Lessons in Rule-Breaking (15 page)

A cold shiver tickled down his spine. ‘I thought maybe you’d got past the worry about how you look naked.’

‘You thought you’d fixed me?’ she interrupted. ‘That after you’d thrown a few orgasms my way I’d suddenly love my body enough to have you expose it for
all the world to see
?’ Her voice was shaking now. ‘It was meant to be just for you, Xander. I never would have let you seduce me if I thought you were going to do something like this. You exploited my trust.’

‘Jess, you’re overreacting...’

‘Do you have any idea how humiliated I feel right now? I trusted you. I thought you were a good guy—a messed-up egomaniac, but a good guy at heart. But this was only ever about the art, wasn’t it, Xander? For your own benefit. For your
career
.’

He was floundering now, at a loss how to explain himself. ‘But you look so amazing.’

‘That’s not the point, Xander,’ she said, giving him such a cold look he had to take a breath to steady himself.

Frustration twisted his guts. ‘You want me to pull the picture from the exhibition? It’s the best thing I’ve done in years, Jess. You inspired it. You should be proud.’

‘Proud!’ She spat the word out. ‘Proud for everyone to know I was just another of your saps that you slept with to get what you wanted, then tossed aside? Judging by the fact you thought it was okay to produce pictures like this of me—’ she jabbed her finger towards the canvas ‘—I don’t think there’s any chance you could love me back in the way I need you to. I thought perhaps you understood me, that our time together meant something, but apparently I was wrong. I was naive and stupid to think I could be the woman to tame you. This was never about me, Xander, was it? It was always about you and your
art
.’

He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even get his response to that straight in his head. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship and this thing with Jess had just come out of the blue and now his creativity seemed to be peaking he was afraid to let anything get in the way of it. Thinking about someone else right now would take precious mental energy away from his work and he couldn’t afford to let anything damage his muse again. Not even Jess.

He needed to prove to the world he was back, bigger, badder and stronger than ever. He’d won against the disabling inertia that had held him hostage for so long. He could prove his earlier talent hadn’t been a fluke and stick two fingers up at all those naysayers.

To not let his father have been right about him.

Jess stared at him angrily for a beat longer, waiting in vain for him to pull himself together enough to answer her. When he failed to open his mouth, she turned on her heel and stormed out, slamming the door of the studio hard behind her.

He slumped into a chair, unable to process all the thoughts raging through his brain. He wanted her to be pleased and proud of his pictures, to tell him what good work he’d done, but instead she’d been more concerned about how she looked in them.

A disabling indolence kept him in his chair and he sat, staring into space as the silence echoed in his head.

* * *

Over the next few days he began to hate looking at his last painting of her, the initial joy of creating it marred by the pain and distress he’d caused.

After a couple more days of staring into space, he tried calling her, first on her mobile, only to be sent straight to voicemail, then at her magazine, only to be told she wasn’t available and could they take a message?

He left numerous messages asking her to call him, becoming more and more irate when his phone remained steadfastly silent.

She’d cut him away like the bloodsucking leech he was.

It wasn’t the first time a woman had walked out on him, but he’d never liked any of the others enough to care that much before. He liked Jess, though, an awful lot.

She’d twisted herself into his thoughts and he found himself on edge and preoccupied by the hole she’d left by her desertion. He barely knew her, but she’d done something to his psyche by forcing him to think about someone other than himself for once—as if she’d opened up a gaping chasm in his consciousness, which he was having trouble knitting back together.

He should have been honest with her about how he really felt, instead of treating her like some
thing
fun to do. He cringed at the memory of telling her that.

But he’d been scared. It was his standard defence mechanism, to keep his lovers at an emotional distance so he’d never have to deal with more of the painful feeling of rejection he’d been living with since he could remember.

His whole life had revolved around getting people to buy into the image of the bad-boy loner he wanted them to see rather than the
real
him and he seemed unable to drag himself out of its deathlike grip.

Without meaning to he’d let Jess glimpse the real him, but when she’d pushed for more he’d thrown up his barriers, keeping their relationship purely physical, keeping her out.

Using her for his own ends.

He’d unequivocally demonstrated that his career was the most important thing in the world to him and that she’d meant nothing. He’d used her to fix himself, drained their relationship of everything good, then spat her out. Because he was a selfish idiot. His father had been right, after all; he didn’t deserve to be loved, not when he acted the way he did. He took everything he wanted and gave nothing back.

