Chapter 117 One Day Left

Chapter 117 One Day Left
Jasmine’s POV

I stare at the blank canvas like it owes me an explanation.

It doesn’t have one. It never asked to be blank. I’m the one who let it stay that way for two days while I drowned in my own head.

“Just submit one of the others.” Xavier says from the doorway, his voice careful, like he’s testing how close he can get before I snap. “The one with the broken rose. It’s more than good, Jas.”

“It’s not the one.” I say flatly, not turning around.

“I know it’s not the one. But it’s one day, princess. One day and a blank canvas isn’t exactly—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off, my voice cracking in a way I hate. “Don’t tell me what isn’t exactly possible. I already know.”

He goes quiet, and I almost regret snapping, but the panic in my chest doesn’t leave room for almost.

I’ve spent the whole morning trying to convince myself that submitting any of the dozen finished pieces stacked against my studio wall would be enough. They’re all the same kind of dark, the same broken women, the same fallen petals and shattered things. They’re good paintings. They’d pass. 

Nobody at the exhibition would know the difference.

But I would.

“Talk to me.” Xavier says, crossing the room slowly, the way you’d approach something that might bolt.

“There’s nothing to say. I have one day, Xavier. One day to make something from nothing, and even if I tried, it would just be a worse copy of what’s already gone. It wouldn’t mean anything.”

He sits on the floor in front of me, not on the chair, not standing over me, just down where I am, level with my eyes.

“Why does it have to be a copy?”

“Because that’s the only story I have.” I snap, harder than I mean to. “That painting was my whole life, Xavier. The wardrobe, my father, all of it. There’s nothing else to paint.”

He’s quiet for a moment, just looking at me, and I brace myself for some line about how I’m stronger than this, how I’ll figure it out, all the things people say when they don’t actually know what to say.

Instead, he asks, “Is it though?”

“Is what?”

“The only story you have.” He tilts his head slightly. “Cause from where I’m standing, I’ve watched you live a whole different one these past few months. The orphanage. Timothy. The hilltop. Skinny dipping like an idiot in front of me.” A small, careful smile. “You’ve barely picked up black paint in weeks.”

I almost laugh despite myself, but it comes out broken instead.

“That painting was never wrong, Jas. It was true when you painted it. But maybe it got destroyed because it already finished being true.” He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine slowly. “Remember what I said about art? It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being honest. Maybe the most honest thing you could paint right now isn’t the wardrobe anymore.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” He shrugs. “You kept that painting hidden for so long because you were scared of what it meant to show people you’d been broken. But you’re not that girl hiding the canvas under a sheet anymore. You haven’t been her in a while.”

Something in my chest shifts, slow and uncomfortable.

“So what, I just forget it happened?”

“No.” He says it firmly, no hesitation. “You don’t forget it. You just don’t have to keep proving it happened. You already know it did. I know it did. The people who matter already know.”

I look at the blank canvas again, and for the first time today it doesn’t feel like a threat.

“What if I paint something and it’s not enough? What if it doesn’t carry what the other one did?”

“Then it carries something else.” He brushes his thumb over my knuckles. “It doesn’t have to carry the same weight, Jas. It just has to be true to where you are now. That’s all art ever has to be.”

I sit with that for a long time, his hand still around mine, the room quiet except for both of us breathing.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe the painting wasn’t taken from me so much as it finished being mine to hold onto.

Maybe there’s a different truth waiting underneath all this panic, one I haven’t let myself look at yet because I was too busy mourning the one I already knew.

“I need to be alone.” I say finally, standing, my legs steadier than they were an hour ago.

He doesn’t argue. He just presses a kiss to my forehead and leaves without another word, trusting me with whatever I’m about to do.

I stand in front of the canvas for a long while before I pick up the brush.

I don’t plan it. I don’t sketch it out first the way I usually do. I just start.

The first strokes come out wrong, too rushed, too uneven, and I almost stop, almost reach for my pencil to map something out properly the way I always do, but I don’t let myself. 

There’s no time.

Soft greens bleed across the bottom, smeared in places where my hand moved faster than my patience could keep up with. 

Color blooms without me deciding their species or their names, just shapes that feel like warmth, some of them lopsided, some bleeding into each other where I didn’t wait long enough for one layer to dry before starting the next.

Hours pass. I don’t notice them passing.

At the edges, almost without meaning to, dark strokes creep in, not spreading, not reaching toward the center, just framing it, holding it the way a scar holds a body that’s already healed.

My wrist aches. My fingers cramp around the brush. There’s paint on my cheek where I keep forgetting not to touch my face, and somewhere past midnight I knock over a jar of water and don’t even stop to clean it, just keep going, chasing whatever this is before it slips away from me.

It isn’t perfect. I can see every place where the haste shows, a patch of green that dried uneven, edges that aren’t as clean as they’d be if I’d had a week instead of one desperate night.

But it’s mine. And it’s real. And right now, that matters more than perfect ever could.

I keep painting until my arm gives out and the light outside has gone from afternoon to evening to something closer to dawn, and when I finally step back, brush still in hand, paint drying under my nails, I don’t recognize what’s looking back at me.

It isn’t the wardrobe. It isn’t the crouched, faceless girl I spent years painting over and over.

It’s a garden.

Imperfect, rushed in places, raw at the edges where I didn’t have time to be careful. 

But it’s blooming, and the dark only lives at the borders now, holding the frame instead of swallowing it.

This might not be the painting I wanted the world to see.

But it’s my reality. 

It’s still the truth.