Chapter 20: Brushstrokes of Possession
The gallery hummed. It was a low, cultured sound, the clink of crystal against crystal, the murmur of appraisal rising like heat from the polished floor. Jade moved through it, a vessel of perfect professionalism, a tray of empty champagne flutes held aloft like a shield. Every laugh, every snippet of conversation about "raw talent" and "visionary brushwork" felt like a finger tracing the edge of a fresh wound.
She hadn't gotten a reply.
Her phone was a cold, silent weight in the hidden pocket of her tailored trousers. The text she'd sent—"The key won't get used, but your painting is the center of the show."—hung in the digital void, unanswered. It gave her no ground to stand on, no way to know if he’d seen it, if he was coming, if he was laughing at her presumption from across the city.
She turned to place the empties on a service table, and there he was.
Not a ghost. Substantial. Cole leaned against the velvet-draped wall, just to the side of a large abstract that mirrored the chaos in her chest. He wore a black shirt, untucked, the sleeves rolled to his forearms, the same shaggy hair falling into his eyes. But the playful glint was gone, replaced by an unnerving stillness. He was looking at his painting, at her painting, his profile sharp under the flickering chandelier light.
Then his head turned. His blue eyes found hers across the room, bypassing a dozen other faces. He didn't smile. He just pushed off the wall and began to walk toward her, the crowd seeming to part without noticing him.
Jade’s spine went rigid. She wiped her hands on her beautiful velvet dress, a useless gesture. He stopped close enough that she could smell the motorcycle leather and wintergreen on him, cutting through the gallery’s perfume.
“You got my text,” she said, her voice flat, a statement not a question.
“I did.” His gaze traveled over her, from her pinned-up dark curls to the stark lines of her long emerald green dress. “You clean up well.”
“I’m working, Cole.”
“I see that.” He took a half-step closer. The noise of the gallery seemed to recede, muffled by the intensity of his presence. “I also see you hung it crooked.”
She blinked. “What?”
A faint, dangerous smile touched his lips. He gestured with his chin toward the painting. “The left side is a quarter-inch lower. Drives me crazy.”
The utter normality of the complaint was a slap. She felt a hot flush of indignation. “It’s not crooked. I used a laser level.”
“Your laser level’s a liar.” He leaned in, his voice dropping. The warmth of his breath stirred the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. She hadn’t realized how exposed she felt there, with her hair up. “But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why?” Her whisper was frayed.
His fingers brushed that exact spot, the exposed curve of her neck beneath her pinned curls. The touch was feather-light, proprietary. A jolt, equal parts ice and fire, shot straight down her spine.
“I painted what I couldn’t touch,” he murmured, his lips so close to her ear they almost grazed the lobe. The words were not an apology. They were a confession and a claim, all in one. “But I’m done with that. Tonight, I’m taking back my muse.”
She jerked back, knocking into the service table. A flute teetered, chiming a high, desperate note before she caught it. “Get lost.”
He straightened, the smile finally reaching his eyes, but it held no warmth. Only a hunter’s focus. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do. You don’t get to do this. Not here.” She gestured wildly at the refined chaos around them. “This is my world. You don’t just… crash into it with your…” She trailed off, at a loss.
“My what?” He prompted, cocking his head. “My honesty? My bad habits?” He took the rescued flute from her numb fingers, set it down. “You liked my honesty just fine the other night. You liked a lot of things.”
The memory was a physical force between them—his hands, his mouth, Dex’s watchful shadow. It was Dex’s absence now that felt loudest. The lack of his counterweight, his solid, brooding gravity, left her untethered in Cole’s orbit.
“That was a mistake,” she forced out.
“It wasn’t.” His hand came up again, not to touch her, but to gently brush a stray curl from her temple. The intimacy of the gesture, here, in public, stole her breath. “And you texted me. You put that,” he said, pointing at the painting without looking, “on a pedestal. You wanted me to come.”
Before she could deny it, the crowd’s murmur shifted. A new energy rippled through the room, colder, sharper. Jade felt it on her skin before she saw the source.
Dex stood in the arched entranceway, backlit by the hallway lights. He was still in his leather jacket, his boots loud on the polished floor as he stepped inside. He didn't scan the room. His dark eyes, obsidian and unreadable, locked onto the two of them immediately, as if he’d known exactly where to look.
The air thickened. The polite art talk seemed to husk into a whisper.
