Chapter 6
MILA
By the time evening settled over Paris, I could feel the decision I’d made sitting under my skin like a live wire.
I’d told myself I’d only agreed to the gallery opening because it was what people in residencies did.
Because the group chat had lit up with the kind of casual enthusiasm that made you look flaky if you didn’t show.
Because élodie believed in momentum, and I was trying—desperately—not to fall back into the habits that had made my life feel so small back home.
All true.
And also not.
I dressed as if Connor Ward might be there.
That was the part I didn’t say out loud, even to myself. I pretended it was just practicality—black trousers, a fitted sweater, a coat with enough structure to make me feel like I belonged to the city instead of borrowing it. Boots I could walk in. Earrings small enough not to signal trying.
But I brushed my hair until it fell the way it always did—too soft, too willing. I let it stay down.
I wanted to be seen. Not by the room.
By him.
The thought made my stomach dip, and I hated myself a little for the honesty of it. I wasn’t a girl who chased men. I didn’t build fantasies out of strangers’ eyes.
Except, I had been building this one for days.
And Paris had a way of making delusion feel like destiny.
My phone buzzed as I was pulling on my scarf.
Amaya Delgado: We meet outside the studio. 19h45. Don’t be late, américaine.
I snorted. A week ago I would’ve bristled at the teasing. Tonight, it grounded me. It reminded me I was not the main character in some cinematic spiral. I was a woman with a residency badge and a half-formed artist statement, trying to make friends in a language that still tripped me up.
I typed back: Je ne suis pas late. I am punctual.
A second later:
Amaya: That sentence is a crime.
I laughed, grabbed my camera—because I never felt fully dressed without it—and stepped into the stairwell.
Four flights down. The familiar burn in my thighs. My breath quickening. My body making itself known to me in that honest way Paris insisted on.
Outside, the street smelled like rain and exhaust and something sweet drifting from a bakery down the block. The sky was the color of wet slate. Streetlights had begun to blink on, softening the edges of everything.
I walked faster than necessary, and I knew why.
Not because I was late.
Because part of me couldn’t shake the irrational hope that he’d appear the way he always had—at the periphery, just out of reach, rearranging the air without touching it.
He didn’t.
At the studio, Amaya stood with her hands in her coat pockets, hair tucked into her scarf, looking like she belonged to the night more than the day.
Luc was there, too, earbuds in, hood up, gaze fixed somewhere beyond all of us.
Two other residents hovered nearby—Henri Morel and a woman named Sanna something who only spoke when necessary.
“Bonsoir,” Amaya said as I approached, her eyes sweeping me once from boots to collar.
“Bonsoir,” I replied, attempting confidence.
Luc lifted a hand in acknowledgment without removing his earbuds.
Amaya leaned in, cheek-kissed me on the correct side before I could mess it up. “Good,” she murmured. “You wore shoes you can run in.”
I blinked. “Run?”
She smiled. “Paris is romantic. But also … Paris.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she linked her arm through mine and started walking as if we’d been friends for years. The sudden intimacy surprised me—how quickly people here shifted from distance to closeness in the span of one decision.
Or maybe that was just Amaya.
We took the metro, packed tight in a car that smelled like perfume and damp wool and the metallic tang of the tracks.
I held the pole overhead, my body angled slightly to keep from pressing too hard into the stranger beside me.
Every stop made us sway into each other, anyway.
Bodies were unavoidable here, and that fact had been a constant, low-grade destabilizer since I arrived.
At home, physical space was a boundary people respected.
In Paris, boundaries were negotiated.
Amaya leaned close to my ear as the train rattled. “You’re thinking too loud again.”
“I’m not thinking,” I lied.
She made a sound of disbelief. “You are always thinking. It’s why your pictures are good. It’s also why you look like you’re about to jump.”
“I’m just new,” I said.
“New is fine,” she replied. “But don’t confuse new with weak.”
The words landed. Not as a pep talk. As a challenge.
Luc glanced at us, as if he’d heard, and then looked away again. But I saw the faint curve of his mouth. Like he approved of Amaya’s cruelty.
We surfaced from the metro into a neighborhood I didn’t know well—streets narrower, older, quieter. The buildings leaned toward each other like conspirators. The gallery was tucked behind a courtyard, its entrance marked only by a small light and a brass plaque I couldn’t read fast enough.
Inside, warmth hit my skin. Music—low, thumping, elegant.
