Chapter 20 #2
He pulled back enough to look at my face. Those warm brown eyes that had seen me at my worst and my best and everything in between. The eyes that had watched me shatter in a basement and put myself back together in his arms.
"Good." His smile was soft. Proud. "That means it matters."
I had to look away before I cried. The family continued moving around us—Sophie pointing out details to Nikolai, Konstantin lifting Katerina above his head until she shrieked with joy, Maya quietly arranging herself in a corner where she could watch without being watched.
This was my life now.
These impossible people who'd become family. This gallery full of paintings I'd been too scared to show anyone. This man holding me like I was precious, like I was brave, like I was exactly who I was supposed to be.
The gallery door was opening.
Strangers were starting to trickle in.
And I was ready—or as ready as anyone could be—to let the world see what I'd made.
T he gallery filled.
Slowly at first—a trickle of strangers through the door, polite gallery faces, the shuffle of people not sure where to look first. Then faster. More bodies. More voices. The hum of crowd noise that always hit my ears wrong, like static on a radio tuned between stations.
Strangers stood before my work.
That was the thing I couldn't stop noticing—the way they tilted their heads, stepped closer, stepped back. Not the polite gallery drift I'd feared, the casual glance and move along that said your work isn't worth my time. These people were actually looking.
A woman in her sixties stopped in front of the Ghost painting.
I watched from across the room as she stepped closer, then stepped back.
Her hand rose toward her face—wiping something from her cheek.
She was crying. This stranger, this person I had never met and would probably never speak to, was crying in front of my painting of a ridiculous dog running on a beach.
I didn't know what she saw. Didn't know what memory or loss or joy my painting had touched in her. But she felt something. My brushstrokes had made someone feel something, and that was—
That was everything I'd ever wanted.
"The composition here is too tight," a man's voice said behind me.
I turned. A couple stood before my cityscape—the view from Maks's window, the one I'd painted in shades of midnight and amber. The man was gesturing at the lower left corner, clearly passionate about something.
"The compression creates tension," his partner argued back. "That's the whole point. You're looking at confinement, not carelessness."
"Tension doesn't require claustrophobia—"
"It does if you're trying to convey—"
They were arguing. About my brushwork.
I drifted past them without introducing myself, a smile tugging at my mouth. They cared enough to disagree. Cared enough to debate whether my choices were intentional or accidental, whether my technique served the emotional content or undermined it.
Years of hiding my paintings in closets. Years of turning canvases to the wall.
And now people were arguing about my brushwork.
"Excuse me—the artist?"
I turned. A woman in an impeccably tailored jacket, the kind of understated expensive that marked serious money. Her eyes were sharp, assessing.
"Yes?"
"These prices." She gestured vaguely at the wall cards. "Are they negotiable?"
My first instinct was to defer. To say yes, of course, whatever you think is fair. The reflex of someone who'd spent years believing her work wasn't valuable enough to demand compensation.
But then, I thought of Maks.
"The gallery handles all sales," I said instead. "But those are the prices."
The woman nodded. Not offended—if anything, she looked approving. "Do you have more work? Beyond what's shown here?"
"Some." I thought of the canvases still turned to the wall in my apartment. The ones I hadn't been ready to show yet. "Different subjects."
"I'd be interested in seeing them. When you're ready." She pressed a card into my hand. "Meredith Wiles. I collect emerging artists."
She moved on before I could fully process what had just happened.
A collector. Wanting to see more of my work.
The evening blurred after that.
Faces and voices and questions I answered on autopilot, pulling from some reserve of social script I hadn't known I possessed.
Yes, I work primarily in oils. No, I haven't shown before—this is my first exhibition.
Thank you, that's very kind of you to say.
I moved through the crowd like a ghost in my own body, present and distant simultaneously.
I found Maks across the room.
He stood near the Ghost painting, where the crying woman had finally moved on. Not watching me—or not obviously watching. He was talking to someone, glass in hand, looking every inch the sophisticated art patron.
But his eyes kept finding mine.
Through the crowd, past the strangers examining my work, his gaze would land on me like a physical touch. Brief. Checking. Making sure I was okay without hovering, without claiming, without making this night about him instead of me.
