The Muse's Undoing

This country.

But it’s not enough. Because I still can’t fucking breathe.

The royal blue leaf I dropped on the floor when Maggie told me Fischer wouldn’t be coming home winks at me from a distance.

52

FISCHER

You need to call him. Now.

I’m in bed in the dark as I take a deep breath and tap the Instagram link attached to Gavin’s text.

What I see is unedited chaos. Matthew in a welder’s mask wielding a baseball bat. Shirtless, barefoot, in low slung jeans. He looks thinner, and my first thought is this is an old video someone dug up and posted, but then he turns his back on the camera and walks into his workshop where the glass tree glitters in bright work lights.

A comment scrolls up the screen. And then another.

—Gorgeous

—Stunning

Fuck, this is live.

My chest seizes, and I sit straight up, flinching as he swings the bat, and one fragile branch shatters to the floor, leaves of glass breaking and scattering, dust flying. Matthew steps right into the middle of it and takes another swing. “No…” I hear myself moaning to no one.

The sounds of destruction are mixed with a raging music track. Matthew’s grunts of effort along with smashed glass are utterly excruciating. I want to click out of it. Not watch it.

But I can’t do that to him. He’s the love of my fucking life, and if he’s hurting, I hurt. So I don’t look away. He picks glass out of his torso and arm, but he doesn’t stop walking on the shards as he whacks away at the glass covered trunk. It’s brutal, bloody, and horrible. It’s performance art and agony.

At the violent end, when the tree is nothing more than twisted wires and words, he walks back to the camera, picks it up and shows the massive expanse of destruction in his loft. “I made that,” he whispers, and the feed cuts off.

I put my phone face down on my bed and sob into my hands. The gut-wrenching noise rips from me like it’s been waiting to come out since the moment I clicked the link.

It’s been nearly a week since I left his loft for the last time. I’ve eaten enough to stay alive, I’ve gone through four bottles of vodka, and I’ve racked up dozens of billable hours with my attorney, but what I haven’t done—what I haven’t had the balls to do—is crawl back to Matthew and beg him to forgive me for listening to anyone who told me to stay away from him.

I can’t do it. He needs me. And I need him.

Fuck all of this. I’ve been way too short-sighted. Listening to the wrong advice.

No one wants a scandal the scale of which I would unleash by taking Nicole to court. I certainly don’t. So, if I roll over, communicate through the lawyers that Vaughn won’t be exposed to whatever horrors Nicole thinks I’m exposing him to, then I could still have half a life with Matthew.

A secret life—one lived behind closed doors and out of public sight—could be enough if he’ll still have me. Because I’ll take anything over this.

I can maintain the façade of living on the Upper East Side as a bachelor—a single dad. I can stay out of the club, away from prying eyes that may be prone to gossip. Since I’ve had him—I’ve wanted nothing more and nothing less.

But by the time I get my side of the street in order, it may be too late. It may already be. He’s wrecked, and he’s purging, and all I can do is watch and wonder while I come undone.

I am not expecting company when my doorbell rings. I’m too drunk to make conversation, so I ignore it. If it were the person I wanted to see, he wouldn’t stand on ceremony. He’d let himself in.

But my caller is persistent. Getting to the door isn’t easy. I’m not normally a stumbling drunk, but I’m particularly unsteady tonight.

It’s definitely not the way I want my son to see me, looking up at me with a huge smile on his face, fidgeting from foot to foot and up way past his bedtime.

“Daddy!”

Daddy.

I hold tight to the sound of it because he may never say it again. I may never hear it again if he does. I set my cane aside, ignoring everything else, including the watchful gaze of my ex-wife as I bend to accept the hug he throws at me. I grasp at him like a drowning man, inhaling his sweet, little boy scent and memorizing all the slim, constantly vibrating contours of him. “I love you,” I say in case Nicole changes her mind and takes him away.