It’s better than any mark I could leave with my teeth—it’s my art, my blood… and…
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
I was careful when I set up a canvas in Donovan’s apartment—there’s a plastic sheet on his kitchen table and on the floor. It makes it look kind of like a crime scene… but that’s okay. It will keep his pristine floors intact while I work.
My medium is mostly paint—I have a little bit left from the man who attacked me, but not enough. I’d been watching the news and checking online, but there’d only been a brief article about it. Body found, man was a criminal…
It hadn’t exactly been safe to leave him there, but I felt pretty good about how I’d cleaned up my tracks. Especially since the article spent more time listing the man’s crimes than mentioning that he was dead.
Honestly, I’d done the city a favor.
And now my eyes were on a smaller canvas in front of me. I wasn’t painting anything solid this time—more thick, red,abstract lines. The sweep of a jaw, the catch of a few strands of hair. Wisps of a person engulfed in a storm of red snow.
The television in front of me catches my attention as I add another stroke of paint.
I’ve seen a few flashes of Donovan here and there, but the camera hasn’t focused on him. The game has been going on for a while, and I’m only half tuned in when I hear them say his name.
My eyes fixate instantly as he stands to his full height and pulls on his helmet.
My helmet.
And even though I know he can’t see me, for just a second our eyes connect through the screen, and I know that heknowsI can see him.
He skates out to the net, and I feel almost drunk on the sight of him… tall and perfect and wearing my artwork like he wants to show it off to the world.
To theworld. Everyone watching can see who he belongs to.
Fuck, everyone can know that he belongs to me.
My fingers keep working on the painting even though I’m only half looking at it. I’m too engrossed in Donovan on the screen, doing what he does best, even though I still don’t much understand it.
Donovan in reds and blacks…
Red on white.
Gorgeous on the ice.
And he’s mine.
My fingers keep working mechanically, but I’m glued to the screen until the game ends and his gorgeous body disappears from view.
Something inside me is burning, and when I glance back at the painting in front of me, I can see that it shows there. Red and black—a streak of motion. It’s not a man caught in a storm, but the storm in Donovan’s eyes as he performs on the ice.
As he performs forme.
I’m careful when I take a picture of it and load it up on my website… and as I do, my attention flicks to the other painting there. The one from the man I’d murdered.
The one that looks like Donovan.
I don’twantto share him.
With a frown, I go through my bank account and issue a refund, shooting a message to Sidney to tell him the painting was damaged during the drying process and I can’t send it after all.
I’m not even sure if he reads it before he messages me about the new piece. Three thousand, since it’s a smaller canvas.
My eyes linger on the red, the swirls… the storm.
On Donovan bleeding into every part of my art, every part of my life.
