The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [71]
He raised the hammer and brought it down, whacking the perfect white arm off the nearest statue. Then the shoulder. The crown of the head. A hunk from the second arm smashed through one of his rear windows but he barely noticed.
Systematically, Max destroyed each and every one of the meticulously hewn souls that haunted his garden. He destroyed all the evidence of this curse—this so-called gift—that had left his life empty, driven away any and all decent people and drawn the toxic ones toward him like moths. He worked until the bandages wrapping his hands frayed and his skin grew raw. He worked until no single marble finger or toe or lock of hair was recognizable, until white dust drifted over his yard like fog and all that remained were hunks of meaningless, anonymous rock. Finally he tossed the hammer aside, feeling his body for the first time in hours, feeling suspended somewhere between dead and brilliantly alive.
He strode inside, then stopped in his tracks before Fallon’s statue. His eyes darted over her half-hewn features, a promise made to that reprehensible man. The man whose sick games had brought her here then ripped her away just as suddenly. He ran a blistered palm down her stone back, across the ridge of her shoulder blade, over the shadows cast by the dying sun. Nearly three months he’d been chipping away, stripping off the layers to try to uncover the essence of this woman. The hardest he’d ever worked, and surely the finest piece of his career, had he succeeded.
Exhausted, he barely had the energy to stagger to the kitchen, uncork the wine bottle and fill a glass. His hand shook as he carried it to the table. The cat mewed at the back door, he let it in. He took his seat and when Oscar grazed his shins he hoisted the cat into his arms and held it hostage, the thing he should have done with Fallon instead of driving her away.
It wouldn’t have done any good, though, keeping her here. If his temper hadn’t scared her off, his refusal to finish that hateful sculpture would have done the job just as surely.
Emotions pulsed through Max’s body like drugs. Ugly emotions he hadn’t felt in years, betrayal and hurt and grief, anger over feeling used and manipulated. Fallon didn’t deserve them. Forrester wasn’t worth them. If these feelings had any point at all, it was to tell Max exactly how different he’d felt these past weeks in Fallon’s company. Calm and happy. Passionate toward a complete person, not just their shadows or textures or scars. Living for something aside from his art and precious solitude, living for pleasurable shared moments and for hope over what the future might bring.
He sighed and set the cat down, eyes caught once again by the stone shape of the woman he’d driven from this house. He stared at the sky, crisscrossed by a thousand mullions. At this moment his home looked an awful lot like a cage. Without Fallon it looked like ribs with no heart beating inside them. He rubbed that spot on his own chest, trying to ease the ache.
He’d let her down. Scared her off and ruined the plan she’d sacrificed so much for, just as she’d said. Max looked to the statue, wondering if he could make a sacrifice himself, ignore his ethics and finish it…
He’d sooner destroy it.
A cool breeze seeped through the broken rear window and Max knew then he wouldn’t sleep that night. That small bed would feel too huge without her in it, this entire space cavernous and cold. She’d ruined him, just as he’d ruined her plans to save her aunt’s home. Funny how that balance felt so deeply unsettling.
He gazed into the distance, past the backyard to the sea and the cliffs. Somewhere beyond all this Fallon was en route to Halifax, to New York. Even if he went after her, he had nothing to offer that could make this right.
He stared at the cliffs, ocean crashing.
He stared at the cliffs, so like an invitation to plummet, here…so protective, the way Fallon had described those surrounding her aunt’s home.
Max stared at the cliffs until daylight abandoned Cape Breton, and then