The Grumpy Landlord, page 16
He didn't look angry.
He looked... resigned.
As if this was exactly what he had expected. As if he had been waiting for the chaos to finally consume the room.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
"No."
"Did someone break in?"
"Just me," I whispered. "I broke in. Into my own head."
He looked at the ruined painting. He stared at the shreds of canvas for a long time.
"Why?"
"Because it's pointless," I said. Tears started to leak from my eyes again. Hot and fast. "It's just paint, Ethan. It's just... pretty garbage. You're out there saving people. You're a hero. And I'm just... I'm a child playing with crayons."
He walked over to me. He moved slowly, like his joints hurt.
He knelt down. He ignored the mess on the floor.
He reached out and took my hands. His hands were rough, dry, scrubbed clean of everything but the scars.
"You think this is garbage?" he asked, nodding at the easel.
"Marian said..."
"Marian is a disease," he cut in. His voice hardened. "I don't care what Marian said. I care what you think."
"I think I don't fit," I choked out. "I think I'm too loud. I think I'm just a distraction from your real life."
He looked at me. His eyes were so tired. There were deep purple bruises under them. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week.
"My real life," he repeated.
He let go of my hands. He sat back on his heels.
"My real life is blood, Willow. My real life is telling a mother that her six-year-old isn't coming home."
The air left the room.
I stared at him.
"Ethan..."
"That was today," he said. His voice was flat. Detached. "Three of them. We saved twelve. We lost three."
He looked at his hands. He turned them over, examining the palms.
"I can still feel it," he whispered. "The moment the heart stops. It's a vibration. A sudden stillness."
He looked up at me.
"I came home yesterday because I couldn't breathe. I needed to see you. I needed to see something that wasn't broken."
He gestured to the slashed painting.
"And now this is broken too."
It wasn't an accusation. It was a statement of defeat.
"I didn't know," I whispered. "I thought you were pushing me away."
"I was trying to keep the darkness off you," he said. "It sticks, Willow. The death. It sticks to everything."
He stood up.
He looked down at me. He looked at the mess I had made.
"I can't fix this," he said quietly. "I'm empty. I have nothing left to give."
He turned around.
"I'm going to bed."
He walked out of the guest house.
He left the door open.
I listened to his footsteps retreat across the gravel. I listened to the back door of the main house close.
The lock clicked.
I sat there in the harsh light.
I looked at the ruined canvas.
I had wanted to destroy it because I felt small. Because I felt like my art didn't matter compared to his life.
But looking at it now, I realized the truth.
He needed the art. He needed the color. He needed the one thing in his life that wasn't life or death.
And I had slashed it to ribbons.
I stood up. My legs were numb.
I walked to the easel. I set it upright.
The canvas hung in tatters. It was beyond repair.
"Okay," I whispered.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
"Okay."
I wasn't going to let Marian win. And I wasn't going to let the darkness win.
If he was empty, I would just have to be full enough for both of us.
I grabbed a fresh canvas.
I set it on the easel.
I picked up a brush.
My hands were shaking, but I dipped the bristles into the blue paint.
I didn't know what I was going to paint.
But I knew I wasn't stopping until the sun came up.
Crossing Wires
Ethan
The hospital hummed.
It was a frequency I used to find soothing. A constant, low-grade G-sharp of ventilation systems, heart monitors, and rubber soles on linoleum. It was the sound of a machine working exactly as designed.
Today, it sounded like static.
I stared at the post-op report for the twelve-year-old from the bus crash. He was stable. His vitals were strong. He was going to walk again. It was a win. A massive, undeniable victory against the odds.
It didn't feel like a win. It felt like I was reading a foreign language.
Instead of white blood cell counts and hemoglobin levels, my brain kept superimposing images over the text.
A smear of blue paint on a cheekbone.
A pair of vintage combat boots kicked off by the door.
Hazel eyes filled with tears I had put there.
I rubbed my temples, trying to crush the headache that had been building behind my eyes for forty-eight hours.
"Dr. Rourke?"
I didn't look up.
"Unless the building is on fire or a patient is coding, give me a minute."
"The building is fine. You, however, are staring at that tablet like you’re trying to melt it with your mind."
I looked up.
Sarah stood on the other side of the nurses' station counter. She wasn't holding a chart this time. She was holding two cups of coffee. She slid one toward me.
"You've been on that page for twenty minutes," she said. "I timed you."
"I'm being thorough."
"You're being catatonic."
She took a sip of her coffee, her eyes scanning my face with uncomfortable precision. Sarah had been working trauma since before I was an intern. She had seen me covered in blood, sweat, and failure. She knew the difference between professional focus and personal collapse.
"Go home, Ethan."
"I have rounds."
"Rounds are done. Dr. Patel took them. He was terrified you were going to bite his head off if he asked, so he just did them."
