Chapter 15
Veronica
I’d forced Georgia to go back to her place without me. She’d insisted on babysitting me after our breakfast – a slurped up meal of McDonalds because I was in the mood for fatty burgers and salty fries – but I needed space.
I’d have to pack up my shit and get ready to leave. Organize my life, what was left of it, into boxes and mark them up.
Art Stuff. Failure Stuff. Bedroom Where Carter and I Fucked Stuff.
I walked down the street, sticking to the sidewalk. I was a couple blocks from my apartment and the area brimmed with art galleries and museums, little parks, and the smells of art. That was what it smelled like to me, anyway.
SoHo was my kind of place. Except, it wasn’t anymore. I passed the glass front of another gallery, SoHo Arts Mélange, and did a double take. What the actual fuck? That was one of my paintings! One of the paintings that’d gone missing last week.
I froze on the sidewalk. The nerve of that mother fucker. The sheer fucking nerve. I positively seethed.
Jackson had stolen one of my paintings – one of my, “ugh, can’t you do better than that?” – paintings and put it up in an art gallery for sale.
This was the straw that broke the damn camel’s back. I’d lost my apartment. Lost the man I’d fallen for, albeit a forbidden relationship, and had all my underwear stolen in the last week. I wasn’t about to let that asshole take money right outta my damn pocket.
I clenched and unclenched my fists. Huffed out a breath through gritted teeth. “Jackson,” I growled.
I walked up to the art gallery and shoved open the glass door. The pale white marble counter against the wall was empty of a receptionist. My painting glared at me from the wall. It was a self-portrait, or an artistic take on one. There was everything of me in it – my insecurities and doubts, my determination.
“Bastard,” I muttered.
“What was that?” someone asked from behind the room divider at the far end of the gallery. A voice I recognized too well.
Jackson strode into view, adorned in black skinny jeans and a white shirt, with a checked black ascot tied around his neck. Jesus Christ, what had I ever seen in this guy? He made my skin crawl now.
Bad choices. That was what I should’ve named the self-portrait. Bad Choices A La Veronica.
“You,” I said and narrowed my eyes at him. “You stole that.” I jerked my finger toward the painting. “I want it back.”
“Lies,” Jackson said. “All lies.”
“Bastard, you know I’m not lying. You broke into my house and stole that along with my underwear and a shitload of other items. I should have you arrested, right now.”
“You lack proof, dear,” he said and shifted his ascot. His precious, precious ascot. “Haven’t you noticed the other paintings in here?”
I looked at the bland collection of landscapes and views of the city. I recognized those brush strokes and the boredom. These were Jackson’s paintings. “What, do you own this gallery or something? I can’t imagine the owner would let you put these pieces of shit on the wall without a bribe.”
“Feisty, today, aren’t we?” Jackson laughed and sauntered over to the reception desk. He sat down behind it and lifted a cup of mocha java crap to his lips. “What’s the matter, sweetie? You lose something?”
He couldn’t know I’d lost my apartment. He couldn’t. I refused to believe that the embarrassing news had somehow spread to my ex.
“It’s none of your business what happens in my life,” I said. “You’d better take that painting down.” I dug in my pockets for my cell, then gave it up. I hadn’t loaded Officer Brady’s number onto my phone, and I’d left my cell at home on the coffee table, anyway. Regardless, he was right. I didn’t have any proof this painting was mine.
If he’d stolen it, he’d likely removed my name from it, too. Erased part of me, just like that.
“You’re so pathetic.” Jackson stifled a yawn. “Seriously, I can’t believe I ever went out with you. You’re uninspired.”
“Uninspired. At least, I’m not a pretentious, talentless asshole in an ascot.”
“You can’t be in an ascot,” he said and slurped down his coffee. “Pathetic.”
Words he’d used on me before. I’d thought they wouldn’t sting as they had when we’d dated but they did. I hadn’t rid myself of those emotions that easy. Outside, lightning cracked gray clouds and thunder boomed. Fat droplets of rain descended, splatted the sidewalk and colored it in by patches.
I couldn’t leave without soaking myself but I couldn’t stay here with him.
“Want me to call you a cab?” Jackson stood up again and leaned on the counter.
“What is this?” I asked, softly. “What is this place?” I’d never seen it before. It was a new gallery, for sure. How could Jackson work here and have his art for sale at the same time? “Do you own this place?”
“No,” he said. “I might as well, though.” Jackson smirked. “That’s what happens when you know people in high places. Speaking of which, I heard you’ve met someone in a high place of late, too.”