Our eyes met.
He mouthed something I couldn't quite catch.
I raised an eyebrow. What?
He did it again, slower. Exaggerating the shapes of the words so I could read his lips across the distance.
Proud of you.
I had to look away.
The tears were threatening—not sad tears, not overwhelmed tears, just the overflow of too much emotion in too small a container. I pressed my fingernails into my palms until the urge passed. Breathed in for four counts. Held.
"Lia."
Sophie appeared at my elbow like a vision in blue. Katerina must have been passed to Nikolai, because Sophie's hands were free—one of them landing on my arm, grounding and warm.
"Three red dots already." Her voice was barely contained excitement. "You're selling, Lia."
Gallery shorthand. The small red circles placed beside paintings that had found buyers. Three of my paintings, three pieces of my soul poured onto canvas, wanted.
"Three?" My voice came out strange.
"The Ghost painting sold in the first twenty minutes. Then the nursery scene—the woman who bought it said it reminded her of her own mother and grandmother." Sophie squeezed my arm. "And someone just put a deposit on the midnight cityscape. The couple who were arguing about brushwork."
They'd bought it.
The people who'd cared enough to argue—they'd cared enough to take it home.
I didn't know what to say.
What words existed for this moment, this specific collision of fear and hope and something that might have been pride? I'd spent so long believing my work wasn't good enough, wasn't worthy of being seen, wasn't anything more than private compulsion made visible.
And strangers had looked at it and said: Yes. This. I want this in my life.
Sophie pulled me into a hug.
"You did it," she whispered against my hair.
I held on.
And let myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe I had.
T he apartment was quiet after the chaos of the gallery.
That silence of coming home after hours of noise—the way the stillness felt deliberate, like the world was giving my ears permission to rest. I stood in the doorway, my heels already dangling from one hand, letting the peace wash over me.
Ghost emerged from his bed with theatrical sighs.
His long grey body stretched, then stretched again, conveying the exhaustion of a dog who had been admired all evening and was now completely drained by the effort.
Maks had insisted on bringing him to the opening—said the inspiration for one of the paintings deserved to attend.
Ghost had spent three hours accepting compliments and treats from strangers, and now he pressed his head against my thigh with the air of someone who had performed great labors.
"I know," I told him, scratching behind his ears. "Being famous is hard work."
He sighed again, then flopped onto his bed. Instant unconsciousness.
I kicked off my remaining heel.
Maks caught me.
His hands found my waist, pulled me close, and suddenly we were swaying. No music, no rhythm except whatever played in his head, just the two of us moving in the dim light of the apartment we'd made ours.
"You did it," he murmured against my hair.
The words were simple. The weight behind them wasn't.
"My brilliant girl." He turned us slowly, a dance that went nowhere. "My artist."
The title landed somewhere deep—deeper than proud of you, deeper than I love you, though he said those things too. My artist claimed something beyond this single night. Made me into someone who created, who showed, who belonged in the galleries and exhibitions of the world.
I pressed my face into his shoulder.
Breathed him in. The scent that meant safety and home and all the things I'd been afraid to want before he taught me wanting was allowed.
"I'm exhausted," I admitted. "And wired. And overwhelmed. And—"
"I know." His hand found the back of my neck, warm and grounding. "I know, little bird."
We swayed a moment longer. The city glittered beyond his windows—our windows now, after six months of slowly merging our lives into something shared. My easel in the corner. His surveillance screens in the office. Ghost's bed migrating from room to room depending on where the sunlight fell.
"Come to bed," he said quietly.
Not a command. An invitation.
I followed.
The bedroom was shadows and city glow, the half-light that made everything soft.
He undressed me slowly—not the deliberate ritual of our morning routines, but something gentler.
Simpler. The zipper of my dress sliding down, the fabric pooling at my feet.
My bra next, his fingers unhooking it with the competence he brought to everything.
I stood bare before him.
Except for the collar.
Always except for the collar.
He didn't undress himself with the same ceremony. Just shed clothes efficiently, laying them aside, until we were both naked in the dim light of our room.
Then he was kissing me.