Page 6 of The Beast

Thinking of that kiss makes me think of another gift he gave me, and I slip into the back showroom to stand in front of the piece that mixes both abstract design and brutal realism. “I needed both reality and non-reality,” he’d said after I’d pulled down the sheet covering the image I’d posed for. “Truth and fiction. Hope and despair.” And then, brushing a soft kiss over my temple, he’d added, “Love.”

Now the painting hangs on the back wall, spot lit like the treasure it is, with the title etched on a bronze plaque: Caged.

It depicts a woman behind bars of her own making, reaching toward light she can’t quite touch. The colors are gorgeous—deep blues and purples for the shadows, gold and amber for the unreachable light—but it’s the expression on the woman’s face that makes this painting extraordinary.

Longing. Resignation.

A kind of beautiful despair.

He’d painted it back when we were still planning this gallery. Back when I thought we had forever.

“Is that how you see me?” I’d asked. “Trapped?”

His expression hadn’t changed as he met my eyes. “No, my love. It’s how you see yourself.”

I’d taken a step back, shaking my head. “No.”

“Everyone starts in a cage, Izzy. The question is, can you get free?”

The question haunts me. Can I?

I didn’t know then. I don’t know now.

But as I look at my left hand and the engagement ring that marks the farce that is my life, I can’t help but think that Gabe would be disappointed in me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “But it’s so hard without you.”

Once upon a time, I’d believed we’d be together forever. How could we not? I’d loved him desperately, with the kind of all-consuming passion that makes you believe you can survive anything as long as you’re together.

Turns out you can’t survive a fire that burns hot enough to melt gold.

Now, all I have left of him is his art. The two that hang in my bedroom at home, and the rest that live here, a tribute to the man who painted them. The man I once loved with all my heart and soul.

Whom I still love, even though he’s gone forever.