We didn’t travel in the same circles anymore. Sure, people might’ve overheard me talking to Georgia about my brother-in-law but I refused that notion. No, this was something else. If he knew about Carter it was because he’d stalked me. He’d left that God damn note on my mirror.
“You leave me alone,” I said. “Do you hear me, Jackson? Don’t come near me again.”
“Uh, excuse me, but you’re the one who stormed in here and confronted me. I haven’t gone near you,” he said.
“The note.”
“What note?” he asked, but his grin said it all. He knew about Carter, he’d watched me again, maybe he even knew about the eviction.
The thunder rolled again and a flash speared the semi-darkness. The lights in the gallery were off, possibly because it’d been light before the storm had started or because Jackson wanted to freak me out.
He rose behind the desk and glared at me. “I want you to know that you’re nothing without me. Nothing. You need me to be special. You know that, right? I’m the one who gave you everything. I gave you the opportunity to show off your mediocre art.”
“Mediocre,” I said.
“That’s right. I made you, Veronica, and I can break you just as easily.” He clicked his fingers. “I will break you.”
The rain roared on the roof outside. It slammed into the sidewalk, now, pounding the concrete as if it meant it, as if the clouds had decided the earth deserved punishment and this was it.
“You can’t hurt me,” I said, but my voice wavered and betrayed the lie. He had hurt me before. He’d cheated and verbally abused. He’d done everything in his power to bring me down, and I’d never understood why until now.
My painting there, beside his. My art showing him up. My personality poured onto the canvas.
I was no Renoir but I made him look like a clumsy middle school art student. He hated me because I was better than him, and he wanted to break me so he felt better about himself. That was all there was to Jackson. He was an ascot-bearing ball of anxiety and insecurity.
In a weird way, I could relate to that – apart from the ascot part.
Jackson circled the desk and walked toward me. He stopped a foot away. His sharp scent, a mixture of lemon pledge and musky cologne, crossed the distance between us. He was meticulously clean, always had been, and I’d only realized it was psychotic behavior too late.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You’ve said that already,” I replied. The rain still hadn’t let up. “You bore me, Jackson. Your art bores me. Heck, it probably bores a lot of people. I could be a big pile of nothing, but it won’t change the fact that you’re a walking yawn waiting to happen.”
His lips twitched. I’d hit a nerve there.
He lurched forward, arms outstretched, and I whacked his hands away. Two vicious slaps.
“Ouch, Jesus!”
“Don’t touch me.” I turned my back on him and marched for the exit. I couldn’t believe this jackass was just down the road from my apartment. My once apartment. God, he was within walking distance of my home. No wonder he’d had such ease of access. How many times had he hovered outside? How many times had he watched me leave?
“Where are you going?” he called. “It’s raining out.”
“I’d rather drench myself and drown than spend another second with you.” I hissed it, then pushed open the door and strode into the deluge. Rain flattened my hair to my skull and poured down my face. It blinded me for a second.
I bowed my head and focused on the patch of concrete beneath my shoes. I had to get home and start packing.
The door of the gallery swung open and Jackson stood there, glaring at me. “I still have your painting,” he said, in what he probably thought was a menacing tone. Mocking, even.
“Keep it,” I yelled, over the downpour. “It’s the last piece of me you’ll ever get.”
I walked off, the weight of that painting on my shoulders.
I arrived home ten minutes later, drenched and shivering. I didn’t regret a second of that walk through the rain. It’d cleansed me in a way only nature could. It’d shown me that I could achieve a fresh start. I just needed the inspiration.
I stripped off my clothes and climbed into the shower. Immediately, my thoughts turned to Carter Jones and my sister. Was Jayne there with him now? Had they had sex? Did he still love her?
“Stop, stop, stop.” Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes and put the heat of the shower to shame. “He was never yours. He was never yours to start with so stop thinking about him. It was a mistake. That’s all it was. Just a mistake.” But the words didn’t ram home. I didn’t believe them.
I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. Steam misted the mirror in the bathroom and blocked my reflection. Thank God. I couldn’t bear seeing my smudgy mascara tears right now.
My cell tinkled to life in the other room, and I grabbed a towel off the back of the bathroom door, wrapped it around myself, then ran through to the living room. I grabbed it just as it stopped ringing.
I unlocked the screen and blinked at the five missed calls from Georgia. Of course, she’d called. She was worried. “I’m fine,” I lied, even though she couldn’t hear me and if she could she would’ve called me on it, right away.
I tapped through to my messages and stared at the one from Carter. Hope swelled. He wanted to go through with the divorce. To get rid of Jayne. If I let this feeling take hold of me, I’d never let go of what happened.
I had a choice: focus on Carter or focus on my future.
I dropped the cell on the sofa and went to my bedroom to get dressed.