Page 363 of Double or Nothing

I nod. The certainty feels a whole lot stronger with him beside me.

Jack heads into the living room and returns with a set of keys in his hand. My keys.

“You’d better start moving some stuff back in when I’m out at work tomorrow.”

“I was furious when I packed everything up,” I say. “Stupid, in hindsight.”

“Not stupid. Upset. Hurt. Rational.”

“It doesn’t feel quite so rational now.”

My chest tightens as Jack steps closer. He takes my hand and presses the keys into my palm, closing my fingers around them.

“Don’t give these back again, please. Even if you do get furious, or upset, or something fucks you off. Whatever it is, I won’t be meaning it.”

I stare at our hands.

“This feels very different than it was before.”

“It is. I realised what I’d lost.”

“Yeah. So did I.”

He pulls me away from the kitchen island by the hand.

“I’ve got something to show you.”

He leads me past the living room, into the hall, towards the bedroom.

My pulse begins to race, but there’s no shift into his usual playboy energy. No provocative glance over his shoulder or filthy promise about what he intends to do when we arrive. He simply walks ahead.

The bedroom door is open. When the room comes into view, the bed is made up neatly, unlike his usual sprawl of sheets. Nice.

Then I see the painting. The Esme Calder portrait hanging on the wall opposite the side of the bed I always slept on. Exactly as Jack said it would be.

I stop at the doorway in shock, because the photographs didn’t prepare me for it, and at the auction itself I only saw the distant shape of the piece and the shifting paddles around it. Jack’s refusal to stop bidding eclipsed everything else.

Here, with no crowd or auctioneer, the portrait has room to speak to me.

A solitary figure emerges through layered colour. The face is partly obscured, the identity softened rather than erased. Gold fractures pass across the image, drawing attention to everything the artist tried to conceal.

I step closer.

The placement is perfect.

From the bed, the portrait will be the first thing I see in the morning.

“It’s incredible,” I say. “Beautiful.”

“Good job, since it cost three hundred and twenty grand. It was a good investment for The Gilded Table, wasn’t it?”

I tear my attention from the portrait and look at him.

“Come on and admit it. You bought it because I said I loved it, didn’t you? Gilded Table or not.”

Jack’s expression turns serious. He doesn’t shy away, instead he sweeps a thumb over my cheek.

“I bought it because I love you.”