I sighed. The sound scraped my throat.
"I can't go home."
"Why? Did you forget where you live? Or is it because a certain curly-haired artist is there, and you don't know how to look her in the eye?"
I stiffened.
"My personal life is not a topic for the nurses' station."
"It is when your personal life is making you scowl at pediatric patients. You scared the appendix in Bed 4. He asked if you were the Grim Reaper."
I winced.
"I'm tired, Sarah. That's all."
"You're miserable. And you're making everyone else miserable. You walked in here two days ago looking like you’d been dragged through hell, and you haven't left. You’re using the hospital as a bunker again."
She leaned over the counter, lowering her voice.
"Whatever you're running from, it's not going to stay away just because you're wearing scrubs. Go home. Fix it. Or at least go get some sleep so you stop frightening the children."
She turned and walked away, her shoes squeaking a rhythm of told-you-so down the hall.
I looked at the coffee. I didn't drink it.
I turned off the tablet.
She was right. I was hiding.
I was hiding because the last time I saw Willow, I had looked at her and felt nothing but a vast, terrifying emptiness. I had been drained. The crash had taken everything, leaving no room for her light, her noise, her chaos.
I had shut down. I had treated her like a distraction I couldn't afford.
And the look on her face—the resignation, the quiet acceptance that she didn't belong—was haunting me more than the ghosts of the crash victims.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out.
Sadie.
I stared at the screen. I didn't want to answer. Sadie would peel back the layers of my defense in seconds.
It stopped ringing.
Then it started again immediately.
She wasn't going to stop.
I walked into the empty break room and swiped answer.
"I'm at work," I said.
"You're avoiding your life," Sadie snapped. Her voice was tight, high-pitched. The voice she used when she was trying not to panic.
"What do you want, Sadie?"
"I want to know why my best friend isn't answering her phone."
My grip on the phone tightened.
"She's probably painting. You know how she gets."
"She's not painting, Ethan. I went by the gallery. Marian DeWitt was there measuring the walls. She told me Willow’s show is effectively cancelled."
The cold stone in my stomach dropped lower.
"Marian is a snake. She doesn't have the authority—"
"She has the board. And she has the rumors. Rumors you helped fuel by disappearing for two days while everyone in town whispers about how 'unstable' the situation at the Rourke estate is."
"I was working," I said, my voice rising. "There was a mass casualty event. Children were dying."
"I know," Sadie said, her voice softening, but only slightly. "I know, Ethan. And you're a hero. You saved them. But you can't save the world and let your own house burn down."
I leaned back against the vending machine. The compressor hummed against my spine.
"I tried to protect her," I whispered. "I came home... I was empty, Sadie. I had nothing left to give her. If I had stayed, I would have hurt her with the silence. I would have snapped."
"So you left her alone? After she defended you? After she put herself in the line of fire for you?"
"I thought space was better."
"Space is for astronauts. Willow needs presence. She needs to know she’s not just a... a colorful accessory you picked up to brighten the gloom until reality hit."
"She's not an accessory."
"Then show her. Because right now? She thinks she's a mistake. She thinks she's just another mess you have to clean up."
Sadie let out a shaky breath.
"She called me yesterday, Ethan. She didn't say much. She just asked if... if I thought she was too much. If I thought she was broken."
I closed my eyes.
I think I don't fit. I think I'm too loud.
Her words from the guest house floor replayed in my mind.
"She's not broken," I rasped. "I am."
"Then stop acting like it," Sadie demanded. "You promised me you wouldn't hurt her. You are currently failing that promise."
"I know."
"Go home. Fix this. Before she packs that van and drives away for good. Because she will, Ethan. She's a runner. If she thinks she's unwanted, she'll disappear."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone.
She's a runner.
Adrenaline spiked. It cut through the fog of fatigue like a scalpel.
I had assumed she would be there. I had assumed that because I had given her a key, because we had painted a wall, because we had shared bodies and breath and secrets, she would wait.
But why would she wait for a man who walked away when things got hard?
I looked at my hands. They were steady. The tremor was gone.
I didn't need the hospital to ground me anymore. I didn't need the sterile white walls to keep the darkness out.
I needed her.
I needed the mess. I needed the paint on the table. I needed the cat destroying my garden.
I pushed off the vending machine.
I walked out of the break room. I walked past the nurses' station.
"Dr. Rourke?" Sarah called out. "Where are you going?"
"Home," I said.
I didn't stop to change. I didn't stop to check out.
I walked out the automatic doors into the parking lot.
The sky was dark. Heavy clouds were rolling in from the west, bruising the horizon with shades of charcoal and violet. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of ozone and rain.
A storm was coming.
I got into my truck.
I turned the key. The engine roared to life.
I pulled out of the lot, tires squealing on the asphalt.
