Broken Hands And Bitter Regrets

The familiar voice drifted through the speakers of my quiet floral studio, cutting through the late-night relationship podcast I had playing in the background.

It was Corinne. The woman I had loved for eight years. The woman who hadnt spoken to me in ten days.

My boyfriend and I have been together since high school, her voice crackled over the airwaves, heavy with an exhaustion that felt performative. "Back then, he saved me from a terrible situation. His right hand was shattered by a baseball bat. He could never paint again."

My breath caught in my throat.

"I swore I would take care of him for the rest of my life," she continued, her voice trembling just enough to sound sympathetic. "But Im drowning. I cant hold on anymore."

"Hes become so volatile, so sensitive," she paused, letting the silence stretch. "Then, a new intern started at my firm. Hes an artist, too. And looking at his handshis perfectly whole, unblemished handsit was like taking my first real breath in years."

She let out a ragged sigh. "I don't want to look at that ruined hand anymore. I cant stomach the guilt."

The podcast host offered a gentle, practiced murmur of sympathy. "Guilt is not romance, sweetie. Letting go is the kindest thing you can do for both of you."

"If his presence has become a tax on your happiness, buy out the debt. Settle the score of what he did for you financially, and walk away."

The host had barely finished her sentence when my phone lit up on the counter. An email notification from my bank.

A wire transfer from Corinne. Five hundred thousand dollars.

The attached memo read: Wesley, this is enough to cover your medical bills and a fresh start somewhere else. Lets stop torturing each other. Let me go.

I accepted the money.

I typed out a single word in response: Done.

Tossing the phone aside, I looked down at my right hand. A thick, angry scar snaked from the base of my wrist up to my knuckles, a jagged fault line that ached with a needle-like intensity whenever the Seattle air turned damp and cold.

This hand had been useless for eight years. And for eight years, it had been Corinnes prison.

Now, she had purchased her parole for half a million dollars.

The next morning, I took the train downtown to her firm to return the keys to her penthouse.

When I pushed open the heavy glass door to her corner office, she wasn't there.

Tristan was.

The intern. The one who made her feel alive.

He was sitting in Corinnes leather executive chair, casually flipping through a stack of contracts. At the sound of the door, he glanced up, a slow, easy smile spreading across his face. "Hey, Wesley. Looking for Corinne? Shes in a board meeting."

I didnt look at him. I walked straight to the mahogany desk and dropped the keyring squarely in the center.

I turned on my heel to leave, but Tristans voice stopped me. "Wesley, wait. Corinne was in a terrible mood last night. Her stress ulcers are acting up again. Could you maybe"

"I'm not her father," I cut him off, my voice flat.

Tristans smile slipped for a fraction of a second before he recovered, his expression smoothing into a mask of polite concern. He picked up a ceramic mug from the desk. "My apologies. Its not my place. Hey, don't leave mad. Have some coffee. I just ground the beans myself."

He took a step toward me. Then, suddenly, the toe of his expensive loafer caught on the edge of the plush rug. He pitched forward.

The entire mug of scalding, freshly brewed coffee splashed directly onto my ruined right hand.

The pain was instantaneous and absolute.

I sucked in a sharp, hissing breath, instinctively jerking my arm back as the heat seared into my nerve-damaged skin.

But before I could make a sound, Tristan screamed. He screamed as if he were the one who had just been doused in boiling water.

A few stray drops had landed on his wrist, leaving a faint pink bloom on his pristine skin.

The office door flew open.

Corinne rushed in, her heels clicking frantically against the hardwood. She didn't even glance in my direction. She made a beeline straight for Tristan, her manicured hands hovering anxiously over his arm.

"Where did it hit you? Let me see. Is it bad?"

Tristans eyes welled with perfectly timed tears. He shook his head bravely. "Im fine, Corinne. Really. It was my fault. I tripped and spilled it all over Wesley."

Only then did Corinne turn to look at me.

Her eyes dropped to my right hand, which was already turning a furious, blistering red. But her brow furrowed not with worry, but with a deep, weary irritation.

"Wesley, what has gotten into you?" she demanded, her tone dropping in temperature. "Tristan is just an intern. Whatever anger you have toward me, take it out on me. Why do you have to bully a kid?"

The words hit me harder than the boiling water.

I stood there, watching her physically shield Tristan with her body. Behind her shoulder, I caught Tristan staring at me, a microscopic smirk playing on his lips.

I couldn't speak. The air had been sucked out of the room.

I reached past them, picked up the keys I had just dropped, and shoved them into my coat pocket.

Corinnes eyes narrowed. "What are you doing now? Are you seriously trying to threaten me with the keys?"

