POV Bella
The midnight blue silk cascaded through my fingers like liquid starlight. Beading caught the afternoon sun streaming through my bedroom window, throwing tiny rainbows across the walls.
"You're going to destroy her." Camila sprawled across my bed, watching me trace the dress's delicate bodice. "Laila will absolutely die of jealousy when Ajax sees you in this."
"It's just a dress."
"That's like saying the Mona Lisa is just a painting." She sat up, eyes gleaming. "You're in love with him."
"I'm not—"
"You are." She grabbed my shoulders. "Bella Sinclair, a cardiac patient with a couple of months to live, is in love with Ajax Spencer, notorious bad boy and former tormentor."
"When you say it like that, it sounds insane."
"Because it is insane!" She shook me gently. "Beautifully, tragically, perfectly insane."
My phone buzzed.
Ajax: Pick you up at seven. Wear something you don't mind getting messy.
"What does that mean?" Camila read over my shoulder. "Is this some weird sex thing?"
"Everything isn't about sex."
"With Ajax Spencer? Everything is absolutely about sex."
* * *
The art studio materialized from downtown's industrial chaos—brick walls splattered with decades of creative violence, windows clouded with paint dust.
Ajax shouldered the door open; warm light and turpentine breathed out to meet us. He steered me over the threshold, flicked on the lamps, and the space snapped into focus—rows of easels, drop cloths, jars bristling with brushes.
"What is this?" I stared at all this stuff.
"You said you wanted to paint again." Ajax pulled me inside. "So we're painting."
"Ajax—"
"No arguments." He handed me a smock that had seen better decades. "You dream, I deliver. That's the deal."
The instructor, a woman with purple hair and paint-stained fingers, clapped for attention. "Tonight we're exploring passion through color. Paint what moves you, what drives you."
"This is ridiculous," I whispered to Ajax.
"This is living." He was already squeezing paint onto his palette—blacks and silvers, dangerous colors.
I watched him work, transfixed. His hands moved with shocking expertise, creating flowing lines that gradually became mechanical poetry. A motorcycle emerged from the chaos, but not just any bike—this was art disguised as machine, curves that suggested speed and danger and freedom.
"You can actually paint." The accusation escaped before I could stop it.
"Don't sound so surprised." He didn't look up, adding chrome highlights with surgical precision. "I wanted to design them professionally. Create bikes that are art, not just machines."
"Why don't you?"
"Because Richard Spencer doesn't raise artists." The brush snapped in his grip. "He raises empire heirs. Future CEOs. Not embarrassments who crash into champagne towers at galas."
"Ajax—"
"After that night, he made sure I knew exactly how much I'd humiliated the family." His voice turned bitter. "Called me a disgrace for weeks. Said I'd proven what everyone already knew—that I was the defective Spencer. My brothers thought it was hilarious. Posted the video in our family group chat with crying-laughing emojis."
"I'm so sorry." The words tumbled out desperate. "I was so nervous when you walked over. I'd had the biggest crush on you for months, and suddenly you were there, saying you'd been trying to talk to me all semester, and I just—I panicked. My hands were shaking and I pushed too hard and—"
"You had a crush on me?" He finally looked up, paint streaking his cheek.
"The worst kind." Heat flooded my face. "I used to write your name in my notebooks. Drew hearts around it like a complete idiot."
"Bella—"
"I tried to apologize. For weeks after, I tried to find you alone, to explain it was an accident. But then you started the pranks, the humiliation, and I couldn't—"
He crossed the space between us in two strides, his mouth crashing against mine. Paint-stained fingers tangled in my hair, leaving streaks of silver.
"I'm grateful it happened." He pulled back just enough to speak. "All of it. The humiliation, the anger, the years of war. Because it led us here."
"Here being a paint-covered mess in a downtown studio?"
"Here being together." He grabbed a brush loaded with cobalt blue. "Now stop talking and paint something."
"I don't know what to paint."
"Then forget the canvas." A spark lit his eyes. "Let’s paint each other—show me how you see me."
"That's dangerous territory."
"Everything with us is dangerous." He dragged the blue brush along my collarbone, leaving a trail of color. "Your turn."
I dipped my finger in crimson, drawing a line across his cheekbone. "You look like a warrior."
"You look like art." He abandoned the brush, using his hands to spread gold across my arms. "Like something precious I'm not allowed to touch."
"You're touching me now."
"I'm destroying you now." But his hands were gentle, reverent, painting constellations on my skin. "That's what I do. I destroy beautiful things."
"Maybe I want to be destroyed." I pressed my paint-covered palms against his chest, leaving handprints like evidence. "Maybe that's better than being preserved."
We abandoned all pretense of proper technique. Paint flew between us—purple in his hair, green on my neck, orange where our bodies pressed together. When we kissed, we left rainbows on each other's skin.
"Your heart's racing." He pulled back, concern replacing playfulness. "Should we stop?"
"It's you." I grabbed his paint-stained hands, pressing them over my chest. "Not the condition. You do this to me. You make my broken heart remember how to beat."
The smile that spread across his face could have powered cities. "Say that again."
"You make my heart race, Ajax Spencer."
"No, the other part."
"The broken part?"
"The part where you admitted I affect you." He backed me against an easel, paint jars rattling. "The part where Bella Sinclair confessed she's not made of ice."
"I never said that."
"You implied it." His mouth found my throat, leaving what would definitely be paint-stained bruises. "You implied a lot of things."
"Ajax, someone can see us."
"Let them." But he pulled back, that dangerous grin playing at his lips. "We should frame this."
"Frame what?"
He spun me toward his easel. The motorcycle was gone, painted over with something else—a heart, anatomically correct but stylized, with cracks running through it like golden veins. Beautiful in its imperfection.
"It's you," he said simply. "How I see you."
The confession hung between us, heavy with meaning neither of us could acknowledge.
"It's perfect," I whispered.
"No." He pulled me against him, paint squelching between our bodies. "But it's real. That's better than perfect."
The instructor announced time was up, but we stayed pressed together, covered in color and possibility.
"Thank you," I said against his chest. "For this. For letting me paint again."
"Thank you," he replied, "for pushing me into that champagne tower."