Page 35 of Shattered

Right before I came, I opened my eyes, slamming my hands down onto the bed. This was ridiculous. No, it was fucking insane. No respectable woman would let herself be attracted to a murderer.

Did I evenwantto be respectable? What was my authentic self?

I couldn’t even imagine telling him off in my fantasies. I didn’t want to. I suppose it would have been easier if he were cruel to me, but he wasn’t. Danger leaked through every seam that wrapped around him and he could kill me at a moment’s notice, and yet, he didn’t. He encouraged me to figure out who I was.

And I felt better about myself than I ever had.

I wasn’t the disappointing daughter, or the art teacher, or the suspect of a crime. I was just me. The server from the Dahlia District who painted. The woman who dropped out of art school and still wasn’t selling her art. Who got face fucked in a private room at work because she was getting paid for it and the client indulged her desire to do breath play. The same woman who killed a man because he was threatening a woman, a friend, someone like her. I was a woman who knew what she wanted. To know this killer. To understand him. To figure out what it was that he saw in me.

I got up from bed, hastily rummaging through the closet to find a twenty-four by thirty-six canvas. I threw up my easel and got out my paints, forgetting the mess on the floor and the crappy lighting. There was no time to fuss with that, not when inspiration struck. With each brushstroke, I created a tree in a different style than before: bold outlines, rich with detail, green roots taking hold of the soil, then stretching out into a strong growth that spread its fingers into dry, dead branches, some of the twigs transforming into serpents’ heads. Life and death. Two knots in the wood signifying those cold eyes, watching me, daring me through every step I took.

As I painted a stroke close to the bulbous knot, a shadow moved across the bedroom, growing as it came closer.

Rourke.