The space was crowded, more fashionable than the private showing had been.
Less candlelit intimacy, more curated cool.
People wore black like it was a uniform.
Conversations floated in French and English and something Slavic I couldn’t place.
I didn’t know where to put my hands.
Amaya drifted immediately toward someone she knew, kissing cheeks, smiling, becoming fluent in a social world I was still learning. Luc melted into the crowd like he’d never been there at all.
I stood near the entrance, camera strap taut against my palm, and tried to remember that I belonged here. That I had a reason to be in the room beyond my own nerves.
I walked toward a series of photographs hung along the right wall—grainy portraits, brutal and intimate. A woman smoking in bed. A man staring into a bathroom mirror, eyes hollow. A hand gripping a wrist, not violent exactly, but not gentle either.
I leaned in to read the placard and realized I was too close—my breath fogging faintly against the glass.
“Too close,” a voice said beside me, accented English.
I startled, turning.
A man stood there holding a glass of something amber, his hair perfectly combed, his smile too practiced. He was handsome in the way men were handsome when they knew it and used it like a tool.
“Sorry,” I said automatically.
He glanced at my camera. “Photographer?”
“Yes.”
“American.”
“Yes,” I repeated, because what else was there?
He offered his hand. “Julien.”
“Mila.”
His smile widened, like my name confirmed something. “Ah. Mila. You like this work?”
“I … respect it,” I said, buying time. “It’s intimate.”
“It’s hunger,” he corrected. His eyes slid over me with the same casual entitlement as a man at the bar the other night. “Paris does hunger well.”
I felt my spine straighten. “So do a lot of cities.”
Julien laughed, as if I’d flirted. “But Paris makes it art.”
I didn’t respond.
He stepped slightly closer, just enough to invade my personal space without technically touching me. “You came alone?”
“I came with people,” I said, and then I saw Amaya across the room, laughing with a woman in a leather jacket.
Julien followed my gaze. “Artists?”
“Residency,” I said.
His eyebrows lifted. “Ah. You are here to become yourself.”
My stomach tightened. “Something like that.”
He leaned in closer. “Careful. Paris will give you what you ask for.”
The words were meant to sound seductive. A warning disguised as flirtation.
It should’ve worked.
Instead, my mind betrayed me and conjured Connor—his stillness, his restraint, the way he’d looked at me like I was a fact, not an opportunity. The difference between being appraised and being studied.
Julien didn’t feel like danger.
He felt like noise.
“I’m going to find my friends,” I said, stepping back.
His smile held. “Of course. But if you want … a real Paris guide …” He shrugged, letting the offer hang.
“I’m okay,” I said again, firmer this time.
I walked away without waiting for his response, heart tapping, not from fear—irritation. The small, familiar anger of being reduced.
As I moved through the room, I scanned faces without meaning to. I searched corners, doorways, peripheries.
Connor wasn’t there.
I hadn’t expected him to be. Not truly.
Still, the disappointment hit like a bruise. Quiet, but tender.
I found Amaya near the bar. She took one look at my face and lifted her glass in mock sympathy.
“Bad French boy?” she asked.
“Not French,” I said.
“Always French,” she corrected. “Even when they’re not.”
“I think I just got … hunted,” I said, half joking.
Amaya’s eyes sharpened with interest. “Hunted?”
I regretted the word immediately. It sounded dramatic. Like something from a book.
But Amaya only nodded. “Yes. That happens.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” I asked.
“No,” she said simply. “It is supposed to be real.”
She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “You must learn the difference between attention and intention.”
My pulse flickered. “And how do you tell?”
Amaya’s gaze held mine. “Intention has patience,” she said. “Attention is hungry.”
The words struck harder than they should have.
Patience.
Connor’s patience.
My throat went dry.
Amaya took a sip of her drink, unbothered by the effect she was having on me. “Come,” she said. “There is a back room. Better art. Less … French boy.”
I let her lead me through the crowd, past a velvet curtain I hadn’t noticed. The shift in atmosphere was immediate. The back room was dimmer, quieter, more exclusive. Fewer people. More intent. The work back here wasn’t designed to be Instagrammable.
It was designed to be felt.
Large canvases hung with dark, layered paint—violent strokes softened into something almost tender.
A sculpture of intertwined hands, fingers digging into flesh, not quite gentle, not quite cruel.
A series of photographs that made my stomach tighten—close-ups of mouths, collarbones, wrists with faint bruises like fingerprints.