He was pure, unadulterated greed.

If he was ever going to be good enough to be the right man for Jess he needed to learn how to let go of his anger and jealousy and fear and give her back what she’d given to him.

Humility and kindness and altruism. To learn how to give for the sake of giving, instead of looking for what he could get out of it.

He’d drawn himself into such a hard shell nothing had been able to penetrate it. Until Jess had come along and started tapping at the seams.

She’d been absolutely right about how distanced he’d allowed himself to be from everyone else, how hyperfocused he was about how things affected
him
. He’d completely overlooked how he’d messed up everyone else who came into contact with him, just so he could get what he wanted.

He’d been alone for so long he had no idea how to let someone else into his life. How to care about them and let them care for him. Deep down he accepted now that he’d thought of himself as unlovable, after having it rammed home over the years through his dad’s total lack of interest in him. He’d never admitted to his father how that had made him feel, he’d just shrugged it off as how things were, but he should have been braver. He should have stood up for himself instead of shutting himself away.

And now Jess had given up on him, too.

He wanted her back so much it made him ache, but how could he ever make her believe he meant it?

It was time to face up to what kept him so distanced from everyone else in his life.

He needed to let go of this feeling that he still had something to prove to a father who had never cared about him. The old man was dead and he needed to move on with his life now.

Then he needed to find Jess and convince her that he was sorry and that he was worth taking a risk on.

After days of not being able to face going in to his studio and hiding away from the world in his flat, he finally made the journey back there. Picking up a scalpel from in amongst the mess of paints and modelling equipment on his art table, he walked over to the painting of Jess. It was the piece of work that could prove he wasn’t the flash in the pan that he, and pretty much everyone else in the world, it seemed, had feared he was.

Raising the scalpel, he brought it down hard across the canvas, cutting a large gash from corner to corner, then another, and another, until all that was left was a frame with colourful strips hanging from it like ragged paper garlands.

It was time to start again.

TEN

After a few
of weeks of going through the motions of getting up and going to work in a stultified daze, Jess finally began to come out of the emotional coma she’d put herself in in an attempt to block the pain and humiliation of how Xander had used her.

He’d tried calling her a couple of days after she’d first stormed out, which she’d ignored in her anger at him, but she hadn’t heard from him since. He’d obviously given up on her now and she didn’t expect ever to hear from him again. But then, why the hell would
she
be any different from the tens of women he’d already used up and cast aside? He’d probably moved on to a new love affair already.

She wouldn’t know. She hardly looked at social media any more for fear of seeing something about him and a new lover that would bring back the flood of heartache she was only just starting to break through.

It was for the best. They would never have worked as a couple anyway. He was too self-involved, too wild, too ephemeral in nature for her and she couldn’t match that.

Pulling off her coat and slumping into her chair at her desk, she was just about to turn on her computer when she noticed an envelope next to her keyboard, addressed to her at the magazine. The handwriting was loopy and messy and something about it made her heart beat a little faster. Tearing it open, she took out a piece of shiny black card and stared at it for a moment. It appeared to be blank, but when she went to flip it over something caught her eye. She tipped it back slowly until the fluorescent overhead lights in the office shone up the words:
Out of the Shadows. A new exhibition by Xander Heaton.

Her heartbeat accelerated, sending a rush of adrenalised blood to her head, making her feel for a moment as if she might pass out. Taking a few deep breaths, she waited until the pounding in her head had calmed down before looking at the invitation again.

There was an address for a gallery in Brick Lane and a date and time for the following week in neat print below it.

Xander’s exhibition.

Her naked body about to be exposed to the whole world.

The invitation slipped out of her trembling fingers and fell onto the floor. Looking down, she saw there were words scrawled on the back of it in the same looping handwriting that was on the envelope. Leaning down to peer closer at them, she made out the words, ‘Jess, please come. I need you to see something. Xander’.

She stared at it for a few moments, the rushing sound in her ears blocking out the noise of the office. Sitting up, she jumped in shock when she realised Pamela had appeared out of nowhere and was standing over her, waiting for an answer to a question she’d totally failed to hear. Looking up to see her boss’s imperious expression, she had to quell the nervous impulse to leap up and dash off to the sanctuary of the loos. ‘Sorry, Pamela, I missed that.’

Pam shook her head, clearly unimpressed by Jess’s lack of focus. ‘I said, did you get an invitation to Xander Heaton’s exhibition, too? He sent one to me asking me to make sure you came along. You must have made quite an impression on him.’ She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

‘Ah, yes, but I wasn’t going to go. I have a thing that night.’

