Page 49 of Painter's Obsession: Volume II

“I see you, Ren.” And my free hand moves over the knife handle in my side, tightening my grip around it as I pull it out while crashing my lips into his. I kiss him. Devour him. My tongue greedily demands entrance as we both cry; our tears mixing with the blood that invades our lips, the salt stinging but grounding us. My hand moves, burying my knife into his chest, causing him to bite down on my lip. His pain is mine. Our breaths are one.

“By-” he whispers against my lips before his eyes move down to where we connect, and he smiles and kisses me again. As I turn my hand, causing him to groan, I move in deeper, hugging him with death’s embrace, and he lets me.

This is how it would always end for us—bloody, breathless, and bound. You can’t redeem a monster. And sometimes, you just don’t heal. You break.

I pull away from our kiss. One final time, I look at my heart and see the steady rise of her chest. She’s alive. Peace washes over me, despite the void that consumes me. My lips stretch into a weak smile as I turn to the man who saw me, and I smile again—blood-stained lips trembling—as he coughs, and I can feel myself growing weaker.

“Byron,” Ren breathes weakly, as his body wobbles a bit, barely holding on. “You were to stay with me.”

Weakly, I cup his cheek, my fingers shaking. “I’ll follow you.”

“Good.” He coughs up blood, splattering my neck, sticky and hot. “I...” he chokes out his words, voice thready and trembling. “Like.” A single tear slides down his face just as I pull out the knife, casting it to the side like the final act of mercy. “That.” He looks up at me again, his voids finally full of life. “In.”

“Another life.” I finish his sentence before placing a kiss on his lips and letting him fall to the ground. My body collapses, and I face my mirror—my shadow, my sin, my twin. His hand stretches out for mine andmine for his, but then—the light leaves his eyes and nothing is left. No breath. No warmth. Just stillness.

I smile as my body begins to drift, my limbs going cold, blood soaking the earth beneath me. “By…” her voice, cracked and broken, calls me home.

I don’t turn. I don’t need to. She’s safe.

The sirens close in and the sounds of dogs filter through the woods, distant but coming. And my eyes close, my body shuts down, and the void swallows me whole—but this time, I don’t fight it. Because I know he’s waiting, and the dark doesn’t scare me anymore.

Epilogue

Gabriela

It’s been exactly five months and six days since my brother drew his last breath, and I was forced to move on like he wanted.

I shed a lot of tears before I was able to walk into the house we had picked out together in Montana. One of the very last things left of him, something I will forever hold on to. We painted the kitchen walls together that first week. He hated the color halfway through and said,“Fuck it—leave it. Ugly is honest.”I never changed it.

The other is this studio, opening on the six-month anniversary of his death. The scent of fresh paint still lingers in the air, mixed with lavender and something faintly metallic like dried blood you’ve tried to scrubfrom your skin. I wanted a place for people to heal. To create. That was the message I took from all this tragedy.

From something terrible, I created something new. The Garden of Thorns. This studio isn’t just for them. It’s for me, too. For the version of me that still needs saving. The version of me who still needs her brother. There were nights I woke up screaming his name, clawing at the sheets like I could pull him back from wherever he went. I stopped looking in mirrors. I couldn’t stand the eyes that looked back at me—they were mine, but they weren’t mine anymore.

Grief is the most complicated process. You go from rage, to tears, to rage again. But today, I choose to heal.... to move on and truly let him go. I wonder if he knows, if from where ever he is, he can see. I smile as I look at the envelope that’s been haunting me, begging me to tear it open and read the contents, but I knew I wasn’t ready then.

Fuck, I’m still not ready now.

I take a seat behind the desk, resting my elbows on the surface. I stare at the envelope, the same one that’ssat untouched since the cops returned it from evidence. It’s just paper, ink, and memory, yet it weighs more than anything in this room. The world views Byron as a victim. Their story became the most fucked version ofRomeo and Juliet, and I was angry at him for leaving me, for choosinghim.

Until I was forced to face the truth.

In their own way, they destroyed each other. Because I refuse to believe all those portraits, all that chase from Ren, wasn’t anything but this twisted form of twisted love. That—I can accept. That, like me, Ren loved him in his own fucked-up way. That Byron’s pain wasn’t all for nothing. That there was love there, even if it was born in blood.

A single tear slides down my cheek as I look at the urns that remain side by side, sitting on a floating shelf. One white. The other as black as his soul. They died together, reaching toward each other. I feel it’s fitting they remain side by side. It took me a long time to get there, to want what destroyed us besides what I adored the most, but in the end, my brother chose love, and Ilearned that I didn’t need to understand their dynamic—not sure I ever can. But he died reaching for him and that has to mean something… so I kept it as a reminder that not even the greatest darkness can overcome the light.

The studio is quiet. Sunlight slips across the floor, touching the easels. The bare walls still waiting for art. This was supposed to be my place of healing. His legacy. But some days it feels like I’m just surviving between ghosts. I used to be the strong one. The steady one. The girl who fixed everything and never cried in public. And now… now I talk to ashes and sleep with the lights on.

My vision blurs.

After postponing the letter, dodging it, fearing it, pretending it didn’t exist on the day of the grand opening of his legacy, I exhale a shaky breath. My hands tremble as I rip open the white envelope. For a second, I almost stop. My fingers hover over the seal like I can still walk away. Like I can delay the collapse one more time.

But I don’t.

The smell of my brother remains frozen in time, and my lips tremble as I bring the paper to my nose, inhaling the familiar scent of weed and linen.

“By,” I sob out weakly, careful not to wet the letter as I open it.

Epilogue

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