Chapter 19 Austin #2
The woman in the center of the frame stood stiffly, her spine straight, hands demurely clasped at her waist. She wore a high-necked blouse with puffy sleeves, the bodice cinched tight with a row of delicate buttons.
Her skirt flared slightly, structured with layers of petticoat, the hem grazing the tips of her laced boots.
The entire image had an eerie, formal softness to it—like she hadn’t chosen to be captured and only tolerated it out of necessity.
Selene sat up straighter. “I know this dress.”
I could instantly see her brain moving, frantic and searching.
Selene delicately riffled through stacks of photographs that she had yet to organize.
When she found what she was looking for, she stopped and held the portraits side by side.
Each had the same woman, in the same dress, with the same background but with different positions.
It wasn’t just the old-fashioned clothing or the haunted look in her posture that made me sit up straighter.
It was the face in the photo.
More accurately—what was left of it.
The woman’s eyes had been scratched out. Not gently faded by light, not the victim of damage over time. Purposefully gouged. Like someone had pressed a nail or blade into the glossy surface and carved her sight away.
“Jesus,” I murmured, inching closer beside her.
Selene didn’t say anything at first. Her thumb ghosted over the marred space where the eyes should have been.
“I found this photograph in a boarding ledger a few weeks ago. I think it has a name written on the back, but it’s too faded to know for sure.
” She gestured to both images. “It’s obviously the same woman, right? ”
She showed me the back, where faint pencil markings in a cursive script were barely visible. Something flickered behind Selene’s own gaze—an old instinct waking up and stretching.
I nodded, equal parts intrigued and creeped the fuck out.
“She’s not alone in this one,” she whispered after a beat, squinting as she looked more closely at the front of the unmarked picture.
She scooted closer to me, and I followed her line of sight.
In the far-right corner of the photograph, half in shadow, stood a man.
He wasn’t posed. He wasn’t meant to be there, from the look of it.
In shadow, the man was angled toward the woman—his gaze almost tender.
The way his body leaned ever so slightly toward her made it clear he was watching her, not the camera.
He was dressed in a simple shirt and vest, trousers tucked into weather-worn boots. Not upper class. A laborer, maybe. Or someone trying to look like he belonged in her world when he didn’t.
Selene squinted at it. “No freaking way,” she whispered, holding it up to the light. Selene’s finger poked at the man’s image. “Who does this look like to you?”
Holy shit.
The man in the photo looked almost exactly like Hayes Darling. Same bone structure. Same dark hair. Same tilted, half-grumpy smirk.
I let out a slow breath. “What the hell . . .”
Selene didn’t answer. She turned the photograph over with reverent fingers. The back was stained and yellowed, but in the corner, barely visible beneath a smear of time, was a name. A single word, written in a slanted, looping hand.
“Alma,” she read aloud. Her voice was almost too soft to hear. “Holy shit,” she whispered, “it’s her. The Lady.”
Goose bumps prickled at my arms. I gave Selene space so she could crisscross her legs. She was examining the photograph, but I was looking at her.
Really looking.
I studied the way her eyes lit up when she uncovered something that mattered. The way she got lost in the margins of other people’s stories but still made room to write her own. The way she gave herself so completely to the people she loved, even when it broke her a little.
It wasn’t just Winnie’s laughter or her smiles or her cinnamon muffins.
I wanted Selene.
All of her.
Not just in the flash-fire moments of stolen kisses or tangled sheets—but in the quiet ones. The ordinary seconds that strung together and became something worth holding on to.
Selene tucked the photo gently into the fold of her journal, slipping it between two blank pages like it had been waiting for a new story to live inside.
I’d spent the majority of my adulthood enjoying the blank pages of my life, never worrying about what would come next and if it even mattered.
Suddenly I found myself sitting on the floor of her living room wanting nothing more than for the woman next to me to see I was more than a stand-in until something real came along.
I was as real as those people in that long-forgotten photograph.
I wanted to crack a joke or think of anything to make the lump that expanded in my throat go away.
“You okay?” she asked, catching me staring.
I nodded slowly, unsure how to answer without telling her everything. That this mattered. That she mattered more than she knew.
You make me want more.
I almost said it out loud, but I didn’t.
Instead, I reached for her hand and let our fingers thread together again, warm and steady in the sun.