The Art of You

“Hearing you talk about your past and men who broke your heart will make my trigger finger itchy.” Constantine always had a way with words. Like, direct and to the point.

“You may want to go, too.” Bella didn’t look up at me, but she was clearly talking to me. She tried to pull off unbothered, swiping her finger along the frosting of the donut.

And I wanted to be the one to suck it off, even if I did want to go. She was right. I was uncomfortable for too many reasons.

It didn’t help that I could feel my best friend staring at me as if he was considering taking the proactive route when it came to me. Kill me just in case I rolled the dice and gambled with his sister’s heart, becoming the next in line to break it.

“I’m fine,” I said, finally coughing up an answer. “I’ll stay.”

“While Hudson’s time with the Bureau was brief, I’m sure his training stuck with him, so it’s a good idea for him to stay.” Picking up on the tension in the room, Adelina employed a firm but polished tone as though she were trying to broker a peace deal.

Constantine dragged his hand along his bearded jaw, eyes on the floor. The dude was contemplating murder.

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the thorn in our sides finally removed himself from the room.

He was like a brother to me, but what brothers always got along? The growing problem continued to be how Bella was sure as hell not like my sister.

Adelina took a seat across from us. After a subtle throat clear, she clasped her hands on the white marble counter and asked, “Shall we start?” The moment her gaze swept to my face, I felt her second unspoken question hit me: Or is there air we still need to clear?

“Whenever Bella is ready.” Because I’d never be ready for a walk down memory lane regarding Bella’s past relationships. And yet, in the back of my head, some sick and twisted part of me needed to hear what she had to say. For instance, were my lips the last she’d touched like hers were for me?

“Go ahead.” Bella poked at the donut, adding more frosting to her finger, still not licking it off.

“Well, for starters, are you in a relationship now?”

I already knew the answer to Adelina’s question, even if Bella never explicitly told me. First of all, when would she have time to date? She was always working.

Secondly, no way would Bella be fucking with my head every hour of every day these last few months with her just-below-the-radar flirting and all of her read-between-the-lines remarks if she was seeing someone. The woman was trustworthy and loyal. So, no, the only guy in her life was me, which was problem number one. I couldn’t be her anything.

But here I am. Wanting to be her everything. To hang on to her every word. Make a list of targets to punish as needed while simultaneously growing nauseous thinking about the men who knew her body better than I did. Men who’d had the chance to wake up next to her. To see how the sunlight would catch in her hair in the morning. To brush their mouth over her smile before bed. To be the reason for her to smile in the first place.

I blinked my focus up to Bella, realizing I’d lost myself to my thoughts and didn’t hear her answer. And she must have said something because Adelina was on to another question.

“When was the last time you were in a relationship?” Before Bella could answer, Adelina quickly added, “Some of these questions may seem ridiculous and too personal, but in my experience, if anyone is watching you and they sent that photo, then it’s someone you’ve already met and know. Someone close to you. Whether that be physically in proximity, like someone living across the street, or a person you dated.”

“Like a long-term thing?” Bella made a hmmm noise as if feigning thinking, but there I was hung up on her word choice.

I was about to skip to my own line of questions if she didn’t answer soon, starting with: Who were you with for a short-term thing? And when?

“Nothing long-term since my ex last year. A few dates here and there since, but none that made it to a second. But it’s been”—she chose that exact moment to pull her focus from the donut and glance at me—“months since even that.”

I did the mental calculations, assuming those “months” were at least four since our kiss happened at the end of May.

For a woman who couldn’t be mine, we’d both done a bang-up job of remaining faithful to an imaginary relationship.

Hell, I hadn’t realized I’d been in one with her until this moment, but there it was. Clear as day.

The reason I turned down women’s advances at my bar was sitting next to me. The why I gave up my normal one-night stands and chose to read, play Call of Duty, or hunt predators at night instead was finally licking that frosting from her finger.

Did it take getting knocked in the head and smashing my face into a steering wheel to realize my disinterest in other women was because the only woman I wanted was my best friend’s sister?

“You okay?” Adelina asked, but I couldn’t acknowledge her or stop staring at Bella’s mouth as she sucked more of the frosting free.

Well, that’s it, I’m screwed. Because if Adelina wasn’t in the kitchen, I wasn’t sure if even Constantine being down the hall would stop me from begging this woman to let me put my face between her legs and eat her instead.

“Hudson?” Adelina mused, somehow reading my dirty thoughts. “You with us or lost in your head?”

I’m lost somewhere, all right.

I used my bruised forearm to press down on the erection in my jeans. There was something seriously wrong with me to get turned on right now. “What were we talking about again?”

“My sex life.” Bella cut off my oxygen supply with those three words. “Lack thereof, I should say.”

And the breath was back in my lungs. Doubtfully for long, given how much trouble I was obviously in with this woman.

“Dating apps? You ever use them? There are a lot of creeps lurking there. Any red flags?” Adelina asked Bella, reminding me of why we were here in the first place, which helped kill the bulge in my jeans a bit.

