Page 42

Sighing, my shoulders deflate as I cross the room to grab a stool from the neighboring station. Dragging it over with an obnoxious scrape that makes half the studio look up, Meg’s eyes narrow as I set the stool beside her. Bracing both my good hand and my injured one on her stool, I lean into her space and yank it a few inches to the side. She makes a startled sound, grabbing her bag to skid it across the desk as she’s moved without her consent.

“This is my spot,” I grumble, dropping onto the stool beside her and pulling the strap of my satchel off my shoulder. Meg raises a brow, appearing far more ready for this fight than I am. Why, today of all days, must she test me?

“I didn’t see your name on it.” Squinting against the throbbing behind my eye, I lift a finger to point at the pale stream cutting across the desk, spilling over the exact place I keep my sketchpad angled.

“It has the best light.” Half of it now falls across her side too, touching the stack of blank paper in front of her. She opens her mouth, probably to argue that I don’t own the sun, but Liz appears before either of us can make the morning worse. She’s carrying a stack of newspapers, her silver bangles clinking as she sets them down in front of Meg.

“For this session, I’ve found every newspaper article and headline I can about you. I’d like you to read through them all,” she smiles broadly. Meg’s face changes in an instant. Misery sinks through her blue eyes, her shoulders going rigid as a flicker of dread pulls her features tight.

“That literally sounds like hell,” Meg groans, dragging a hand over her face as she stares down at the stack. A low chuckle slips out of me before I can stop it. Call it karma for stealing my boyfriend without even trying. Paying me no attention, Liz places a thick black marker in Meg’s hand.

“As you go through each article, you can redact everything you wish wasn’t printed. Every label they’ve given you, all of the recognition they’ve given him. Cut it all out until only a version of the story you want printed is left behind.” Her eyes soften just slightly. “It’s your story, Meg. Fix it.”

The single second of humor I found dies a sudden and painful death. Liz’s instruction is simple, yet the meaning behind it is anything but. To physically redact the words she wishes were never printed, to take back control of her story. It’s a concept I’ve never even considered, always too fearful of the fallout for Everest. That’s how Nicholas keeps us both firmly under his thumb, using the other as leverage.

But Meg doesn’t have that same fear hanging over her. She has the opportunity to take all the ugly printed evidence of what happened to her, what’s been said about her, what was stolen from her, and strike it out. She has a chance to heal, one that I’ve continually tried to hinder.

At the front of the studio, Liz redirects the rest of us into our own work, but I don’t hear much beyond the scrape of chairs and the shift of paper as Meg uncaps the marker. The scent of ink cuts through paint and dust. I open my sketchbook so I’m not openly staring, but the page stays blank for longer than I’d like. My pencil hovers in mid-air, my hand aching, my mind refusing to settle. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her shift through the newspapers.

MISSING LACROSSE STAR FOUND ALIVE.

I read the headline at the same time she does, her fingers tightening around the marker. After a beat, Meg leans forward and makes her first strike. A harsh, bold line cutting through the text. Then another and another, soon covering more of the article than is left untouched. I can’t track the words quick enough, the ink erasing them before I get a chance to peek over her shoulder, but I know them anyway.

Traumatized survivor. Kidnapping victim. Broken athlete. All of the things Meg was before I set my sights on her. She continues, her wrist gaining confidence with every brutal stroke. Black ink spreads across the columns, sinking into the cheap newspaper paper until the original print becomes unreadable beneath her hand. There’s something violent about it, and I can’t help but consider what I would strike out if it were me. There wouldn’t be enough ink in the marker.

Eventually, I put one earbud in to make it look like I’m not watching her, though I totally am. Every once in a while, my arm brushes hers, and each time she stiffens for half a second before pretending she hasn’t noticed. It becomes a game of curiosity, wondering if I physically repulse her enough to shift down the bench. The answer is strangely no.

