CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEO STEPPED BACK and studied the wide stripe of pale olive paint he’d just applied to the wall above the fireplace. It seemed right for the room. A calming sort of colour but rich enough, saturated enough, not to be boring. He loaded the roller again and worked it over the wall, expanding the patch of colour. There was something satisfying about the sticky glide of the roller, the fresh paint smell, the instant transformation. Mia would approve, he thought. Direk would be peeved. He’d say that Theo was the client, that he wasn’t supposed to be painting...
But he’d been restless. A long run hadn’t helped and, when he’d tried to focus on work, his thoughts had kept drifting to Mia, to the look on her face as she’d slowly backed out of the room. She hadn’t turned her back on him, but held his gaze to the last, giving him chance after chance to stop her. But he hadn’t; he’d let her go.
He’d given up trying to work and roamed the house instead. He’d been pacing up and down the hall when he’d felt a sudden compelling need to control something, an overwhelming desire to assert himself. He’d spotted the paint tins through the sitting room door, and that was it. He’d moved Direk’s vase off the mantelpiece and set to work painting the chimney breast. Pathetic, really, slapping paint on a wall to exorcise his demons. He knew what was wrong with him. It was half-past six. Mia was at Eline’s apartment, which had been his apartment once, and he had absolutely no control over what was being discussed...or revealed.
He coated the roller again, driving it over the wall, wet pinpricks of paint peppering his face. For three days he hadn’t been able to think about Mia without seeing her tear-stained cheeks as she’d stood in the doorway. For three days he’d tried to convince himself that she’d be better off without him, but if he believed that then why hadn’t he been able to draw a line under everything? Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? He paused for a beat. Because he knew all the way to his bones that they were better off together. It had been the coward’s way out, trying to write off everything they’d shared, because he was too scared to turn his gaze inwards and deal with the hard stuff.
Hard stuff!
He powered the roller over the wall.
Deal with it!
Eline... The thought of her didn’t turn his blood to ice any more. Yes, she’d stung him with her attitude to Bram, and she’d broken his heart with her casual affair, but it was time to face the truth. Ancient hurt over Eline wasn’t the reason why he hadn’t told Mia about Bram. It had been a ready-to-wear excuse, that was all. Mia was sweet, kind and empathetic. He’d always known in his heart that she would never think badly of Bram; would never see Bram as a tiresome liability, as Eline had. For pity’s sake, Mia had even expressed sadness at the death of his father, something he’d never been able to do himself.
He poured more paint into the roller tray and moved on to the next section of wall. His father had been a waste of space. At twelve years old Bram had been more of a man than his father had ever been. Bram, protecting them all, wading in to divert his father’s drunken fists from their mother, hollering at him to take Madelon away so she wouldn’t see... And he’d always done as he’d been told, hadn’t he...? He’d always run away knowing full well that, when he got back, Bram would be...hurt. The roller froze in his hand. To this day the sharp scrape of chair legs on tile made his heart lurch. The sound of breaking china made him buckle inside.
He stared at the glistening green wall, felt his ten-year-old self shrinking back, heartbeat ramping, mouth tinder-dry. He’d been a coward. He’d never done a single thing to help Bram put their father down. He’d never raised a finger or answered back. The noise and the swinging fists had frightened him. So he’d let Bram do it, had let him take the blows and the curses, and when Bram had congratulated him for getting Madelon out of the house he’d glowed because Bram’s approval had meant everything. In his eyes, Bram had seemed unbreakable, like a superhero. He’d seemed like someone who could weather a storm and come out smiling. He’d been reliable, dependable. Strong.
But Bram wasn’t a superhero. He was mortal, broken and scarred on the inside. He’d been pretending all along to make his cowardly little brother feel better...
Theo lowered the roller, felt it slipping from his hand. Bram the hero; Mia the brave. He’d never noticed before, the vocabulary he used in his head. He was drawn to strength and bravery because strength and bravery were attributes that he didn’t possess. He could see it clearly now: his unswerving determination to fix his brother at any cost had been a desperate attempt to atone for his own failings. It was messed up but that was why he hadn’t been able to tell Mia about Bram, because sharing Bram’s story with her meant sharing his guilt, admitting his own weakness...
He drew in a long breath. His abhorrence of violence and abuse; the properties he’d bought for the refuge so that women like his mother, and kids like Bram and Madelon and himself, would have somewhere safe to go; his need to control things and protect his family: they were shoots grown on a rootstock of crippling guilt.
He bent
