To My First Love, With Regret - 52

At first, she was appalled and disgusted, feeling even a primal sense of danger.

But a room is just a room. Though Harry—the man whose depravity brought about Ethan’s ruin and her own fall—would likely disagree. Still, it was for the best. If he were to scream from the pits of hell as he watched the man who killed him take possession of his belongings, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

Yes, she would rather just give it up. If a mere room could make that man drunk on a sense of victory and satisfaction, then that, too, was a good thing.

A hungry beast is always the most vicious. If Eve filled his starving belly with revenge first, perhaps he would stop trying to tear her apart. Eventually, he might realize his revenge was already complete and that anything more was merely a hollow act of self-mutilation—and then, he might leave this place of his own accord.

It was the wisest choice for Eve. And in a way, it was the right one.

His rage toward Harry was justified. Though Ethan had driven everyone’s future to the edge of a cliff by executing Harry with his own hands, Eve still believed it had been an unavoidable choice.

Looking back, this tragedy was ultimately the original sin of the Sherwoods. Therefore, atonement was necessary. She, too, had to atone—for being too powerless back then to save Ethan and his family.

Even though Ethan had left without a single backward glance, despite the fact that she had already thrown everything away for him.

Eve had become a perpetrator by virtue of that original sin, but in another sense, she was a pitiful victim. Thus, she hoped that this man—who was both victim and perpetrator under the name Ethan Fairchild—would settle all his debts quickly and disappear from her life. This time, forever.

Even if right now, he was moving in as if he intended to live here for the rest of his life. While the other officers brought only a few bags of luggage, this man had brought in entire moving crates. He was even boldly driving nails into the walls of someone else’s home.

—A little more to the right.

The moment the painting his men were hanging came into view, Eve’s breath hitched.

It can’t be.

The canvas, painted entirely in monochrome grays, was hauntingly familiar.

No. It just looks similar from a distance.

Forgetting even the most basic etiquette of a lady—that one must not enter a strange man’s bedroom—Eve stepped inside as if possessed. As she drew closer to the painting, her vision grew even more blurred.

A. Leclerc.

She stared blankly at the signature resting atop a pile of painted strokes in the corner of the canvas. Then, a shadow fell over her. Ethan, who had approached her side unnoticed, asked:

—Do you still paint these days?

The question felt like a blade pressed against her spine without warning. A cold shiver ran down her back.

—…No.

Please, let it be that he didn’t ask because he knows I painted it.

—Still, your eye for art remains unchanged.

He mistakenly thought Eve was simply admiring the painting because she liked it. Feeling the blade retreat from her back, Eve carefully exhaled the breath she had been holding.

—The artist is a genius I discovered. They’re unknown now, but one day, they’ll be a master.

Ethan had called her a genius. Eve froze, not knowing how she was supposed to feel.

—The problem is, the work is infrequent. I thought the artist was in financial trouble and offered a sponsorship, but it was rejected. The reason given was a lack of time due to raising a child. To think it was a woman…. It was a surprise.

Eve was equally surprised.

To think my regular customer and patron, who bought every piece the moment I sold it, was you.

Because the offers had come through an art dealer and Emily, and no name had ever been mentioned, she had never imagined it. In the first place, she had never been curious enough to ask who was buying her work.

She had only wondered for what reason they had chosen those paintings.

Because Eve’s paintings were the graveyards of her emotions. For the past ten years, she had poured onto the canvas the feelings that would have strangled her if she kept them inside. Thus, the paintings were handkerchiefs used to wipe away tears and then discarded; they were the blood spat out after sucking out poison.

—Do you know why this is my favorite painting?

Ethan had hung this painting—of a gaunt lighthouse—directly opposite his bed, so that he would be forced to face it at the start and end of every day.

A lighthouse that would lose itself the moment the cliff, slowly eroded by the elements, finally collapsed.

The guide for the lost was being swallowed by darkness, unable to save even its own soul. The light that was meant to illuminate the world flickered only like a desperate distress signal. Below it, angry waves scattered foam like a spray of tears.

