The Genius and the Muse (19 page)

“Why does everyone say you’re such an asshole?” she finally asked after another round of crazy photo shoot stories. “Brandon Wylie talks about you like you're a total creep.”

He snorted. “Wylie… I'd like to think that's more a reflection on him than me. Though admittedly, I wasn't very nice to him. The asshole part? I’ve been told that I’m very… focused when I’m working; I'm sure I'm getting worse in my old age.” He smirked a little. “Plus, I’m loaded now, which means I can tell everyone to fuck off if they don’t like my stuff.”

He shrugged again. “I think celebrities think too much of themselves. I enjoy examining them. Sometimes, they really
are
quite beautiful, but often, their beauty is so fake. Like a thin layer of snow over a dirty street. I have no interest in taking a picture of the same nose sculpted by the same surgeon on five different actresses. It’s boring and more than a little insulting, if you think about it. Like they know better than we do what beauty is.”

“I’d never thought about it like that before.”

From there, Kate and Reed launched into a discussion of his work and how it related to her thesis project. He agreed to allow her to use some quotes in her published thesis, for which she was flattered and very grateful.

“Reed.” Kate paused, finally getting up the courage to ask what had been on her mind for hours. “Do you still have any pictures of Sam?”

He smiled. “Of course. Would you like to see some?”

“Very much.”

Reed stood and motioned her toward the walled-off area of the studio. Turning the corner, she saw a small living area containing a couch, a neatly made bed pushed into a corner, and bookcases which lined two of the walls. On the other two walls were picture after picture of Samantha Rhodes.

Some were art pieces, dramatically lit and processed, featuring O’Connor’s distinctive abstract style. They were stunning, and Kate recognized a few of them she had seen in exhibits and others that had been published. The rest were candid shots—all showing Sam’s face—where the blond woman was laughing, working, or often just looking into the camera with a soft smile and a warm look in her brown eyes. There were color prints and black and whites, and all of them captured her beauty in different ways.

Kate noticed an abstract canvas highlighted in the center of one wall. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it wasn’t abstract, just unfinished. She stared at it, finally recognizing the familiar lines and angles of the picture Dee had taken of them in college. Sam must have started it, but left it unfinished for some reason.

“Do you still have the picture? The one Dee took?” Kate asked softly, as she went to stand in front of the unfinished canvas.

Reed stood next to her, his right hand gripping his short hair, and the other hanging limply at his side as he stared at the unfinished oil painting.

“No,” he whispered. “I was so stupid. After the fight—after she left and she ripped up all her canvases, I lost it. I tore up all the prints I had of her. I tore up
that
picture without thinking.” He sighed deeply as he looked at the painting. “So stupid. I could reprint all the ones I had taken, but I didn’t have the negative for that one.”

“Why didn’t you ask Dee for another copy?”

“I didn’t really deserve another copy, did I? This is all I have left. It’s not complete, but I love it.”

Kate looked at him and tears threatened her eyes when she saw the sadness and resignation on Reed’s face. She reached over and took his hand, squeezing his fingers in her own, and she felt him squeeze back lightly.

“Do you think she still has hers?” she asked.

He stared at the unfinished oil.

“Maybe.” He paused. “I hope so. Maybe if she did…”

Kate looked at him out of the corner of her eye as he trailed off.

“Yeah…” she murmured. “Maybe.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Crestline, California

July 2007

“
Y
ou should call him.”

“What would I say after a year, Suz? What could I possibly say to make things right again?”

Susan scowled at Sam as they sat on the front porch of their grandfather’s cabin on the lake, watching the sun set over the mountains. An owl hooted in the pine trees surrounding them, and she could hear trout jumping in the twilight.

“Say you’re better! Say that the idiot doctors should have warned you about depression when you lost the baby. Say that you want to come home.” Susan grabbed her cousin’s hand and whispered desperately. “Say you forgive him, Sammy. Say you love him. I
know
you still do.”

Sam dashed the tears from her eyes and pulled her hand away. “I forgive
him
?” she hissed. “I’m the one who was so messed up.
I’m
the one who flipped out when I knew how stressed out he was. He’d been holding me together for so long…” she whispered, shaking her head. “I saw the look on his face as soon as he kissed that stupid girl, and I completely lost it instead of talking to him like a rational person. All—
all
my canvases—” She choked, and the tears ran down her face.

After Sam had shown up at Susan’s the previous summer, her cousin finally grilled her about how she’d been coping. Sam knew her work had dropped off. That she was sleeping more than normal and dropping weight, but she was just never hungry. She’d had no perspective from the dark hole she found herself in. Susan, who had grown up with a mother who battled clinical depression, recognized the symptoms almost immediately.

‘Sam, it’s me. Will you please talk to me? I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? Aren’t you even willing to listen to me? I don’t want to apologize to a machine.’

After a difficult conversation with a lot of yelling on Susan’s part, which was mostly met by detached numbness on Sam’s, she had agreed to go to a doctor in Southern California. Together, they began to get a handle on the illness that should have been dealt with months before.

‘Please, pick up the phone, baby. We need to work this out. We can work this out, Sammy. Just… pick up the phone. Please.’

Though she’d been getting better and her doctor was pleased with her progress, Sam still refused to even talk with Reed on the phone when he called. She knew the things she’d said had been unforgivable, and she was worried what else she might say if she got too upset.

Reed had called the house daily for weeks, finally leaving lengthy phone messages when she refused to answer. At first they were heart-rending, then they were resigned. Finally, after months of Sam ignoring him, Reed became angry.

‘That’s it, huh? Six years, but you’re willing to just throw it away like this? You’re so fucking stubborn. Why am I even bothering to call anymore? Why don’t you tell me? Tell me, Samantha!’

