I don't know why I'm still sitting here. Maybe it's the deadline hanging over my head. Maybe it's the same old weight pressing on my chest like it always does. The canvas stares back at me — blank, silent, uncaring. Kinda like the rest of the world.
I light a cigarette, even though it's already my fifth for the night. Or morning. Or whatever time it is. Honestly, time's a suggestion these days.
Then Reid decides to open his mouth.
"You two fucked or something?"
I blink, slow, confused. "What?"
"Neil," he says, like it's obvious. He's leaning against my table like he owns the place, like I somehow invited him into my personal circle of hell. "You and him. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the way he acts around you. It's creepy."
I snort. "Jealous?"
That smug expression he always wears twitches, the smirk cracking at the edges. For a second, there's something almost wounded in his eyes, but he covers it up quick — he's good at that. Always has been.
"Of him?" Reid scoffs, a bitter laugh slipping out. "Hell no."
But he is. Not of Neil exactly — but of what I have. What I waste. The name. The attention. The expectation. The goddamn ghost of my mother looming over everything I do. And the worst part? I never asked for any of it.
"Relax," I mutter, flicking ash onto the floor. "I don't have the energy to screw anyone these days."
"Doesn't look like you have the energy to paint either," he snaps back.
There it is. The bite. Classic Reid. I should've seen it coming.
"You come here to babysit me or what?" I ask, raising a brow.
Reid crosses his arms, jaw clenched tight enough to crack bone. "I came here to tell you to back off."
I stare at him. "Excuse me?"
"This competition," he says, voice low, sharp, like a blade against my throat. "Withdraw."
A humorless laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. "You're joking."
"I'm not."
"Why?" I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "So you can finally win something for once?"
He flinches, just barely. Most people wouldn't catch it. But I've known Reid long enough to recognize that crack in his armor.
"This isn't a joke, Charssein," he snaps. "You don't even care about this. You never did. And yet—" he gestures towards the empty canvas, the crumpled sketches on the floor, the cigarette burns on my table, the room stinking of nicotine and old paint. "Everyone's still obsessed with you. Even after everything. You'll probably win this too."
"You think I asked for that?" I ask quietly.
"I don't give a shit what you asked for," Reid snarls. "People like me — we work for it. We bleed for it. And people like you… you stumble through life drunk, high, half-dead, and they still pick you. Because your mother was a goddamn legend. Because you've got her eyes, her name, and the whole world is still waiting for your next masterpiece born out of whatever personal breakdown you've got lined up this week."
There's a lump in my throat I refuse to acknowledge.
I lean back, letting his words hang between us, sour and heavy.
"You think I wanted this?" I whisper, my voice cracking on the edges. "You think it's easy being her son?"
Reid stares at me, and for a moment, the anger falters. There's something else there. Guilt. Regret. Something old and bleeding.
"I don't know what you wanted, Charssein," he says, softer this time. "But you had it. You always did. Ever since we were kids. Remember those summer workshops? When our parents made us paint still life bullshit and you finished yours in ten minutes and it still looked like something they'd hang in a gallery?"
I do remember. I remember the way the instructors fawned over my work, the way Reid's jaw clenched every time they praised me. How his father's face darkened, how his mother's eyes dimmed.
"I remember," I murmur.
"And I remember how I had to work twice as hard just to be noticed. And it was never enough. Never, because you were there." He laughs bitterly, dragging a hand through his hair. "And you didn't even want it."
Silence stretches between us like a tightrope.
"You think I don't know?" Reid adds, voice low and trembling now. "That every time you win, you feel nothing? That every piece you finish, you wish it was your last? I know, Charssein. I've always known."
That one hurts. It really, really fucking hurts.
I open my mouth to tell him to leave, to go to hell, to stop digging up graves we buried years ago — but then he says it.
"Besides," Reid adds, feigning casual. "You know where the winner's work is going, right?"
I shrug. "Some gallery?"
"The Merrowin Museum."
It lands like a goddamn bullet.
At first, it doesn't click. Just a name. A place. And then—
The glitch.
2AM.
This morning.
It slams into me so hard I forget to breathe.
I'd buried it — no, I'd lost it. When I woke up this morning, head pounding, taste of cigarettes and blood in my mouth, I couldn't remember a thing about last night. Just a weird headache and the vague sense that something was wrong.
And now it rushes back all at once.
The balcony. The cold. The flickering air. Neil standing there, his face warping, distorting like a bad VHS tape, eyes too bright, mouth moving out of sync. The world bending like glass under heat.
And then it was gone.
I'd passed out, maybe. Or the world had rewritten itself like it always does when things go wrong. I woke up and… forgot.
Until now.
And Reid — dumb, oblivious Reid — just tore the scab off.
"You alright?" he asks, misreading the look on my face. "Didn't expect that, huh?"
I manage to shrug, face blank. "It's a museum, Reid. Who gives a shit?"
But my hands are shaking.
I shove them into my pockets.
"I figured that'd get your attention," he says. "You don't give a damn about art or legacy. But that place? Yeah. Thought so."
He has no idea.
I stare past him, heart pounding like something's remembered me.
Because if the Merrowin's where it started, maybe it's where I'll find whatever the hell is wrong with Neil. With me. With this place.
Maybe it's where I'll finally tear a hole big enough to see what's on the other side.
And no one, not even Reid and his decades-old resentment, is stopping me.
"Sorry, Reid," I say, moving past him. "Looks like you're gonna be second again."
His face twists in that way it always does — fury dressed up as smugness. But I don't care.
I've got something else to chase now.
And it's waiting for me at the Merrowin.
---
TO BE CONTINUE...