Still with you

Chapter4

The man turns to her, a smile spread on his face.

“Is it a crime for a man to visit his newly wedded ex”. He responds, sarcasm dripping in his tone.

“Yes!, yes it's a bloody crime!”. Blaire exclaims loudly, slightly irritated, knowing where he is going with his sentiment, already familiar with his game.

“What will you do? call your husb.. oops.. I mean boyfriend to come and arrest me”. He says, a smirk dancing on his lips, as he talks in a mocking tone.

Her eyes widen, of course her ex knows, sometimes she forgets just how influential her fiance is.

She had been doing a good job avoiding the gossip concerning her wreck of a wedding.

Blaire takes in a deep breath, trying to ground herself, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her break down.

“So this is why you are here?, to taunt me?, you're just wasting your time Henry”. She says, trying to mask the emotional pain at the remembrance of the unfortunate incident.

“Of course that is not my intention, why would I go to this length just to piss you off?”. His face drops, a serious expression on display, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“Maybe because you're a psychopath!”. She snaps at him, rolling her eyes at his poor dramatic skills.

“Look, just wanted to check up on you, this wouldn't have happened if we were together you know”. He says in a shrug as his tone now completely serious.

“What are you on about?, you literally cheated on me”. She replies with a scoff.

“And I tried to fix it, I apologized, turned my life around, just to prove that I was remorseful, but what has your little boyfriend done about this problem huh?”. His voice spiteful towards the end, as he stares at her.

Blaire is speechless as his sentence marinates in her mind, what has Mark done about this? The woman is literally living in their home for christ sake. But she shakes the questioning thoughts off, reminding herself that Mark loves her and will do everything he can to fix this.

“Why am I listening to you anyways, please leave”. Her head hung low, her tone dismissive as she turns away from him not wanting to see his face.

“Come on Blaire, just come back, I promise to make things better, you'll not have to worry about all this drama”. He says as he slowly walks up to her, her back turned to him.

He places his hand on her shoulder but it's immediately shrugged off.

“Henry, just go away”. Her tone exhausted as she stares at the ground

“I’ll go, but just know that I’ll treat you better than he can and I'll be waiting for you to get back to your senses”. Blaire hears his heavy footsteps slowly dissipate, an indication that she is alone in the studio once more.

Collapsing on her seat, her mind goes wild, Henry's words weighing heavily on her psyche, the worst case scenario floating in her head.

She massages her temple as she goes back to scrolling on her phone knowing the earlier she starts painting, the faster she’ll get a calm mind.

Suddenly she receives a text from Mark, she opens it to see a paragraph of affirmative words ending with the usual sentence.

‘I love you my muse’.

A smile spreads on her face as she reads the sentence over and over again, he does this everyday but she's still not used to it, she still feels her heart flutter at his mid day messages.

The words, a form of assurance that his feelings for her will never change.

She sends a quick response to acknowledge that she had received the text and starts painting a picture that came to her mind.

Blaire suddenly feels drowsy and decides to leave.

She places her canvas now containing an abstract drawing of a rose near the window so it could dry quickly and sends a text to the studio manager to keep her painting safe when he comes to lock up.

She walks out the studio and into the car that had been waiting for her for the past 2 hours, greeting the driver that had brought her there she requested he take her home.

Looking out the window, she sees a blur of the buildings as they speed pass, struggling to stay awake she scrolls through i********:.

She sees her dormant profile that she abandoned for a while, she had been so fixated on the situation with Lisa that she had forsaken the app altogether.

Deciding in her heart to revive her presence on the app, she took a picture of the blurred building and got to work to edit and post it.

Soon they arrive home, the driver calls her name to alert her, her body jerks at the sudden action, bringing her back to reality.

She gives the driver a small smile, thanking him once more as she steps out of the car, into the mansion.

Deciding to take a quick drink of warm milk before going up, she goes straight to the kitchen, warming up some milk and putting it in a mug.

She sips some and carries the rest to her room.

As she gets to the top of the stairs she hears some noise.

Her heart almost jumps out of her body as goosebumps break out on her skin.

Her mind starts going haywire, thinking of what to do.

The only logical explanation is a thief must have broken in as Mark doesn't leave the office till 6 and Lisa had left earlier in the morning to God knows where. Plus if Lisa was around she would be in her room.

And it's the weekend so the security men are not available.

“Perfect timing”. She whispers to herself with a sarcastic tone.

She racks her brain to think of a plan, she could just quietly walk out of the house and call the police, but that might take time as the house is in a secluded area.

An idea suddenly comes to her mind, Mark keeps a gun in the study room, and he had taught her how to use it.

So she could just quickly open the door and threaten the criminal with it, and it's a pallet gun so it's not lethal if she shoots the right place, but she hopes she wouldn't need to do that.

With this plan in mind Blaire places her cup of milk on the ground, goes to the study to retrieve the gun and slowly and quietly makes her way to the room the noise is coming from.

As she gets to the door, she takes a deep breath, adjusts her hand on the trigger

She swings the door open and jumps in, arm stretched out with the gun, eyes scanning the room for the intruder.

“Put your hands in th…”

Her voice trails off as her eyes blow wide and jaw dr

ops at the scene in front of her, her arm slowly lowers the longer she stares.

“What the heck!”....