Ruth’s POV
The black dress clung like a memory I wasn’t ready to remember.
I stood in front of the mirror, smoothing it down over my hips with trembling hands. The same dress I wore to a gallery opening years ago, before everything cracked, before I learned how to translate grief into brushstrokes. Back when I still believed success could make me whole.
Tonight, the fabric felt tighter. Not in size, in significance. My hands trembled again, I blamed the coffee, but it wasn’t the caffeine. Emmett hadn’t come back. He was always there, until he wasn’t. No note, no warning. Just a disappearing act that stretched through morning, past noon, into early evening. He had become a constant in a life built on chaos. But today, he vanished like a shadow refusing the sun.
I thought about staying home. The thought clung to me, begging for safety. But the exhibit was more than an invitation, it was a declaration. A reminder that my story existed outside of Emmett’s hands and scars and body. That my art was still mine, even after being painted with the color of his obsession. So I went.
The museum’s atmosphere glowed with soft lights and soft voices. People moved through the gallery like they were inside a sacred space, pausing in front of canvases, sipping wine, speaking in low, thoughtful tones. I recognized faces. Colleagues, curators, collectors. They glanced at me with vague familiarity, as if uncertain how to place me outside the context of my work. My paintings lined the walls.
Not just hung, commanded. They bled intensity, rage, shame, and flesh. Some canvases still bore the smudges of my fingerprints. Some had been touched with tears. And yet the descriptions beside them read like translations: “haunting,” “visceral,” “feral intimacy.” For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like people were seeing me as broken, just human. Beth found me quickly, smiling over a glass of red wine and pulling me into a soft, proud embrace.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said.
“I almost didn’t.”
“I’m glad you did. People have been connecting to the work in ways I didn’t expect. It’s unsettling. In the best way.”
I smiled, or tried to. But my attention drifted past her shoulder to the door, and froze there. Everything inside me went still. Emmett. He stood just beyond the threshold, dressed in black, clean-cut in a way I wasn’t used to. His presence alone didn’t stop me cold. It was who stood beside him.
The older man’s face was refined, too composed, marked with age but still sharp in ways that didn’t dull with time. His eyes swept the gallery like he already owned it, and then his gaze met mine. The silver tooth caught the light, and my blood went ice cold.
I didn’t hear Beth say his name, I didn’t catch the introduction. All I heard was my own heartbeat, pounding behind my ears like a scream I hadn’t let out in years. I had seen that face before. Not on a sidewalk, not in a photograph.
In a room, I was fifteen, and terrified. Trapped behind a locked door. He stood over me and called me a painting that hasn't dried yet. He touched the side of my face and said art only meant something when it begged to be ruined. He was my abductor. And Emmett had brought him here.
I didn’t take the time to think, I left immediately. My body moved faster than my mind could catch up. I didn’t take my coat, I didn’t say goodbye, I walked out into the cold night, down the museum steps, and disappeared into the dark streets of the city.