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Or what remained of it.

I step closer.

The canvas feels warmer than the rest of the room, as if the fire is still alive inside it. It is all flame and annihilation. Thick, violent strokes of crimson and molten orange rip upward into a sky choked with smoke. I didn’t paint the fire delicately; I carved it in. The palette knife tore through layers of color, building heat upon heat until the paint began to split. In some places it has cracked, tiny fractures running through the surface like stress lines in glass. As if even the canvas couldn’t withstand what it was forced to hold.

The car itself is barely recognizable. Metal twisted into sharp, skeletal angles. The frame warped and peeled back like burned skin. Windows blown out into jagged mouths. The headlights shattered into blind, empty sockets.

I made sure it looked like it was screaming.

I remember watching it burn.

I remember the concussion of the blast and how the sound hit my chest before my ears processed it. The bloom of fire swelling outward in a violent flower of heat and debris. The way the night turned orange in a single breath. The shockwave kissing my face, hot and intimate, as if the explosion leaned in just for me.

It was obscene.

I painted it that same night, adrenaline racing under my skin like a second pulse. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Not from fear but from exhilaration and the aftertaste of destruction. I remember laughing softly at one point, the sound swallowed by the empty studio. I remember stepping back, breathless, and thinking—Yes, this is what it feels like.

The explosion was the most beautifully violent thing I’ve seen in months. And for the first time in weeks, my mind latched onto something that wasn’t Tristan.

That alone made it sacred.

I study the painting now, tracing the chaos I immortalized. Then my eyes move back to the painting covered by the curtain, the one I’ve been working on for weeks, and I let out a frustrated groan.

My head feels both too full and too empty at once. It’s a familiar contradiction. I get like this when I’m tilting, when the mania hums just beneath the surface yet refuses to break through. Colors feel brighter. Sounds sharper. My thoughts move fast, then stall, then sprint again.

And underneath it all—

Him.

Tristan.

He is a disease in my brain.

I pace once, then twice, running a hand through my hair. Gradually, as if nearing an altar, I walk toward it. My fingers hesitate at the curtain before finally pulling it aside.

There he is.

Tristan.

Not smiling; he never smiles in my paintings. I’ve never seen him smile at me. Not once. I’ve seen him smirk at others; I’ve seen that cruel curl of amusement when he’s about to humiliate someone. The only time I have seen a soft smile from him is the one he gives to Jake.

I stare at his painted face, drinking him in like oxygen after drowning. Every line perfect. Every shadow intentional. The shape of his mouth, calm, firm, and impossible to forget. His eyes steady, confident, infuriatingly untouchable.

I’ve reworked his eyes at least seven times, but I still don’t think they’re right. They’re not intense enough. Not dangerous enough.

Not… him enough.

This isn’t the first painting of Tristan.

It won’t be the last.

I’ve lost count of how many versions of him exist in this room. Some half-finished. Some hidden behind others. Some I’ve destroyed in manic bursts—slashed through the center when he said something that crawled under my skin and stayed there.

He’s easier to paint than to understand.

A knock sounds at the door, cutting my thoughts off.

I close my eyes.