That makes Phillipe wonder,What exactly has Gemma been doing all day?
“A lot of recent articles have called your relationship with Ms. Rosenberg an unhealthy one. They report that it was an unusual arrangement with your being center stage in the public eye while she was rather secluded and kept away from the public. They allude to your being too protective. Some even use the wordobsessive.” She ceases in her spiel, finally glancing up.
Phillipe knows she is uncomfortable.I’ll be damned if I’m going to ease her.If she wants to go down this rabbit hole with him, then she better be prepared for what she will find.
He sits there silently as he waits for the next question.
“Would you say they were right? Were you obsessed with Chantel Rosenberg?”
Phillipe lets the question linger in the air while her foot begins to tap nervously. She starts to flick her pen against the notepad. Finally, he uncrosses his legs and stands, making his way over to the window.
“Do you know why I love this window so much?” he asks as he looks over his shoulder.
“No,” she immediately replies.
“This is where I first saw her,” he explains, turning back to face the woman who is watching him with intense, smart eyes—the same eyes that saw too much this morning. “This was the window that I was looking out of when my life changed.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he closes his eyes and tells her what she wants to know.
“Obsession, as defined by the dictionary, meansthe domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire.” Phillipe opens his eyes and focuses intently on Gemma, who now has a crease between her brows as she frowns at him in concentration. “What do you think? Do you think Chantel dominated my thoughts and feelings?”
She swallows once. “Yes.” As she chews her bottom lip more in thought than from nerves, she blinks slowly. “You painted several images of her. You dedicated a wholecollectionto her. If that isn’t obsession or persistent desire, I don’t know what is.”
Pushing away from the window, Phillipe walks over and stops by her desk. He reaches out and fingers the journal that is sitting there.
Gemma turns, glancing down at his hand, before looking back up to face him.
“A lot of people talk aboutmyobsession—my unhealthy need for Chantel. Everyone focuses on the images, the haunting beauty, and the eroticism behind my obsession.”
Picking up the journal, he holds it out to her. She flinches back at the unexpected move, and then reaches out slowly to take it from him. As her fingers grip the leather, he leans down until they are eye to eye.
“No one knows that the obsession went both ways. What would they do if they read pages of journal entries where each entry was dedicated in precise detail to a moment in time—ourmoments in time?”
Standing up straight, he releases the book and makes his way to the studio door. “If there was obsession here—a dominant, persistent desire—then it was the desire to lose ourselves in one another. The only problem is that one person is now lost, and the other is trapped.”
Taking one last look at the now-silent Gemma, he turns and walks out. As he leaves, he softly mutters, “Good night.”
I sit in the silence he left behind, shaking slightly as I hold the journal he just relinquished. He is right, of course. No one knows that Chantel Rosenberg wrote a journal. No one knows that she was just as hungry to know Phillipe as he obviously was to know her.
What must it be like to be craved that way? To return that feeling with such ferocity?
Letting out a sigh, I put the notepad on the desk. I wonder if a time will come when he won’t leave after spending thirty minutes in a room with me, but I know it isn’t me he is running from. It isher.
I look at the empty page that is mocking me. I haven’t written down a single thing from this evening’s session. In all honesty, I turned on my small recorder because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to function as I sat here and stared at him. After this morning, I can’t help seeing him that way—naked and hard. So I came prepared, knowing I would be frozen.
Good thing, too, because this evening’s episode was intense. Turning off the lamp, I make my way over to his side table, and I can’t help reaching out to stroke the chair he was sitting in. He seemed so lost, yet he was also so present and angry.
Is he what people say he is? Did his obsession ruin a perfect relationship?
I have no clue, but I want to find out. Although he is intense and sometimes frightening in his fierce and passionate nature, I don’t fear for my safety.
No, if anything,I muse as I make my way to my room and into bed,I fear for his.
Cravings ~
I want Phillipe. There—I typed it.
Why can’t I stop thinking about him? And why don’t I want to?