Cole didn’t move away from her. He turned his head slowly, meeting Dex’s stare over Jade’s shoulder. His playful charm had evaporated entirely, leaving something stark and confrontational.
Dex began to walk toward them. Each step was deliberate, his presence carving a path through the silk and suede. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze flicking from Cole’s possessive proximity to Jade’s face, which she knew was flushed with a volatile mix of anger, guilt, and panic.
“Cole,” Dex said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in Jade’s sternum.
“Dex.” Cole’s reply was light, a veneer over steel. “You’re underdressed.”
Dex ignored him. His eyes, full of a silent, storming question, settled on Jade. “You alright?”
The question was a lifeline and a trap. It acknowledged she was in a situation that might require checking on. It forced her to choose a side in front of both of them.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Cole’s fingers, still lingering near her hair, curled slightly.
The three of them stood there, a silent, tense triangle in the middle of the sparkling gallery, the painting of the storm-born woman watching over them like a prophet of the coming chaos.
The three of them stood there, a silent, tense triangle in the middle of the sparkling gallery, the painting of the storm-born woman watching over them like a prophet of the coming chaos.
Jade felt the weight of both their stares—Cole’s challenging blue, Dex’s smoldering black—pressing on her skin. The polite hum of the gallery twisted into a taunt. This was her world, her carefully curated night, and they had both bulldozed into it, dragging the messy, visceral truth of the other night into the light.
She took a sharp breath, the air tasting of champagne and tension. "I'm working," she said, her voice clear and cutting through the silence between them. She looked directly at Dex, then at Cole. "And you're both in my way."
She took a deliberate step back, breaking the triangle. The movement was final. She smoothed the front of her emerald green dress, a gesture of pure, defiant reclamation.
“Enjoy the art, gentlemen.”
She didn't look back. She walked toward the curator, toward the clinking glasses, toward any conversation that wasn't about possession or crooked paintings. The click of her heels was a metronome, measuring her escape. Each step was an effort of will, her back feeling unbearably exposed, expecting a hand on her shoulder or a called-out word.
Neither came.
Only the muted gallery sounds followed her. She accepted a glass of water from a passing waiter, her fingers trembling slightly on the cool crystal. She forced herself to take a sip, to nod at a patron's comment about the sculptures, to pretend her pulse wasn't hammering in her throat.
From the corner of her eye, she saw them. Still standing where she left them. Cole had turned fully to face Dex, his posture loose but coiled. Dex hadn't moved an inch, his arms crossed over his leather jacket, a solid wall of grim silence. They were talking now, their voices too low to hear, but the aggression in their stances was a language of its own.
A tight laugh burst from a group nearby, startling her. She finished the water, the ice clinking loudly. She needed air that didn't smell of their conflict.
She slipped toward a service door marked 'Exit', pushing it open into a stark concrete hallway lined with stacked crates. The sudden quiet was a relief. She leaned against the cool wall, closing her eyes, listening to the thump of her own heart.
The door swung open again.
She flinched, expecting Cole's smirk or Dex's brooding presence. It was Leo, the assistant, looking harried. "Jade, there you are. The owner wants to introduce the Cole piece to the press cluster in five. You know the most about it."
She opened her mouth, a refusal already forming. I know nothing about it, she wanted to say. It's a violation set in acrylic.
"Sure," she heard herself say instead. "Five minutes."
Leo nodded and vanished back into the swell of noise. Jade pushed off the wall. She had to go back in. She had to stand in front of that painting and talk about its composition, its emotion, its artist, while the artist and his best friend silently warred over her in the crowd.
She re-entered the gallery just as a wave of laughter erupted from near the painting. Cole was holding court now, a fresh champagne flute in hand, charming a small circle of older women. He gestured flamboyantly at the canvas, saying something that made them titter. He was performing, the playful mask firmly back on.
Dex was gone. Or so she thought. As she moved closer to the press area, she saw him. He was leaning against a far pillar, half in shadow, watching Cole's performance with a chilling detachment. His eyes tracked across the room and met hers. Held. There was no smile, no nod. Just a slow, deliberate once-over that felt more intimate than Cole's touch had been.
Then he pushed off the pillar and melted into the crowd, heading toward the main doors.
"Jade, ready?" Mr. Armitage boomed, his hand on her elbow, steering her toward the waiting journalists and their recorders. She was positioned directly beside the painting, its chaotic energy now feeling like a shout in the small, formed circle.