"No," I finally rasped, my throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper. "I just realized there's no point in leaving them here."

"Youve obviously already changed the locks."

I turned and walked out.

From down the hall, I heard her voice, tight with repressed fury: "Wesley! Are you ever going to stop making a scene?!"

I didn't look back. I just kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other until I was out of that suffocating glass tower.

Outside, the midday sun was blinding. My hand was on fire, a throbbing, blistering reminder of what a colossal fool I was.

Eight years ago, when this hand took the brunt of a metal bat meant for her skull, she had held my bleeding fingers to her chest and sobbed, swearing she would spend the rest of her life protecting me.

Eight years later, my hand was scalded in front of her, and she demanded to know why I was so narrow-minded.

I made it back to my floral studio. The heavy scent of eucalyptus, damp earth, and crushed petals wrapped around me. This was how I survived. This was my sanctuary.

I pulled an ice pack from the floral cooler and pressed it against my blistering skin. The physical sting dulled slightly, but the burning in my chest only grew more suffocating.

My phone vibrated against the counter. It was Corinnes younger sister.

"Hey, Wesley. Did my sister do something stupid again? You know shes emotionally stunted. Dont take it to heart."

Bridgets voice was, as always, a burst of bright, chaotic energy. Throughout this entire agonizing decline of our relationship, she was the only one who had remained fiercely in my corner.

"Its nothing," I lied softly.

"Don't give me that. She just called me, demanding I talk you off the ledge. She said... she said that guy Tristan burned his wrist and his skin is peeling, and that you were way out of line."

My stomach plummeted.

Peeling?

I looked down at the massive, fluid-filled blisters rising on my own scarred knuckles, and a bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat.

"Wesley, who exactly is this Tristan guy?" Bridget asked, her tone shifting to suspicion. "Shes been bringing him up constantly."

"Just an intern at her firm."

"Just an intern? Bullshit. You know my sister. She is practically allergic to people, especially men. Since when does she care this much about anyone who isn't you?"

Since when, indeed.

In high school, Corinne had been the brilliant, socially awkward girl the entire school treated like a pariah. I was the golden-boy artist, the only one who didn't care what people thought. I pulled her out of the dark, vicious currents of high school bullying and anchored her. She had relied on me with a desperation that bordered on the pathological.

When did it change?

Probably right around the time she built her empire, while I remained the crippled guy tending to wilting flowers in a dusty shop.

"Bridget," I said quietly, the words tasting like ash. "Corinne and I are done."

Dead silence on the other end of the line.

When Bridget finally spoke, her voice cracked. "Wesley, don't say that. Don't scare me. Its been eight years. You guys don't just end."

"She ended it."

"No! That's impossible! She loves you. She would never throw you away!" Bridget was crying now, the sound high and panicked.

I didn't have the strength to comfort her. "I'm exhausted, Bridge. I need to go."

I hung up. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor in the back corner of the shop, utterly still.

Beyond the glass windows, the city moved in a blur of headlights and rushing pedestrians. It was a massive city, but there was no room in it for me anymore.

Back then, I had turned down a full ride to RISD to follow her here. My art teacher had wept, furious, telling me I was throwing away a generational talent for a teenage romance.

I hadnt regretted it.

Because Corinne had gotten into Columbia, her dream school, and she had looked at me with those wide, desperate eyes and promised we would build a life together.

I believed her.

I used the hand that could no longer hold a paintbrush to learn how to arrange stems, prune thorns, and keep things alive. I built this shop. I thought we were going to walk quietly side-by-side into old age.

I thought. That was my fatal mistake.

Around dusk, the brass bell above the door chimed.

Assuming it was a late customer, I didn't look up from the counter.

"Wesley."

Corinnes voice.

Every muscle in my back locked, but I didn't turn around.

She walked around the counter and crouched down, forcing her way into my line of sight.

"Does your hand still hurt?" she asked, a trace of exhaustion threading through her words.

I said nothing.

She reached out, intending to touch my injured hand. I flinched, jerking it back so violently I knocked over a spool of ribbon.

Her hand hovered in the empty air between us, painfully awkward.

"I had security pull the footage this afternoon," she murmured, looking down. "I was wrong. Tristan tripped on his own."

"The camera outside your office has been broken for three years," I said, my voice eerily calm.

Corinne froze.

She had insisted on disabling that camera years ago for her own privacy. She hadn't checked any footage. She was fishing.

If I had played alongif I had vented my grievances and complained about how unfair it wasshe would have offered a hollow apology. And just like the hundreds of fights before, the incident would have been swept under the rug of our shared history.

