It had been since that first fateful trip to New York when I was barely fourteen. But I’d lost myself somewhere along the way. “I have to find a way to make it mine again. It’s not just what happened this past year. It was long before that. The minute my face was out there, things changed. I lost some of the…rawness. The bravery. I played it safe.”

Carson studied me through the screen as if he were trying to find the right words. Ones that would help me out of this bizarre identity crisis. “Brody. I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Your pieces have always been some of the most authentic I’ve ever seen. And the most terrifying. I don’t know if it’s possible for you to pull punches. But if you have recently, it’s understandable. You’ll get back there.”

I let my focus drift to the canvases and various mediums scattered across the room. Darkness had always pulled at me. All the things that people hid beneath the surface. What they would look like if we could see those parts of them that they disguised because they were too ugly or scary to face.

But someone had taken that art and perverted it. Turned it into something it was never supposed to be. It had messed with my head. And not just that I was afraid to put it out in the world anymore. A part of me worried what it said about me that my creative soul had called to a murderer.

“Brody.”

Carson drew my attention back to the screen. I blinked a few times, clearing my vision. “Sorry. Lost in the weeds for a minute.”

Carson rested his cigarette on an ashtray he’d welded from spare parts. “Do you want me to come out there? Maybe we can work on a project together.”

“Car, you’re a sculptor. I work with spray paint.”

“You could paint a sculpture that I make. We’ll come up with the vision together.”

“And how the hell are you going to get welding equipment and a bunch of metal to my place?” He was trying. And it meant something to me—his support and dedication to making sure I got my head in the game.

“I could figure out a way.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I’m sure you could. And I appreciate it, man. I really do. But I need to find my footing on my own. I’ll get there eventually. I just need to do it without Lara or anyone else in the art world breathing down my neck.”

“Fair enough. Just promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Carson leaned towards the camera until his face was a close-up. “Don’t throw in the towel.”