She began to speak, her gallery-trained voice automatic. "The piece explores the tension between form and chaos, using the urban landscape as a psychological mirror..." As she spoke, she saw Cole catch her eye over the shoulders of the press. He winked.
Her sentence faltered. The journalists leaned in.
At that moment, from across the room, there was a sudden, discordant crash of shattering glass. Every head swiveled. A waiter fumbled with an empty tray near a sculpture, red wine spreading like a wound across the pale floor.
In the instant of distraction, Cole was there. He’d closed the distance silently. His lips brushed her ear as the room’s attention fixated on the spill.
“He’s leaving,” Cole murmured, his voice barely a breath. “I’m staying. Your move, Jade.”
Then he was gone, moving to help the flustered waiter, the charming guest once more. She was left staring at the dark stain seeping into the pristine floor, her curated words dead in her mouth, the echo of his challenge and the vanishing trace of Dex the only things left in her mind.
She was left staring at the dark stain seeping into the pristine floor, her curated words dead in her mouth, the echo of his challenge and the vanishing trace of Dex the only things left in her mind.
A raw, vivid anger ignited in her chest. It wasn't just about them. It was about the fucking floor. "Goddammit," she hissed under her breath, already moving.
She snatched a stack of clean bar towels from a service station, her heels clicking a furious rhythm on the concrete. She pushed past a clump of startled patrons, dropped to her knees beside the spreading burgundy pool, and started soaking it up. The cold, wet stain immediately soaked through the knees of her expensive velvet dress.
"Jade, the staff can—" Leo started.
"I've got it," she snapped, not looking up. The coarse fabric scrubbed at the polished surface. Motherfuckers. Do they realize how hard this floor is to clean? Each swipe was a revenge for the silence, for the wink, for the weight of the key in her purse.
She worked with a violent efficiency, her movements sharp and final. The physical act grounded her. The wine was just wine. The floor was just a floor. She could control this. She could fix this stain. Cole's painting watched from the wall, a silent judge. She ignored it.
When the last pink smear was banished, she stood up, the damp towels a heavy bundle in her hands. Her knees were soaked and cold. The curator gave her a tight, approving nod from across the room. Work. This was work. She was staying.
She dumped the ruined linens in a soiled bin and walked, not toward the bathroom to check her dress, but straight to the main control panel for the lighting. She needed a task with consequence. Her fingers flipped switches, adjusting the focus of the track lights. She drowned Cole's painting in a sharper, cooler light, killing its warm, intimate glow. It became a clinical specimen under her command.
"Your text."
The voice came from directly behind her, close enough to feel. Dex. He hadn't left. He was a ghost in the machinery, leaning against the wall next to the electrical panel.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She didn't turn. "Which part?"
"The part about the key." His voice was low, a gravelly rumble meant only for her. "You meant it."
It wasn't a question. She finally looked at him. He was studying her face, his own a mask of hard angles in the technical half-light. "Yes."
He gave a single, slow nod, his dark eyes unreadable. "Good."
That one word unspooled something tight in her gut. Was it approval? Relief? A closing of a door she hadn't meant to open? Before she could decipher it, he spoke again.
"He won't stop," Dex said, his gaze cutting toward where Cole was now laughing, charming a new circle. "That painting wasn't an end. It was a starting gun."
"I didn't ask him to paint me."
"You didn't have to." Dex pushed off the wall, his leather jacket creaking. "You're a flash of color in a grey world. He's gonna chase that. So would anyone."
He looked at her, really looked, his eyes tracing the damp patches on her dress, the determined set of her jaw. "You should get the fuck out of here, Jade. This isn't your scene."
“You should really shut the fuck up.” She snapped. “You can’t tell me what to do, Dex. You do not know me. Leave. Both of you.”
The words hung in the air between them, sharp and final. Dex didn’t flinch. He just watched her, his expression shifting from its usual brooding detachment to something harder, more analytical.
A waiter passed with a tray of empty flutes, the clinking glass sounding absurdly loud.
“You’re right,” Dex said, his voice lowering even further. “I don’t know you. But I know that world.” He nodded toward the chattering crowd, the affected postures. “And I know him.” This time the nod was a minute jerk of his head toward Cole, who was now signing a brochure for a delighted older woman. “You think this,” he gestured between the three of them, “stays in some clean little box? You think he paints that,” he flicked his eyes toward the stormy canvas, “and it’s just art?”
“It’s my job,” she insisted, her voice cracking.
