on me as he did.
“You felt it too, didn’t you?” Lindsay called out, her voice breaking through the resounding silence. She was speaking to Jay, and he seemed to realize it about the same time I did. His attention on her waned as his eyes slid to the side and met my own. Then he turned his attention back to Lindsay. “You did!” Her words were a hissed accusation. “You told me there was someone you couldn’t get out of your head when we first met. That was why you said it would be best if we were just friends. When I met Ever, you told me about the two of you, I thought you had been talking about her. I figured it was okay because she’s married to your brother. There was nothing for me to worry about. She wasn’t who you were talking about, were you?”
He shook his head indicating, no. Lindsay’s shoulders started to shake as she stood there and cried. Jay made no move to go to her and I felt as though I was glued to the floor. “That’s why you didn’t want to come here tonight to share our news, isn’t it?” My eyes widened as she said that. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Jay that time. I wasn’t sure if his answer would make me happy or disgust me. “She really is your soulmate, and now I’m standing in the way with your baby in my belly,” she cried. “Everything is just repeating again.” Those last words made no sense as she wailed them out.
“You’re not standing in anyone’s way, Lindsay,” I tried to reassure her. “We were never together. We never even spoke more than a handful of words to one another.”
“I am! Don’t you see? God, Christina, why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were already dating him for a month before you brought him by my old place. You never even sent a picture of him before. Besides, what did you expect me to say? You can’t have him because I saw him first while weeping over my dead husband’s grave?”
Lindsay’s color drained as I spoke. Devastation flashed across her face before she turned to Jay. “You were going to break up with me. The day I told you about the baby,” she clarified. “I saw it in your eyes. When you said we needed to talk…” He didn’t say anything to confirm or deny it. Instead, he stood there watching her react to everything.
“Oh God!” She cried out again, getting her confirmation through his silence. There had been no denial on his part. “I need to go home. Please, take me home, now.”
“Lindsay,” I called out to her.
“No.” She held up a hand to shush me. “I know this isn’t your fault, but I can’t look at you right now, Christina. It’s too much. I already felt bad, and now I just have to feel worse because karma is a massive bitch.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that either. It didn’t really matter as I watched her and Jay both leave my apartment wordlessly. There were no promises of ‘see you later’ or ‘goodbye’ as they left. One minute they were there, then the next they were gone, and I heard the loud pipes of his motorcycle roar as they took off.
I know it’s horrible to think things like this. I know it like I know that I will probably never have a happy moment in my life without someone leaving it, and still, there was a moment once they walked through that door where I sent a wish up to the stars in the sky that Jay didn’t belong to her. My mind sent out the thought that she didn’t deserve to have him. The jealousy that waged a war inside of me rattled at the cage I’d kept it contained with and reminded me of all the times I’d been jealous of her easy friendship with my husband when he’d been alive. It reminded me that she knew I had a soulmate out there, and for the briefest of moments I wondered if she knew. Maybe at some point, she had peeked at my art and she knew his face already when she had met him. Vile thoughts rolled through my mind before I managed to shut it all down. That was why everyone ended up leaving me the way they did. I was not the type of person worth sticking around for. Everyone else knew it, and now, my own thoughts had betrayed me to myself. I was a horrible person for wishing her out of the picture.
I vowed to give her a little time and space before I tried to fix things with us. I wondered if they would be manageable anymore or if today had been the end of us that I hadn’t seen coming.
Chapter 15
Death’s Ride
J-Bird
Christina took off out of the apartment like death himself was chasing on her heels. I couldn’t blame her. I’d basically done the same thing when Lindsay had given me her ‘good news’ too. Lindsay just stood there for a minute watching as the door slammed shut behind her friend. Then she turned in a circle taking in the living room and kitchen area that surrounded us.
“Something is wrong here,” she stated coolly.
“What do you mean?” I asked without sounding as curious as the question might otherwise convey. “I can get us a hotel, if you’re not comfortable staying the night here like you planned.” I offered only in order to get us out of this fucking awkward as hell situation.
Lindsay ignored my suggestion though. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the too-clean apartment. “She only cleans like this when she can’t focus on painting.” Her hand flew out to gesture around the room. “There’s no painting supplies anywhere.” She turned on her heel and started looking more closely at everything in the apartment. Then, she moved to the bedrooms. The first room was obviously the master. The bed still sat unmade, but everything else in the room was pristine. There were no clothes lying about, and more importantly, no painting supplies. “Nothing,” Lindsay chimed in, as if reading my last thought. She moved to the next door on the other side of the hall.
Before I could follow her, she opened the door and then gasped. By the time I caught up, Lindsay was just standing there taking in the room with her hands over her gaping mouth. “What’s going on?” I asked bef
ore I leaned in and looked over her shoulder.
“Holy shit!” I managed to get out as I realized the whole room was filled with images of me. There were canvases tossed aside, sketches strewn out on the bed, one unfinished painting of a frog on a lily pad sat on an easel in the corner, but otherwise every single surface that had been used to create art in this room had some form of me on it.
Lindsay ran inside, after collecting herself, and started dragging canvases out into the living room and kitchen. “Linds, what are you doing?”
“Oh! She’s going to answer for this crazy shit as soon as she gets back. What the hell, Jay? Has she been stalking you? What if you end up like your best friend and it’s all my fault? I introduced you to her.”
She hadn’t actually been my first introduction to the girl, but I didn’t bother telling her that. I was too preoccupied with everything I was seeing. The last canvas Lindsay had procured from the room was staring at me with eyes that spoke of a lost soul looking for its home. I fell into the emotion she managed to paint into them. There was a veritable sea of anguish and self-loathing mixed with loneliness I hadn’t been able to overcome. Maybe it was just me seeing what I wanted – what I truly felt – reflected back at me, but I didn’t think so. Christina had captured me, body, heart, and soul rendered in paint.
“Have you slept with her?” Lindsay’s accusation managed to tear me out of the fog I’d been in while staring at the painting of my pain.
“What? No. That’s fucking ridiculous. I only met her that one time you took me to her apartment.” It was true considering our brief interaction at the cemetery hadn’t included an exchange of names or anything else.
“She’s obsessed with you! I can’t believe this! Look at all of them.”
I did look. I was both intrigued and impressed at the level of detail she put into each one of them. If it were anyone else starring as her subject, I would have said this level of work belonged in a museum somewhere.
The Killing Ride Page 13
