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Chapter 1
Celeste
The cold Chicago air would have nipped at my skin, if I'd given it the chance. Instead, I stood in the center of my cramped apartment, heat cranked up past what's reasonable, a canvas laid out like a lover on the floor. Naked as the day I was born, I dipped my fingers into pots of body-safe paint, smearing crimson and violet across my skin. It was a private dance between me and the art, no prying eyes to judge or expectations to meet. Just raw, fucking creativity.
I pressed my paint-laden body against the white expanse, transferring my anger, my frustration, my goddamn soul onto it. This was how I coped, how I bled out the poison of betrayal without actually spilling blood—though the thought did cross my mind more times than I’d like to admit.
I grabbed a dildo, doubling as my unorthodox brush today, and dragged swirls of black through the chaotic colors. It represented him—my ex, the king of deceit. The man who thought he could shred me to pieces and watch me scatter in the wind. Every stroke was a word unsaid, a scream locked in my throat during those final, ugly moments of our breakup.
"Fuck you for thinking you broke me," I said with each smear, each line. My voice echoed back at me, off the walls of the tiny space that felt both like a sanctuary and a prison cell. I wasn’t just painting—I was purging his ghost from my system, layering over his lies with my truth.
Each piece in this series was a chapter of my story, a narrative of deep-seated pain that was slowly transforming into something else. Power, maybe. Or just the sheer relief of acknowledging the shitstorm and moving the hell on. With every press of my body against the canvas, I left behind the girl who loved too easily and picked up the armor of someone new—a woman who wouldn’t put up with anyone’s crap, least of all a man who couldn't recognize what he had.
The colors blended, creating shades that didn’t even have names, expressions of an inner rage that words couldn’t touch. This was healing. This was my damn salvation, one twisted, beautiful mess at a time.
The paint across my dark skin had become something more than just color—it was a confession, a raw scape of my deepest cravings. I smeared a deep crimson across my torso, and the chill of the room faded against the heat that began to build within me. My hand trailed lower, smudging the boundary between art and self-pleasure.
"God, if only someone could see me now," I mused out loud, the words dripping with sarcasm and a hint of longing. My mind raced, conjuring images of shadowy figures lurking just beyond my line of sight, their eyes ravenous over the spectacle of my vulnerability.
"Would you like that, Celeste?" I whispered to myself, tipping my head back as a shiver ran down my spine. "Some twisted fuck getting off on watching you unravel?"
My fantasies were no longer bound by the pretense of normalcy. They were wild, unapologetic. The thought sent a thrill through me, mixing pleasure with a pang of fear—a cocktail of emotions that was intoxicating. I was lost in the sensation, in the imagined breaths I could almost feel against my neck, the ghostly fingertips tracing invisible lines along my curves.
Then, the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock jerked me back to reality—Aria.
"Jesus, Cel, do you ever wear clothes?" Aria's voice was laced with amusement as she stepped into the chaos of my living room turned studio.
"Only on Tuesdays," I shot back, scrambling for a robe without much urgency. Aria knew me better than to expect modesty.
"Look at you, all 'starving artist' meets 'sex goddess,'" she chuckled, but her eyes scanned me, searching for signs of the girl she’d known since we were both knee-high to a grasshopper.
"More like 'emotionally constipated' meets 'horny hermit,'" I retorted, tying the robe loosely around me.
"Real talk, Cel." Aria perched on the edge of a paint-splattered stool, her concern cutting through her usual cheeriness. "When was the last time you went on a date? Or even just... y'know, connected with someone who doesn't come with batteries?"
"Human connection is overrated," I said. "Besides, after Mr. Wonderful turned out to be Captain Douchebag, I'm not exactly itching to jump back into the cesspool of modern romance."
"Okay, fair," Aria conceded, pushing a curl behind her ear. "But you can’t let one asshole turn you into a nun. You’ve got too much..." She gestured vaguely at me, encompassing both my disheveled appearance and the carnal artwork surrounding us. "...this going on."
"Trust me. Nobody wants a piece of ‘this’ mess."
"Wrong. Plenty would kill for a piece of you, Cel. You're talented, gorgeous, and you've got this sexy-rebel vibe that drives men crazy." Her brown eyes were earnest, pleading with me to understand.
"Sexy-rebel vibe, huh?" I scoffed, but somewhere beneath the layers of cynicism, her words planted a seed of possibility. Maybe there was a world where someone could handle my brand of crazy.
"Promise me you'll think about it?" Aria stood up, ready to leave but paused to squeeze my shoulder, grounding me with her touch.
"Fine, I'll think about it," I lied, because that's what friends do—they make empty promises to ease each other's worries.
"Good." She grinned, clearly seeing through my bullshit but letting it slide. "And for the record, I'd totally subscribe to your voyeuristic art show."
"Get outta here, perv," I said with a laugh, tossing a rag at her as she ducked out of my apartment.
With Aria gone, the silence settled around me again, punctuated only by the distant sounds of Chicago nightlife. I glanced at the canvas, at the raw depiction of my inner shit show, and wondered what it would be like to truly let someone in, to let them witness the chaos of my soul.
Staring at the ceiling, I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Aria's advice swirled in my head like a bad aftertaste from cheap wine. Get back out there, she says. As if 'out there' isn't a cesspool of philandering assholes and heartbreaking letdowns. My bed felt like a goddamn life raft in the middle of the dating shark tank.
"Fuck it," I muttered to the shadows dancing across my room. The idea of plastering on a smile for some Tinder tool with a half-assed pickup line made my skin crawl. But the thought of another night tangled in sweaty sheets—alone—made me want to scream.
