I blink. “That’s me. Who’s it from?”
He shakes his head. “No sender listed. Just said it was urgent—express delivery from the city.”
The wordsurgentandfrom the cityhit something in my stomach, a cold little knot tightening under my ribs. I nod anyway, sign the slip, and take the parcel from him. It’s heavier than it looks.
“Merry Christmas,” he says before heading back down the walkway.
I close the door and stand there for a second, the warmth of the house brushing against my back while the cold package presses into my hands.
The shape of it is wrong—or rather, too right. I know this size, this weight, the slight give of stretched canvas under paper.
My heart starts to beat faster.
I kneel down, my fingers trembling as I pull at the tape. The brown wrapping falls away in strips, the sound of tearing paper far too loud.
The breath rushes out of me.
It’s my painting. The woman in the shadowed light. Torn apart. Ripped straight through the middle, canvas fibers frayed and curling outward like a wound.
The pieces have been stuffed back together haphazardly, the paint cracked, the brushwork mutilated. Gold flecks cling to the shredded edges.
Something small slips free, fluttering to the floor. A folded note.
The handwriting is jagged and obsessive, carved into the paper with so much pressure it almost bleeds through.
You don’t deserve beauty when you’ve defiled yourself.
Beneath it—taped crudely to the bottom of the note—is a photograph.
For a moment, my brain refuses to understand what I’m seeing.
Then it hits.
Me. Kneeling. My hair tangled, my mouth open, Cast’s hand tangled in my hair. The image is blurred around the edges, taken from a distance. But it’s unmistakable.
Every drop of blood in my body feels like it freezes, then starts to boil all at once. My breath stutters out of me, shallow and uneven.
The lights from the living room spill faintly down the hall, golden and warm, and I can hear laughter again—Vincent’s low baritone, the children’s bright voices. The normalcy of it feels cruel.
My shaking hands fold the photo back into the torn wrapping. I can’t think. I can onlymove.
Not here. Not in front of them.
I shove the painting and the note back into the paper, fold it once, twice, three times until my knuckles ache, and push the whole thing into the hall closet behind the coats. The scent of cedar and dust fills my nose as I bury it beneath old boxes of wrapping paper.
My chest hurts from how hard I’m trying to breathe quietly. My hands won’t stop shaking.
When I close the closet door, I press my forehead against it for a moment, eyes squeezed shut. The warmth from the living room feels like it’s miles away.
Then I straighten, smooth my hair, and school my face into something close to normal. I can’t ruin this for them. Not tonight.
I walk back toward the light and laughter. The smell of cinnamon and pine grows stronger with each step until it almost feels like it could smother what I just saw.
Damien looks up as I step into the room. “Who was it?” he asks, still half laughing, a tangle of lights draped around his shoulders.
“Carolers,” I say quickly, the lie sliding out smoother than I expected. “I told them to come back tomorrow and we’d give them cocoa.”
“Perfect,” he says, dropping the lights onto the couch. He crosses the room, presses a quick kiss to my temple, his voice warm and easy. “You’re too nice to everyone, you know that?”