But this time, I didn't play the game.

Corinnes expression hardened. "Do you have to be like this, Wesley?"

"Like what?"

"So uncompromising. So obsessed with being right!"

A hollow, broken laugh escaped my lips.

"Corinne, who exactly is being uncompromising here?" I stared dead into her eyes. "After eight years, is this really how little you think of me?"

She went entirely silent.

It was a suffocating, heavy silenceone that cut deeper than any insult she could have hurled at me.

Slowly, she stood up. She reached into her designer trench coat, pulled out a small silver tube, and placed it on the counter next to me.

"Its a prescription burn cream from Switzerland. Make sure you apply it twice a day."

Just like that, the mask was back on. The untouchable, pragmatic CEO. She was the benevolent benefactor bestowing grace upon the pathetic, needy dependent.

"Also," she paused, not meeting my eyes. "That money is yours. You earned it. Go... build a good life for yourself."

She turned and walked toward the door.

No hesitation. No backward glance.

I stared at her retreating silhouette. That back had once been the only thing I needed to feel safe in the world. Now, she was just the knife twisting in my ribs.

I grabbed the tube of expensive ointment and threw it at her with every ounce of strength I had left.

It hit her squarely between the shoulder blades and clattered loudly onto the hardwood floor.

She stopped walking. But she didnt turn around.

The door opened, the bell chimed, and she was gone.

I was left completely alone in a room full of dying flowers.

For the next few days, Corinne didn't reappear.

The rhythm of my life resumed its hollow ticking. I opened the shop, arranged bouquets for strangers, and locked up. But the throbbing burns on my right hand were a constant, pulsing reminder that the ground beneath me had vanished.

Then, the envelope arrived.

Heavy, matte black cardstock. Inside was an invitation to a gallery opening.

Tristan Matthew. Solo Exhibition.

The venue was the most prestigious contemporary arts center in the city.

The sponsor listed at the bottom? Corinne CorWes Media.

It felt as though a giant, invisible hand had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart until it bruised.

Tristan was an artist. Corinne had said that seeing his perfectly intact hands made her feel alive.

What was she doing?

Was this a victory lap? Was she rubbing my nose in the fact that she had found a flawless replacement? A man who could be everything I was supposed to be, but without the baggage and the trauma?

I crumpled the thick cardstock and pitched it into the trash.

But on the night of the exhibition, like a man walking to his own execution, I went anyway.

Without an RSVP, the security guards barred me at the door. I stood outside in the freezing rain, peering through the massive floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

Inside, Tristan was bathed in warm, golden light, wearing a custom-tailored suit, laughing as the citys elite fawned over him. And standing right by his side, draped in a stunning silk gown, was Corinne.

She looked at him with a gentle, glowing pride I hadn't seen directed at me in half a decade.

Standing there in my damp coat, I felt like an absolute clown. A voyeur pressing his nose against the glass of someone elses perfect life.

I turned up my collar and prepared to walk away.

That was when I saw it.

Hung in the dead center of the main gallery space was the exhibitions centerpiece.

The placard read: Shattered.

It was a painting of a young boy curled into a tight, defensive ball in a dark corner, surrounded by a galaxy of jagged, broken stars raining down on him.

The composition. The linework. The raw, bleeding emotion of it.

I stopped breathing. The world tilted violently on its axis.

That was my painting.

It was the final piece I had ever drawn. Eight years ago, right after the doctors told me I would never regain fine motor control, I had locked myself in a room and drawn it in a fugue state of pure, unadulterated agony. Because my hand shook so violently, I had only managed to finish the sketch before my muscles gave out.

That sketchbook was locked inside a safe in my old studio apartment.

Only one person beside me knew the combination.

Corinne.

She had stolen my grief. She had taken the most agonizing, humiliating moment of my existence, gift-wrapped it, and handed it to her new lover to build his career on.

Blood roared in my ears. I couldn't see straight.

I shoved past the velvet ropes, tearing my arm away from the security guard, and burst through the heavy glass doors.

"Corinne!"

My voice ripped through the elegant hum of the room.

The string quartet stumbled to a halt. Dozens of faces turned toward me in shock.

Corinne and Tristan spun around.

The moment Corinne saw me, her face contorted into a mask of pure fury. She marched toward me, her heels striking the marble floor like gunfire.

"Wesley, what the hell is wrong with you?"

She kept her voice in a vicious whisper, the disgust in her eyes entirely unfiltered.

I pointed a shaking finger toward the center canvas. "That painting. Why is it here?"

Corinne glanced over her shoulder at it, her expression entirely blank. "That is Tristans work."