—It’s lonely and desperate. I wonder if the Captain’s final moments were like that? Or perhaps like the night I left these cliffs. You could call it a headstone mourning my past self.

Ethan shifted his gaze from the painting to check Eve’s reaction. She wore the expression of someone who had been insulted, just as she had at the reception yesterday.

The nerve of her.

Of course, Ethan had no way of knowing who the truly brazen one was. However, his interpretation—that the painting captured the night he left the cliffs—was hauntingly accurate.

It was a painting where Eve had buried the emotions of the night she was abandoned by him.

Could there be anything more insulting than someone claiming your grave as their own?

—Ha….

The moment she couldn’t suppress a hollow laugh, the atmosphere beside her shifted violently. He clearly misunderstood, thinking she was mocking him or his grandfather. Eve decided to use her past self as a sacrificial lamb.

—A ‘masterpiece’? Hardly. Look at the shading; it’s the work of an amateur who hasn’t even mastered the basics. You wasted your money on a trifle.

So, never use my painting as your trophy ever again.

Ethan’s face froze into an icy mask at her arrogant dismissal of both his taste and the genius he had discovered.

—You think this is just a realist landscape? Perhaps living cooped up in the countryside has made your tastes provincial. You’ve lost the eye to recognize a masterpiece.

Ethan didn’t realize for a second that he was currently insulting the very artist he admired.

He couldn’t have known. Her style had changed too much.

The Eve he once knew painted with a passion that felt like exploding fireworks. Bold colors would recklessly streak across the canvas as if mocking all the rules of the world—yet, like fireworks stitching the summer night sky, they never strayed from a hidden order.

But now, her work was less a painting and more a manifestation of chaos; it was closer to a scar left on the canvas. The paint wasn’t applied with a brush; it was rough, as if scraped and gouged by a palette knife.

I feel like I’m hanging on this man’s wall, naked.

It was no different than having sold a private diary only to find it displayed in a museum.

She wanted to escape this room immediately. Turning her back on the shameful sensation, Eve brought up the reason she had come to Harry’s old bedroom.

—This is the item I promised to return yesterday.

The moment he opened the unfamiliar box, Ethan was hit by a wave of intense humiliation and pain, as if he’d been struck in the face by an invisible fist.

Inside the box, two rings were pinned side by side like another set of headstones. They were the engagement ring and the wedding ring he had given to Eve.

You… still had these?

He had believed they were thrown in the trash long ago. With what kind of heart had this woman kept the love of the man she abandoned for ten years?

—I wanted to return them, and I thought you’d want them back, but I had no way to contact you, so I kept them.

Of course, he had wanted them back. Unable to forgive his foolish self for losing his grandparents’ heirlooms forever, he had spent countless sleepless nights dreaming of the miracle of finding them. Finally, the miracle had happened, but there was no joy. The humiliation of receiving them was far more vivid than any sense of relief.

Ethan’s gaze dropped to the ring finger of Eve’s left hand. She was returning his rings while wearing a wedding band from another man.

As if to say: I’ve found a better toy, so you’re useless now.

What did marriage even mean to Evelyn Sherwood? She didn’t look like a woman in love with Owen Callas. Was this marriage just a gamble for some sudden impulse or practical gain?

Just as it had been with him.

—I’ll take my leave, then.

She acted as if she were paying her respects to a dead love, but returning the tokens of a love she had trampled was mere hypocrisy—a cowardly escape to erase him completely and flee from the past—

I won’t let you.

Ethan called out to her back as she walked away with a lightened step.

—Lady Evelyn, are we rescheduling our tryst for tonight, then? Your room, or mine?

The moment Eve’s footsteps stopped, he laughed loudly for her to hear. But as soon as she vanished without a single backward glance, the laughter evaporated from Ethan’s face.

Like a weary clown throwing off his mask behind the scenes after the curtain falls.