That curiosity only grows. I start picking up on finer details, like the angle of her wrist or the way her mouth tightens when she finds a phrase that cuts too deep. The tiny pause before she blacks out a name. The flex of her jaw.

This is the woman Everest loves. He may have loved me first, loved me in the dark, loved me through the worst pain and the greatest moments of euphoria, but that doesn’t change his admission. He loves her too. He’s drawn to her. He kissed her in the stadium and then crawled into bed with me.

As much as that thought drives the pencil into my page hard enough for the tip to snap, his honesty is a relief. At least we don’t have to tiptoe around, ignoring the obvious. At least he can start to be truthful with himself now. He can make informed decisions rather than act out of impulse, and so can I.

Meg is surrounded by the newspapers scattered across the desk now, some pages ripped from the force of the pen’s attack. Tilting my head, I wish I knew what she’s thinking. Is she vindicated and empowered? Is she struggling beneath the weight of the journalist’s judgement? Knowing Meg, and knowing Everest’s interest in her, I decide it’s the former. Her tenacity knows no bounds, as my efforts have proven. In trying to break her, all I’ve done is create a more determined ruin for Everest to deal with.

The air in my lungs empties out, the throbbing in my head intensifying, and soon, I can’t take her silence anymore. I have to know what she’s thinking. I have to understand her. My shadow stretches over the articles as I lean in, and her marker pauses mid-stroke. Meg glances up at me, her eyes instantly defensive.

“You never asked me,” I mumble under my breath. Her brows pinch.

“Ask what?” Sliding my sketchbook toward her, I open to a page I wish didn’t exist, but we both already know it does. There’s no use keeping it a secret anymore. I have enough secrets that are destroying my soul.

“About the paintings. I know you saw them.” I assess her closely, picking up on the flinch she tries to hide. “You never asked me about them.”

Sitting back a fraction, Meg shrugs indifferently, although she doesn’t look down at the page.

“I figured they…they should remain private.” Clearing her throat, I watch with keen interest as her bravado slips, and for some strange reason, it warms me. We’re all wearing masks here. We’re all hiding in plain sight. “And maybe I was scared of the answer, but now you’ve brought it up. Why did you paint me like…that?”

My throat constricts instantly. I expected the question, yet I never seemed to come up with an answer for it. Yet now I’m staring into her big blue eyes, and now I’ve set aside my pointless anger, the answer seems simple.

“Because that’s how you looked.” I doubt that’s what she wanted to hear, that the contorted bodies, bruised skin, and bent spines were how I saw her, but there’s no other reason. I studied her trauma, identified with it, and then recreated it. Resting my forearms on the desk, my fingers brush the edge of the sketchbook, and Meg slowly looks down.

The woman on the page isn’t flattering, and does nothing to capture Meg’s natural beauty. There’s no heart-shaped face, slightly upturned nose, freckles, or huge all-consuming eyes in sight. Instead, the figure is curled inward, her spine knotted too sharply, ribs shaded in shadowed dips, dark hair spilling forward like ink and tears mixing into a swirling dark pool. Around her, I’ve written the words I couldn’t stop seeing whenever I look at her.

Broken. Powerful. Splintered. Stubborn. Alone. Beaten. Obstinate. Crushed. Brave. Absent. Fearless. Dejected. Above it all, larger and bolder than the rest, the title she never truly lost is curved over her body. CAPTAIN.

“I draw what I see, not what I want. It started in rehab. Whilst you were fighting so hard to keep anyone out, you had no idea how much you were actually revealing. I saw it all.” The confession is quiet, but I suppose it’s a day for revelations. Meg’s eyes snap to mine, like a deer caught in the headlights as her reality changes around her.

“I…I didn’t know you even noticed me,” she mutters quietly. I could almost laugh. Noticed her? She’s been the bane of my fucking existence, and it suddenly occurs to me that in Meg’s version of events, this is the first real conversation we’ve ever had. Rolling my eyes, I grab a fresh pencil and add a new word to the page.