Pamela’s other eyebrow shot up to join its counterpart. ‘Cancel it. You should attend. We could do a great follow-up piece on him for the magazine. Your interview’s been syndicated to a lot of influential sources already and you’re in a position to exploit your relationship with him to get a good exclusive interview afterwards. Am I right?’

Jess sighed. There was no way Pamela would let her get away with missing the exhibition if she thought the magazine had something to gain from it.

Well, she was going to have to face the horror of being recognised as the model in his paintings some time. It might as well be sooner rather than later. At least it might be a friendly crowd at the exclusive first showing of his work. She could write the piece, then go and hide away under a rock until all the fuss had died down.

She gave her editor a tight smile. ‘Sure, Pamela, I’ll be there.’

‘Good, good. Make sure you work all the angles, Jess,’ Pam said, waving a hand in the air as she stalked off, unquestionably on her way to terrorise another poor member of her staff.

* * *

Xander couldn’t ever remember being this nervous before a showing of his work, and for once the nerves weren’t about what the critics might say about it. It was all down to what Jess would think.

Everything he’d done here was for her, after all.

After she’d refused to pick up or return his phone calls he’d realised it was going to take more than words to prove to her he was sorry and that he cared about her and wanted to make a go of a relationship—something he’d never been interested in before. Unfortunately, his reputation for being such a playboy didn’t do him any favours in that regard and he’d clearly fed directly into her insecurity about taking a relationship with him seriously with his selfish disregard for her feelings.

He missed her so much.

He couldn’t go on the way he was, isolated and casually using people before casting them off like pieces of rubbish.

She’d shown him how incredible it could feel to fall in love with someone and now he’d experienced it he was damned if he was going to let her just walk away.

Because he
was
in love with her, he realised. This aching hole in his chest he’d been living with for the last two months was exactly Jess-sized.

The front door to the gallery swung open, bringing him back to the present and letting in a draught of cool evening air. He looked round to see who it was.

Jess.

He’d sent an invitation to her editor as well in the hope it would force Jess to come, but had made the time on Jess’s half an hour earlier.

He wanted her to see what he’d done for her first without being interrupted.

Apparently this exhibition opening had turned into a hot ticket after Jess’s article on him for
Spark
magazine had been so well received. He’d been humbled by her descriptions of him and impressed by how she’d woven in his background with real sensitivity, making him sound like the kind of guy he’d always wanted to be—intelligent, passionate and talented.

She’d let the piece run, showing him in such a good light, despite how he’d treated her.

He knew he didn’t deserve to even lick her shoes, but he wanted to become a man who
did
deserve her, and only she could help him with that.

If she could forgive him.

She stood in front of him now, head held high, looking so beautiful and bold he wanted to pull her against him and kiss her hard, to let her know just how much he wanted her back. How amazing she was. But he knew he couldn’t do that—he needed to be more subtle, to prove to her this wasn’t just about sex.

‘Where is everyone? Did I read the invitation wrong? I thought it started at seven thirty,’ Jess said, staring at him defiantly, her arms folded across her chest. He could see she was trying to brazen it out, but her awkward stance and the slight tremor in her voice gave her away.

Maybe there was hope? The thought made his blood buzz with adrenaline.

‘You’re on time. This is a private viewing, just for you, before all the other guests arrive. I wanted you to be the first to see it.’

‘So I have time to run away and hide before they all arrive?’ she asked, an eyebrow quirked, clearly trying to keep her voice controlled, but failing spectacularly to hit the right note of nonchalance and sliding right on through to utter terror.

He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, feeling the heat of her skin burn through her thin cotton top. His mind flicked back to the memory of how the heat of her body felt against his and he almost lost his cool.

‘I’m really hoping you won’t want to run,’ he said, begging with his eyes for her to give him another chance.

‘You know, I don’t know if I can bear to look at it again, Xander.’ Taking a step backwards, she broke his hold on her and gave him a wobbly smile. ‘But I wish you luck with the exhibition. I’m sure everyone’s going to love it.’ She turned to walk away, but before she could take a step he slid his fingers around her arm and twisted her back round to face him. No way was he going to let her walk away before he had chance to at least apologise.

He pulled her hard towards him, drawing her mouth so tantalisingly close he could feel the heat of her breath on his lips. ‘Jess, please. Don’t leave. I did all this for you. Not for my critics. I wanted you to know how much I miss you. How much I care about you. Please don’t walk away now.’