"His work?" A hysterical, jagged laugh tore out of my throat. "Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me youve never seen that sketch?"

Corinnes pupils contracted sharply.

"You're a monster, Corinne!" I screamed, the sound raw and tearing.

"Wesley, stop it!" She grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my jacket. "We are in public. Stop acting insane!"

"I'm acting insane?!"

I stared at her, hot tears finally spilling over my lashes. "You stole my work! You stole my grief and handed it to the man youre sleeping with, and you have the audacity to call me insane?"

The crowd had formed a tight, whispering circle around us.

Tristan hurried over, wrapping a protective arm around Corinnes waist. He looked at me with wide, Bambi-like innocence.

"Wesley, man, I think you're confused," he said softly, playing to the audience. "This is a completely original piece. Corinne just... provided me with some conceptual inspiration."

"Inspiration?" I sneered. "You colored in my linework like a toddler with a coloring book and you call it inspiration?"

"I don't know anything about any linework," Tristan whispered, shrinking slightly behind Corinne. "Corinne, he's scaring me..."

Corinne moved instinctively, shielding him behind her back, glaring at me as if I were a rabid dog that needed to be put down.

"That is enough. If you don't leave right now, Wesley, I will have you physically removed."

Security guards. Always security. In her world, I was just a mess that needed to be cleaned up and thrown out.

"Okay," I nodded slowly, wiping the tears from my face with the back of my ruined hand. "Okay. Remember this night, Corinne."

I looked at herreally looked at herone last time. Then I turned and dragged myself toward the exit.

The murmurs followed me out like a swarm of hornets.

"Who was that guy? He looked deranged."

"I heard its her ex. Hes crippled, apparently. Has serious mental issues."

"God, no wonder she left him for Tristan. Who could deal with that kind of psycho?"

Every word was a blade slipping neatly between my ribs.

So that was the narrative. I was the unhinged, disabled burden. And Corinne was the tragic heroine who had finally escaped my toxicity.

I made it back to the floral shop and locked myself in the storage closet.

It was dark and smelled heavily of dust and dried lavender. I dug through a cardboard box at the very bottom of a stack, pulling out an old, weathered Moleskine sketchbook.

Inside was the ghost of who I used to be. Charcoal portraits of Corinne studying. Pen-and-ink landscapes of places we promised wed visit.

And on the very last page, the original, trembling graphite sketch of Shattered.

It was rough, the lines jagged from my shaking hand, but it pulsed with a desperate, screaming life. Now, it was just a stepping stone for someone elses vanity.

I pulled my knees to my chest, curling up on the dusty floor in the exact same posture as the boy in the drawing.

Only this time, I knew no one was coming to pull me out of the dark.

For the next few days, my body simply gave out.

A brutal fever took hold, leaving me drifting in and out of a delirious haze. The fresh coffee burns on my hand became aggressively infected, aggravating the old nerve damage until the pain was a blinding, white-hot static in my brain.

To manage the chronic nerve pain, I required a highly restricted synthetic opioid.

Sweating and shaking, I crawled across the floor to my medical drawer.

The amber bottle was empty.

I distinctly remembered filling a new bottle just a few days ago. I tore the shop apart with my one good hand, knocking over vases and scattering dirt across the floor, but it was nowhere.

A cold panic seized my chest.

Without the medication, the withdrawal and the nerve pain combined would quite literally send my body into shock. It felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to the bones in my arm, over and over again.

Trembling so violently I could barely hold the phone, I dialed Corinnes number.

She was the only one who knew about my condition. She was the one who pulled strings with private doctors to get me the prescription in the first place.

The phone rang endlessly. Finally, a sharp click.

"What?" Corinnes voice was clipped, intensely annoyed.

"Corinne, I..." I gasped, my teeth chattering from the pain. "Im out of my medication. Can you... please, can you bring me some?"

"Out again?" she scoffed, the suspicion dripping from every syllable. "Wesley, are you seriously trying to play this game right now?"

"I'm not... Corinne, please, I'm dying..."

I curled into a tight ball on the floor, my clothes soaked in a cold sweat. The agony in my right arm was escalating, threatening to pull me entirely under.

"The boy who cried wolf. Are you ever going to get tired of this act?" Her voice was devoid of an ounce of humanity. "I am incredibly busy. Tristans national tour is launching, and I do not have the time to entertain your pathetic tantrums."

Click.

The line went dead.

Listening to the dial tone, a strange, hollow peace washed over me. I let out a weak, rattling laugh.

Maybe dying wasnt so bad.

Corinne. In the next life, I hope to God I never meet you.