I drove fast.
I ignored the speed limit. I ignored the fatigue pulling at my eyelids.
My mind raced ahead of the truck, replaying every moment of the last two days. The way I had looked at her in the guest house. The way I had walked away without touching her.
I'm empty. I have nothing left to give.
That had been a lie.
I wasn't empty. I was just afraid to pour what was left into someone who might spill it.
But Willow didn't spill things. She caught them. She caught light. She caught color. She had caught me when I was falling.
I hit the gas.
The first drops of rain hit the windshield. Big, heavy drops that splattered like bugs.
Please be there, I thought. Please just be there.
I turned onto the county road leading to my property. The trees whipped past, blurring into a green tunnel.
I had built a fortress to keep the world out.
But I had locked myself in with the ghosts.
Willow was the only one who had ever opened a window.
I pulled into the driveway.
The house was dark.
The guest house was dark.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, irregular rhythm that had nothing to do with medical science and everything to do with fear.
I didn't bother with the garage. I left the truck in the middle of the drive, engine still ticking as it cooled.
I ran to the guest house first.
"Willow!"
I threw the door open.
It was unlocked.
The smell of turpentine was stale.
I flipped the light switch.
The easel was upright. A new canvas was on it.
It was blue. Just blue. A deep, endless ocean of blue paint that looked like it had been applied in a frenzy.
But the room was empty.
No music. No cat.
"Willow?"
I checked the bathroom. I checked the closet.
Her clothes were still there. The yellow cardigan was draped over the chair.
She hadn't left town.
But she wasn't here.
I ran to the main house. I unlocked the back door.
"Willow!"
Silence answered me. The echo of my own voice mocking me from the high ceilings.
I checked the kitchen. The red paint stain on the table was still there, a dried, permanent reminder of the night I ruined everything.
I checked the bedroom. The bed was made. Perfect. Pristine. Unimpeachably empty.
She was gone.
I ran back downstairs. I went out onto the porch.
The rain was coming down harder now. A steady, soaking drumbeat on the roof.
Where would she go?
She's a runner.
But her van was still parked in the driveway.
She was on foot. In the rain.
I looked toward the woods that bordered the property. I looked toward the road leading into town.
"Think," I commanded myself. "Think."
When she was upset, she sought movement. She sought air.
I need to clear my head.
I ran down the steps. The rain soaked through my scrubs instantly, plastering the fabric to my skin. It was cold.
I didn't feel it.
I pulled my phone out. I dialed her number again.
It went straight to voicemail.
"Dammit."
I shoved the phone in my pocket.
I started walking. Fast. Toward the road.
The wind picked up, whipping the trees back and forth. The storm was breaking.
And somewhere out there, in the dark and the rain, was the woman who had tried to paint me gold, and I had left her in the gray.
I broke into a run.
I wasn't a surgeon anymore. I wasn't a soldier.
I was just a man who had made a terrible mistake, running into the storm to find the only light I had left.
Rain-Soaked Reunion
Willow
The rain didn't fall; it drove.
It came down in sheets of icy gray, stinging my face and soaking through my sweater in seconds. The wind whipped my hair across my eyes, blinding me, but I didn't stop walking.
I couldn't stop.
If I stopped, I would have to think. I would have to think about the empty easel back in the guest house. I would have to think about the red stain on the kitchen table that looked like a wound that wouldn't heal. I would have to think about Ethan, saving lives while I played with paint and feelings I had no business feeling.
You're just a distraction.
Marian’s voice was a snake in my head, hissing over the sound of the thunder.
A colorful little toy.
I stomped through a puddle. Cold water flooded my boot, soaking my sock. I didn't care. The physical discomfort was grounding. It was real. It was better than the hollow ache in my chest that told me I was taking up space I didn't deserve.
I had painted the blue. I had covered the canvas in an ocean of emotion, trying to drown the insecurity. But the blue wasn't enough. It was just pigment. It couldn't fix the fact that I was standing on the edge of his life, waiting for permission to enter, while he was out there fighting wars I couldn't understand.
I turned the corner onto Main Street.
The town was shut down. Windows were dark, storefronts blurred by the deluge. The streetlights cast long, wavering reflections on the wet asphalt.
I hugged my arms around my chest. I was shivering. My teeth chattered, a staccato rhythm against the roar of the storm.
"Stupid," I muttered into the wind. "Stupid, dramatic, messy."
I was walking to nowhere. Maybe to Riley’s, though the gallery was closed. Maybe just walking until my legs gave out and I had an excuse to collapse.
A car horn blared.
I jumped, stumbling toward the curb.
Headlights swept over me, blindingly bright against the dark rain. A truck swerved, tires hissing on the wet pavement, and slammed to a halt a few yards ahead of me.
The engine idled, a low, angry growl.
