“Why?” I ask, the single syllable containing multitudes.
Aaiden turns back to me, his expression unreadable. “He said you needed to choose. He won’t force this final surrender.”
My hands shake as I fumble for my phone, pulling it from my pocket. The Heat app is still pulled up, and my thumb hovers over the “Add Contact” button, my hesitation lasting only seconds before I type in the number for the burner phone Ezra has been using.
The invite configuration screen offers various options for how much information to share, how much access to grant, and how many notifications to send.
I toggle every option to its maximum setting, granting him complete visibility into my approaching cycle.
No words.
No explanation.
Just the silent acknowledgment of my surrender. If he wants my broken pieces, if he wants to be the one to fuse me back together, he’ll have to come and claim me.
19
The thin fabric of my boxers chafes like sandpaper, but taking them off would mean admitting how far gone I already am. My flannel pants and cardigan lie discarded on the floor, stripped away hours ago.
The Rockford cleanup team has already come and gone, Harcourt’s body and vehicle disappearing as if they had never been there. There’s nothing left to give testimony to the violence that took place earlier in my shop.
Hours have passed since I sent the tracker invitation, and my body betrays me with each passing minute. Heat creeps beneath my skin, turning simple sensations into torment and thickening the air in my lungs.
I pace the length of my loft, bare feet slapping on hardwood floors strewn with charcoal dust and flecks of dried paint. My steps falter near the window, muscles trembling from exertion that shouldn’t be taxing.
When was the last time I ate? The kitchen counters hold evidence of a bowl with dried cereal dregs, an apple with two bites taken before my stomach revolted. Food turns to ash in my mouth, appetite buried beneath the body’s more primal hunger.
The clock on my nightstand announces another hour has passed, the numbers blurring as I stare.
My phone sits on the windowsill, screen dark and silent. I snatch it up, fumbling with the cracked surface, heart pounding as I check for notifications.
Nothing.
The Heat tracker app shows my invitation sent, received, but not accepted. Not rejected, either.
Did I not try hard enough to find myself? Did my capitulation end our game?
I rest my forehead against the cool glass of the window, searching the street below for any sign of him. The pavement remains empty save for strangers who hurry past.
“Come on,” I whisper, breath fogging the glass. “Don’t leave me like this.”
My legs can’t support me for long stretches anymore, so I slide down the wall, phone clutched to my chest. From this angle, I can see what remains of my frantic attempts to find myself amid the wreckage of discarded personas.
A painting pinned to the wall catches afternoon sunlight, not Ezra this time, but the Valenne.Anatomy of a Ghost. The real one, forgotten in my car for the months it sat in the Rockford Manor’s garage, brought up here the third time I ran from Ezra.
I had crawled across the floor two hours ago to retrieve it from its forgotten tube, needing to see if it still spoke to me. The canvas curls at the corners, yellowed with age, but the lines remain bold. Honest. A ghost captured in strokes that blur the line between presence and absence.
Beneath it sits a half-finished canvas, the beginnings of a self-portrait abandoned when I couldn’t capture what stared back from the mirror. Too many faces overlaid, too many years spent becoming others.
With effort, I push up from the floor and stagger toward my workstation. My fingers find my grandfather’s brushes, arranged in perfect order by size just as he kept them. The bristles are worn from decades of painting masterpieces no one knew were his. I lift one to my nose, inhaling the lingering scent of linseed oil and turpentine that clings to the wood despite countless cleanings.
“What would you think of me now?” I ask the empty air, throat dry from thirst.
The brushes represent a different part of me than Knox’s glasses or Lorenzo’s scarves. They’re not masks to hide behind, but tools that shaped me. They taught me to see beauty in precision and patience. I set them down with care, having realized not everything from my past deserves the trash bin.
But what remains when the disguises are stripped away? I’ve spent days tearing down the structure of my existence, burning bridges to personas I’ve worn for years and building nothing in their place.
The loft echoes with emptiness, shelves bare where collections once stood, walls stripped of art that didn’t emerge from my hand alone.