“No. No swiping left or right. No apps.” Bella pushed away the plated donut and propped her elbow on the counter, setting her chin on her palm. “Honestly, I haven’t encountered anyone new this year I could say would develop an unhealthy obsession with me.”

“Is there such a thing as a healthy obsession?” Where the hell did that come from?

Bella faltered, her arm collapsing at my question. She straightened and peered at me, eyes going up and down my body as if doing a quick inventory of my appearance. “Sure. Alessandro’s obsession with his wife. Enzo’s for Maria.”

Mine for you? No, that wasn’t healthy. It was forbidden.

“Okay, so no red flags from any new guys.” Adelina was the only one focused on the mission at hand, another reason she was wrong to include me in this conversation. “So, let’s talk about this ex, then. Has he made contact since you two broke up? Was it an amicable split?” Adelina drew Bella’s attention with those questions.

Bella brought her hands to her lap, and when I turned on my stool to get a better read on her, I didn’t like what I saw.

Nerves.

What was it she didn’t want to share?

My hard-on was now dead with concerns her asshole ex may be a problem, and she’d kept me in the dark about it.

“My brothers, not to mention this guy next to me, scared him off. But he only attempted to return to my life because he felt he needed me.” She kept her eyes on her hands.

“What do you mean?” I asked before Adelina could.

“You remember Pablo’s an artist, right? Well, when we broke up, he lost his ability to paint. He decided it was because he’d lost his muse. Me.”

I didn’t like where this was going, but I shut my mouth so she could continue. And so I could find out whether or not he’d be added to my shit list. The fact I didn’t preemptively have that asshole on it meant I’d lost my touch.

“Pablo approached me a few times this year, begging me to take him back. To, at the least, pose for him. He thought he needed me to become inspired again. He was always high when I saw him, and he usually didn’t press hard when I turned him down.” She held up both palms. “To be clear, I always said no. I felt bad for him, but I wouldn’t date someone simply so they could be artistically creative again.”

Pose? High? Usually? Usually meant there’d been a time he didn’t take no for an answer.

Adelina removed her phone from her pocket, presumably to take notes. “Please, continue.”

Bella turned on her seat, setting her hand on my chest while locking eyes with me. And there was no chance she’d miss the thunderous beats. “He’s more of a danger to himself, I promise.”

“Yeah, I’d say so. Because if I find out he set a hand on you, I’ll kill him.” I stood so fast the stool fell back, and Bella came up with me, keeping her hand in place.

Forgetting we weren’t alone, I waited for her to tell me more.

When she didn’t talk, I gritted out, “Does he need to die?” I’d only planned on a very unhinged conversation with the man for asking her to be his muse, but that very well might change depending on her answer.

“Like I said, he’s always been on drugs when he’s approached me.”

“And? Alcohol. Drugs. Neither are excuses.” I swallowed, becoming increasingly tense as I waited for her to share more.

“I know.” She removed her hand from my chest and looked at Adelina as if remembering she was there with us. “He’s not the one who sent the photo, though. He’s still in rehab. Because when he approached me the last time, he was on much heavier drugs than he’d ever used in the past, and he didn’t want to take no for an answer.”

My heart.

Fuck.

There it went. Out into the wild and to a lawless wasteland where rules wouldn’t apply.

“He was a mess. Desperate. And, um, my refusal to be his muse sent him over the edge. He grabbed me pretty hard.” She touched her arm as if remembering.

And now so was I, finding myself back in her office the day I’d noticed the mark and asked her about it. “The bruise you had in August . . .?”

She quietly stared at me, seemingly surprised I’d recall that moment. Of course I did. I paid attention to everything when it came to this woman.

“He shoved me to the ground, but the second he realized what he’d done, he took off. I called his mom that night to let her know I was worried about him, and she convinced him to check into rehab. So, I think we can rule him out. I didn’t want to bring this up because I didn’t want you to lose your mind. Or my brothers.”

I stepped back, my gaze shooting to the fallen stool, and I mindlessly righted it. “What if he has someone keeping tabs on you while he’s in rehab, and he discovered we’d been spending a lot of time together? He could be jealous.” I highly doubted this theory, but I had to be certain of his innocence when it came to the photo. “Pablo may have chosen to have someone deliver that photo because it was the only one he could find online of us together. He wanted to remove me from the picture to make his point. To scare you.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Bella lifted a brow.

No. But fucking A, I hate this man.

“I’ll look into him. Check who’s visited him as well. Obviously ensure he’s also still in rehab,” Adelina said softly, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours’ worth of seconds having stretched by.

“Thank you.” I nodded to Adelina, trusting her to handle Pablo’s innocence or guilt regarding the photo since this was her area of expertise.

Bella rubbed her hands up and down her denim-covered arms, keeping quiet.

“I wish you’d told me when this happened.” Defeat cut through my voice. “At least, told your brothers.” I slid the stool back in place beneath the marble overhang. “Things could’ve gone much differently with him, and⁠—”

“I know.” Tears filled her eyes, more than likely remembering Bianca now, the same as I was. “Secrets get people killed.”