Page 89 of Brushed and Buried
There was a piece of closure I hadn’t expected. Vince called me late one night, his voice heavy with something I couldn’t identify.
“I talked to my father,” he said without preamble.
I’d been preparing the canvas, but my hands stilled at the words. We’d both avoided the subject of Victor Holloway sincethat explosive revelation at the resort, the wound still too fresh to examine directly.
“He’s not going to change,” Vince continued. “I know that now. But I needed him to understand the damage he caused. All the manipulation and threats, the way he weaponized my career against you. I needed him to know that I finally see everything clearly.”
There was a long pause, and I could picture him in his San Francisco house, probably standing by those huge windows that faced the bay, gathering courage for what came next.
“I told him I forgive him,” Vince said finally. “Not because he deserves it, but because carrying that anger was poison. You taught me that, even if you didn’t mean to. The way you never let bitterness consume you, even after everything you went through.”
My throat tightened. “Vince…”
“I won’t have a relationship with him,” he said firmly. “But I won’t spend the rest of my life running from his shadow either. I want to build something clean with you, something that isn’t defined by what was done to us.”
The conversation stayed with me for days, this evidence of how much we’d both grown, how much we’d learned about choosing healing over revenge. Maybe someday there would be room for Victor in our lives again, but only if he could become the man worthy of forgiveness. Until then, this was enough, this decision to move forward unburdened.
Five weeks ago, the news broke and brought me back the peace I lost the day I went to the scout’s hotel.
I was grabbing coffee at my usual corner café when the TV mounted above the counter caught my attention. The reporter was young, earnest, standing outside a courthouse I didn’t recognize.
“Former GSU scout Reginald Mitchell was arrested this morning on federal charges, including solicitation of sexual conduct from minors, abuse of power, and racketeering. The charges stem from a pattern of exploitation involving young athletes seeking scholarships, with allegations spanning nearly two decades.”
The coffee cup slipped from my hand, hot liquid splashing across the floor. Someone asked if I was okay, but I couldn’t answer. I just stared at the screen, watching the words scroll beneath Mitchell’s photo.
The story unfolded over the following days like a nightmare played in reverse. Victim after victim came forward—young men, hopeful and naive, manipulated by someone who held their futures in his hands. The FBI had been building a case for months, following tips and testimonies, constructing a web of evidence that stretched back to when I was still in high school.
The tipping point, according to the articles I devoured obsessively, had been an anonymous submission of detailed evidence. They had been handed bank records, hotel receipts, and documented threats made against young athletes and theirfamilies. Someone gave investigators a complete roadmap to Mitchell’s crimes, tied up with a bow.
The article never mentioned any other names, but I knew. I knew with the kind of certainty that lives in your bones, the way you know your own heartbeat. Somewhere between our confrontation at Azure Tides and this moment, Vince had made sure Mitchell could never hurt anyone else the way he’d hurt me.
Justice, it seemed, didn’t always arrive on schedule. But when it came, it came with the full weight of federal law enforcement and decades of accumulated evidence from every boy Mitchell had tried to break.
Now, standing in the West Hollywood gallery space, I survey twenty-three pieces that chronicle a decade of my longing for someone I thought I’d lost forever. The collection spans the walls like a visual memoir, each frame a window into a different stage of grief, hope, and stubborn, persistent longing.
The Longing Unseenis the title that encompasses everything we couldn’t say, and everything we carried in silence.
I adjust the lighting on one piece, then another, perfectionist habits dying hard even when everything is already exactly as it should be. The afternoon sun filters through the tall gallery windows, casting everything in golden hour light that makes the paintings seem to pulse with their own inner fire.
The gallery door chimes, and my first guests begin to arrive. They are art collectors, critics, and friends from the industrywho’ve watched me struggle through years of creative drought. They move through the space with that particular gallery rhythm, wine glasses in hand, voices pitched to the perfect volume for serious appreciation.
I watch them discover the story piece by piece, see the moment recognition dawns in their eyes. Some pause longer at certain paintings, heads tilted as they work to decode the emotional language I’ve painted in oils and memory.
“Extraordinary work,” a woman in expensive jewelry murmurs to her companion as they stand beforeLost. “You can feel the pain in it. The longing.”
Her words land somewhere deep. This is what I was afraid of, having my most private feelings dissected by strangers, reduced to cocktail party commentary. But it’s also what I hoped for, that the emotions would translate and the years of buried feeling would finally find their voice.
“Adrian.” A familiar voice cuts through the gallery chatter. I turn to find Holly approaching, radiant in a way that speaks to happiness found and claimed. She pulls me into a warm hug that feels like forgiveness and new beginnings rolled into one.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says, stepping back to study my face. “This is what courage looks like.”
Before I can respond, the gallery door opens with a soft chime that makes the entire room hold its breath. Conversations don’t just pause; they falter, the way they do when someone with real magnetism walks into a space.
Vince steps inside wearing a charcoal suit that transforms him from an athlete into someone approaching royalty. His hair is styled differently too, swept back in a way that sharpens his features and makes his eyes more striking. He looks and feels more settled and certain, like he’s finally stopped fighting with himself about who he’s allowed to be.
The crowd parts without anyone consciously deciding to move. Eyes follow him with the kind of fascination reserved for those rare people who seem to bend gravity around themselves. He nods politely at strangers, accepts murmured greetings with the gracious ease of someone accustomed to attention, but his gaze moves through the room with clear purpose.
When his eyes find mine across the gallery, everything else becomes background noise. The sophisticated conversations, the subtle clink of wine glasses, and the soft classical music fade to nothing. There’s only the way he looks at me, like I’m the reason he learned to breathe, the answer to a question he’s been asking his entire life.