“And we’re in the way of it,” he finished for her, not unkindly, but with a brutal clarity. “That’s what you’re really saying. This,” he said, his leather-clad arm making a small arc to encompass the gallery, the painting, Cole, himself, “is a mess on your nice clean floor.”
Jade stared at him, the truth of it dousing her anger in cold recognition. The wine stain. The confrontation. Cole’s performance. It was all a series of spills, of chaotic marks on the pristine surface of the life she was trying to build here. A life of polished floors and laser-leveled paintings.
“So leave,” she whispered, the fight draining out of her, replaced by a hollow fatigue.
Dex took a step closer, invading the little pocket of empty space she’d carved for herself near the lighting controls. The scent of him—oil, cold night air, leather—was suddenly overwhelming.
“He won’t. And if I leave, it’s just you and him in this.” He let that sink in for a beat. “You sent that text for a reason. You hung that painting for a reason. It wasn’t just professional.”
She had no retort. The hum of the gallery’s climate control seemed to fill her head.
“You feel like we’re trying to get you fired?” Dex asked, his eyes searching hers.
The question was so blunt, so exactly right, that it stole her breath. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
He leaned in, his mouth nearly brushing her ear. His voice was a rough whisper, devoid of its earlier calm. “We don’t want your job, Jade. We want you. And we’re not the kind of men who ask nicely twice.”
“Yes, I’m aware. You made that clear at the fucking club. Where you both trapped me in a storage room. Fuck. Off.”
Jade turned on her heel before Dex could respond, the words still vibrating in the space between them. The damp velvet of her dress clung coldly to her knees as she strode away, her vision narrowing to a tunnel leading toward the gallery’s rear exit. She didn’t look back. She pushed through a heavy fire door, the mechanism groaning, and stumbled into the quiet, industrial chill of the loading dock.
The night air was a slap. It smelled of wet asphalt and distant garbage. She wrapped her arms around herself, the fancy dress suddenly laughable against the concrete reality.
She leaned against the cold brick wall, letting it leach the heat from her back.
The door opened again.
“He’s pissy,” Cole said, his voice casual as if commenting on the weather. He leaned against the wall a few feet away, digging a pack of cigarettes from his jacket. “Took off. Gunned it out of the parking lot like the devil was chasing him.” He offered the pack to her.
She ignored it. “You should go too.”
“Nah.” He lit a cigarette, the flare illuminating his sharp features for a second. He exhaled, the smoke blending with her visible breath. “You’re out here without a coat. Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t freeze your ass off.” He shrugged out of his jacket. It wasn’t heavy leather like Dex’s; it was a worn denim thing, lined with flannel.
“I don’t want it.”
“Your chattering teeth say otherwise.” He didn’t move to put it on her. He just held it, draped over his arm. “Look. The painting.”
“Don’t.”
“I have to.” He took a drag. “I saw you, that first week you moved in. Carrying that box of sketchbooks up the stairs. You were muttering to yourself, pissed off at the world. The light from the window was hitting your hair, and you just… glowed. I hadn’t touched a brush in a year.”
The confession landed softly in the cold air. It felt truer than anything else he’d said tonight.
“You didn’t know me,” she said, but the anger was draining, replaced by a weary confusion.
“I know that,” he said, his tone losing its playful edge. “That’s the point. I painted what I saw, not who you were. The energy. The… potential.” He flicked ash. “Then I met you. And you were funnier. Smarter. More infuriating. The painting was wrong the second I finished it. It’s just a ghost.”
Jade looked at him, really looked. The performer’s charm was gone. This was the man with paint-stained knuckles. This was the substrate. Her throat felt tight.
“Dex is right,” she whispered. “This is a mess.”
Cole nodded slowly, acknowledging the truth of it. “Yeah. It is. We’re a mess. He’s my best friend. And we both looked at you and saw the same damn flash of color.” He finally moved, stepping closer to drape the jacket over her shoulders. The denim was warm from his body, smelling of smoke and him. “He’s gone because I’m here. And I’m here because he left. And you’re out here because you’re smarter than both of us.”
She pulled the jacket around herself, the warmth a reluctant comfort. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you get to choose the mess, Jade. Or you get to walk away from it and go back to your clean floors.” He dropped his cigarette, grinding it out with his boot. “The guy in the painting, the one who saw that flash? He hopes you choose the mess.”
“Really?” she almost laughed. “I get to choose the mess. I get to choose the mess after you and Dex took turns fucking me.”