He felt her falter and relax a little against him and he pressed on quickly before she could gather herself enough to leave.

‘This is my apology to you. No one has ever given me that much of themselves before, Jess, and I can’t believe I took advantage of you like that. I was so scared I was actually as washed up as everyone suspected, I lost sight of what was right and wrong. You trusted me and I treated that trust as if it was nothing. It was a cowardly, selfish, pathetic thing to do. I understand why it upset you and you were right to call me on it.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide with confusion. ‘Okay. Well, thank you for apologising.’

‘I destroyed that painting you saw, so you don’t need to worry about it ever appearing.’

Releasing her arm and digging into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of long painted ribbons of canvas. ‘This is all that’s left of that painting and the one of you covered in paint.’ He handed them to her and she stared down at them, her eyes widening in surprise.

When she looked back up into his face, her bottom lip was trembling and her eyes were shining with tears.

‘What do you want me to say? That I’m pleased you tore your work apart?’

It was hell being this close to her without being allowed to enfold her in his arms and hold her close, to soothe all the pain away, but he knew he couldn’t do that right now. The weight of his reputation for short, intense affairs with his muses lay heavily between them. He’d given her no reason to believe she was any different from the tens of women he’d already used up and cast aside.

‘Let me show you what I replaced those pictures with,’ he said, walking over to the light switches on the wall and flicking them up so the room was flooded with light.

He heard Jess gasp as she saw what he’d been pouring his heart into for the last month.

* * *

It took Jess a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the light before she could fully focus on what was in front of her.

There was a sculpture, made up of what looked like a multicoloured canvas stretched across a man-shaped frame, sitting in the middle of the room beneath four white spotlights. His posture was tensed as if ready to jump up and run forward, his hands gripping his knees, but, eerily, there was a flat picture where the contours of his face should be.

She walked towards it on shaking legs, utterly captivated, and as she peered closer she realised the flat piece had a self-portrait of Xander’s face painted on it, showing an expression of such pain in his eyes it nearly broke her heart to look at it. The word
loser
was painted across his forehead in dark purple paint.

Dragging her gaze away from the face, she peered more closely at the rest of the sculpture and realised with a shock that the multicoloured body was made up of hundreds of tiny paintings.

Of her.

In some of them she was smiling, some looking confused, some looking insecure. In fact, he seemed to have captured every possible emotion she’d ever had in her life. As if he
knew
her. As if he’d seen inside her and understood exactly what made her tick.

There was something metallic and shiny protruding from the chest of the sculpture, as if it had been dragged out of his body and was hovering in mid-air before him.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she dropped to her knees to study it more closely and realised it was a small metal cage, in the shape of a heart with fine filigree letters trapped inside it.

She peered closer, barely able to focus through a bewildering haze of emotions.

It was the word
Jess
.

It was Xander’s own personal love letter to her.

She felt his footsteps behind her as they made the stripped wooden floor bounce. Swivelling round, she stood up and faced him, at a total loss for words.

He didn’t say anything, just took her hand and gently led her out from under the spotlight into a room at the back of the gallery, motioning for her to sit down on a cream leather sofa set back against the wall.

She sat on the edge and watched him lower himself down next to her, her whole body shaking now. She had no idea how to deal with all this. After convincing herself she needed to put her fling with him down to a freak anomaly in the short history of her life, she’d never expected to see him again, let alone have to deal with something as surreal as having a piece of his art dedicated to her.

‘Did...did I imagine the life-size naked model of you, made up of images of my face?’ she asked, her voice faltering as she tried and failed to pull herself together.

He breathed out slowly, as if centring himself.

‘I need to explain something to you.’ He ran a hand over his face, then repositioned himself on the sofa so his body was twisted towards her. ‘When I was younger my art was the thing that saved me from complete meltdown. I did it as an outlet for all the anger and shame I carried around with me. I never expected for a second I could make the sort of money I have from it. After years of being shoved into the category of
troublemaker
I was totally amazed when people began to talk about me in terms of having talent as an artist instead of just being a public nuisance with my “graffiti”. Before I realised what was happening, my career began to gain this crazy momentum and I was suddenly propelled into the limelight. People were interested in what I had to say, like it meant something important to them. It was a revelation. Instead of being a problem and a drain on the system, I was someone people wanted to be associated with.’