Sam knew he still called Susan occasionally to make sure she was okay, but she’d forbidden Susan from revealing how bad the depression had been. Eventually, the phone calls had petered off, and Susan heard from Lydia that Reed had been seeing other people.

She told herself that it was good.

“Sammy, you
weren’t
a rational person. You were clinically depressed. You need to tell him that. He's never known the whole story, and it’s not fair. He needs to hear it from
you
. Don’t you think he would want to know?”

Sam dashed the tears from her eyes. “You don’t get it, Susan. You weren’t there. I said such horrible things. Awful things. Things I knew weren’t true. And I said them anyway. You can’t unsay things like that.”

“Please talk to him; you know he would understand.”

Sam shook her head. All she could hear was Reed pleading for forgiveness as she ripped her canvases apart. Then the crash of the light kits and the eerie silence that followed.

“I told him I didn’t need him,” she whispered. ”That he could never give me what I needed, and that he was holding me back.” She choked on her tears as she continued. “I told him it was a good thing I lost the baby, because he was too self-centered to be a father.”

She heard Susan gasp as the tears rolled down her face. “Sammy—”

“How on earth could he still love someone who would say that to him? How could he even look at me again?” Sam stood, pacing back and forth on the porch as she stared at the full moon rising over the mountains. “He deserves to be with someone who would never say something like that.”

Sam turned to her cousin with pleading eyes. “I
know
he still feels guilty, but that will pass, and he'll find someone who’s
good
for him. Who’s healthy and whole. Didn’t Javi tell Vanessa he was seeing that performance artist?”

Susan snorted. “Yeah, she also said she had to restrain Javi from flying up to New York so he didn’t kick the shit out of Reed.”

“That’s not fair,” she whispered. “He deserves to be happy.” She nodded. “He’ll find someone to make him happy.”

“
You
make him happy.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t. I hadn’t made him happy in months.”

“That’s not true. You loved him. Even when you were sick, you loved him, and he knew that.” Susan came to stand behind her and put her arms around Sam’s waist. She had lost so much weight, she almost felt like Susan could snap her in two.

Her cousin leaned her chin on Sam’s shoulder as they looked out at the dark lake. The stars reflected off the cold water, and it reminded Sam of the lake in the middle of Central Park where Reed liked to take pictures. He had sent her one the previous month. It was just a snapshot, but Sam had taped it to the fridge along with all the other random pictures of the city Reed kept sending.

“Don’t you love him anymore?”

“Of course I love him.” Sam shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ll
always
love him.”

“So why—”

“He deserves better than this mess.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Pomona, California

July 2010

K
ate let herself into the warehouse late on Thursday night with the key Javi had given her, quietly picking her way through the studio toward the small office in back. None of the lights were on, and she didn’t hear music blasting, so she guessed he had gone home for the night.

She’d driven directly from the airport, thankful that she had been able to sleep on Susan’s plush private jet. She was on her way home when she remembered one of her lenses was still in Pomona, and she needed it the next morning.

Kate wasn’t tired, despite the time change, and she hummed happily as she maneuvered through the scrap metal that littered the floor. She smiled at the thin path Javi always seemed to clear for her leading toward the back office. She wondered if he even realized he did it.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what Reed said about him. Was she really the only other artist he had ever let use his studio? She knew she was fascinated by him. Did he really see her as more than a kid he was helping out as a favor to Dee?

Kate picked up a worn work shirt that had fallen to the ground and draped it over the back of a chair. Javi often stripped down to just an undershirt after he finished working, sweat pouring off of his arms and back from the heat of the torch and the weight of his leather sleeves. She flashed to the memory of him the week before, standing over the beginnings of a new piece wearing only a pair of jeans, his cowhide chaps, and a sweat-soaked t-shirt. The sculptor had caught her eyes and stared at her. Kate had to fight the urge to grab her camera.

No man had ever affected her the way Javi did. She was past trying to deny it or try to reason through it. He had become her fascination. He may not have been classically handsome, but something about the rough sculptor drew her in.

“Like a moth to a flame.” She sighed as she pried open the door.

Kate turned the lights on in the office and was looking through her bag of lenses when the door slammed open. She gasped as she stepped back, and her foot twisted in the leg of the chair behind her, causing her to stumble and fall. She landed with a small ‘oomph’ as Javi strode into the room.

“Shit, Katie! What the hell are you doing here? I thought someone was robbing the place!” He blinked at her in confusion and tossed aside the length of steel pipe he’d been holding.

She scowled as she rubbed her forehead where she’d bumped it on the desk. “I was just getting a lens! I didn’t think you were even here. All the lights were off.”

He knelt beside her and pushed her hair back to look at her forehead. “I was working late,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I crashed on that bed I have in the back. Did you hit anything else or just your forehead? Let me see. It’s not bleeding, but you’ll have a bump.”

Javi pushed the chair back and disentangled her ankle with gentle hands. He was bare from the waist up, and Kate’s eyes were drawn to the defined muscles at his waist and abdomen.

“N—no,” she stuttered as she took in his brightly painted chest. “I’m fine.” Most of his tattoos were flames. She had examined the blue and green patterns on his arms and shoulders, but had never seen the bright red and gold fire that licked up his torso and spread over his chest. She couldn’t stop staring.

“You sure you’re okay?” He frowned at her blank expression, and the color rushed to her face. He glanced down at his naked chest, as if just realizing he was only half-dressed. “Oh, sorry. I’ll, uh… I’ll go put a shirt on. I was sleeping.”

“It’s okay. I’m not—I mean… they’re beautiful.” She blushed even brighter when she realized he had caught her staring at his chest. “Your tattoos. I’ve never seen all of them. They’re… beautiful.”