Page 81 of Double or Nothing

Bryce has gone. Again. Maybe for good this time. And as for Jack… I don’t even know him. Not really.

When I step back into the studio and see the canvases, the ache shifts.

The paintings are still here, in testimony. Still breathing. Still mine.

And as I stand before them, alone in the wreckage, I realise something that makes my eyes sting.

Jack and Bryce might have left, for good, even if I didn’t want them to. Bryce may have come to his rational senses and legged it out of here with a what the fuck that can’t ever be undone.

But even if he has. Even if he retreats into the shell of sensible and Jack the casual jackass never looks my way again, the testament of the paintings will never go away.

What a beautiful memento.

It brings tears to my eyes.

And it only makes me adore the paintings even more.

Just like I adore the men who helped me make them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

BRYCE

My reflection in the elevator window says it all. Eyes bloodshot. Shirt collar sitting badly. Jaw shadowed with stubble that has no business being on my face on a workday, but I had no time to shave before I rushed from my place like a good boy to get to the office on time.

Shit. I’ve still got a faint smear of paint on my wrist. Alice’s paint. Alice’s yellow. Her wild, reckless, dawn-breaking yellow.

Fuck.

I lick it and rub at it with my thumb until the skin pinks up, evidence vanquished. Only it will never vanquish itself from the rest of me. Nothing about last night is going to disappear just because I want it to. No matter how hard Mr Safe and Boring scrubs the evidence away, the truth is still there, under the surface.

I fucked up.

Again.

Only this time, the stakes aren’t just a hurt heart and a few years of regret. This time there’s a career on the line. A reputation. A whole life painstakingly built from early starts, late finishes, perfect reports, perfect manners, perfect bloody everything.

But Alice.

God help me.

Alice.

Her laugh is still in my ears as I step out of the lift. Her studio. Her hands in the paint. Her eyes when she forgets the world exists. I can see her so clearly, lost in her flow. I can hear her from our days of youth, talking about colour like it’s a living language and we are the only ones who understand it.

I can see Jack, too. Obviously.

That arrogant bastard is imprinted all over my nerves. That grin. That voice. That infuriating certainty that life is only worth living if you’re standing right at the edge, laughing while the ground crumbles underneath you.

One of the most niggling factors is that I suspect he’s right, at least on some crazy level.

I shove that suspicion aside. It doesn’t matter what that casual jackass has to say on it. He’s not the one who has to deal with the consequences.

Jack is probably lounging around his penthouse as though detonating lives is a standard Sunday hobby of his, while I’m in the office with a heartrate on the verge of dangerous.

I stride along the corridor, attempting to look like my regular self, but it’s laughable. I can feel sweat gathering under my shirt.

Stupid.