Chapter 10 #2
“No needles. No ink. Just a sketch.” Ivy tilted her head. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to stay the night. But I want to look at you, and I want you to let me.”
Giulietta hesitated, and for a second Ivy thought she might say no, that the silence between them would win again.
But then Giulietta stood.
She walked to the chair in the corner, the one with the adjustable lamp and soft cushion, and slipped out of her scrub top, folding it carefully on her lap. Beneath it, she wore a black tank. Ivy had seen her bare before, had traced every curve with reverence and hunger, but this was different.
This was about being seen, not touched.
She sat back, arms relaxed at her sides, chin slightly lifted. Her posture wasn’t stiff, but it wasn’t surrendering either.
It was an offering.
Ivy picked up her pencil.
And for the next hour, she didn’t speak. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t ask about last names or family trees. She just watched the angle of Giulietta’s jaw when she tilted her head, the curve of her spine when she shifted her weight, the shadow that fell across her clavicle when she breathed.
She drew all of it.
And when she finished, when the sketch was done and her hand ached from restraint, she looked up and found Giulietta watching her, not with suspicion, not with shame.
But with softness.
With something Ivy hadn’t seen since the night they’d kissed in the dark and Giulietta had whispered, You make me feel real.
Only now, it wasn’t whispered.
It was in her eyes.
Ivy walked over and knelt beside her.
She didn’t touch her.
Not yet.
“I don’t care about the name,” she said, voice low. “But I care about the parts of you that you think you have to keep hidden. I care about the version of you that’s too afraid to stay. That version deserves to be loved too.”
“You scare me,” she said, so quietly Ivy almost missed it.
“I know,” Ivy said. “But I won’t break you.”
They sat there, still.
Because for once, this—the drawing, the space, the breath between them—was enough.
And maybe, Ivy thought, that was the beginning of a name she could believe in.
The apartment was dim, the lights low and amber like memory, the air thick with the scent of lavender from a candle left burning in the corner.
Ivy didn’t speak as she locked the door behind them.
She didn’t guide Giulietta by the wrist or try to lead her down the hallway.
She simply stepped aside, giving her room, giving her time, because tonight wasn’t about claiming or coaxing or dissecting the pieces of a woman still wrapped in mystery.
Tonight was about something gentler. Something that didn’t need a name to be real.
Giulietta stepped out of her shoes with the quiet care of someone trying not to break the spell.
Her fingers moved slowly as she peeled off her coat, her movements deliberate, almost unsure, as though each action was a question, each breath a bridge she wasn’t sure she had the right to cross.
And Ivy, who had known this body in the dark and beneath her hands, found herself seeing it again as if for the first time, not as a canvas or a lover or a secret, but as a woman unraveling one thread at a time, too slowly to stop.
They didn’t rush. They didn’t undress each other like lovers starved.
There was no urgency in the way Ivy reached for Giulietta’s waist or how Giulietta leaned in, forehead resting against Ivy’s as her fingers came to rest on the hem of her own shirt.
It was quiet. A reverent ritual. The kind of undressing that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with trust. Ivy lifted the fabric over Giulietta’s head, careful not to let their mouths touch too soon.
She kissed her shoulder instead, just once, before Giulietta reached for the hem of Ivy’s jumper and pulled it up with fingers that trembled despite the steadiness in her eyes.
Ivy lay Giulietta down like she was something sacred.
Her hands moved slowly, reverently, over her ribcage, down the dip of her stomach, around the edges of the bruises that bloomed like shadowed secrets on her hips.
She didn’t ask where they came from. She didn’t need to.
She just kissed them like they were holy.
The sex wasn’t frantic or wild. There was no biting, no breathless power play, no wrestling for control.
Ivy kissed her everywhere—thigh, breast, the inside of her wrist—like each part of her had earned its place in the light.
Her touch was soft but intentional, like she was drawing every sound from Giulietta’s lips without ever needing to raise her voice.
Giulietta moaned only once, a quiet, broken sound when Ivy’s fingers sank inside her, slow and deep, and her hands gripped the sheets like she wasn’t holding on to cotton but to the moment itself.
Ivy whispered nothing but her name over and over, like it was a spell that might keep her from disappearing.
When Giulietta came, it wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even shaking. It was stillness. It was surrender. Her spine arched once, breath caught like it didn’t want to leave her body, and then she melted, completely, entirely, into Ivy’s arms.
They lay tangled in the warmth after, limbs loosely entwined, the blanket kicked down to their feet.
Neither of them reached for their phones.
Neither of them moved to fill the silence.
Ivy stroked slow, absentminded lines down Giulietta’s back with the tips of her fingers, her other arm curled beneath her head.
Giulietta had her face buried in Ivy’s shoulder, eyes open, unblinking, as if trying to memorize the feeling of being wanted without being asked to explain it.
It was late. The world outside was hushed.
And in that space, with only the tick of the old clock and the sound of their breathing, Ivy said, “You don’t have to tell me, but you could.”
Giulietta didn’t speak. Her body stilled for a moment, a sharp inhale caught just beneath her ribs. But no words came.
Instead, she shifted. She turned toward Ivy fully, her bare skin pressing into hers, her hand resting lightly over Ivy’s heart. She didn’t speak, but the way she moved, the way she pressed her forehead to Ivy’s collarbone and let her eyes slip shut, said enough.
Not now.
Not yet.
But she wasn’t running.
And for Ivy, that was something.
Maybe even everything.
The light from the streetlamps slipped in through the cracks in the blinds, casting faint lines across Giulietta’s bare back like the delicate bars of a cage she no longer fought against. Her breathing was steady now, face half-buried in the pillow, one arm curled loosely beneath her, the other stretched out as if reaching for something in sleep she hadn’t dared grasp when awake.
Ivy lay beside her, not quite touching, letting the moment breathe, letting the quiet settle without the need to fill it.
She studied her like she would a half-finished tattoo—lines elegant, story unclear, a work in progress she didn’t need to rush to complete.
There was always tension in Giulietta’s body, even when she slept.
A tightness in her shoulders, a crease between her brows that didn’t ease even in rest. Ivy wondered, not for the first time, if Giulietta even knew what she was still defending herself from.
Whether the shields she carried had been so long in place that she’d stopped recognizing what they were meant to protect her from.
The world? Her past? The people who claimed her by blood but had never earned her trust?
Or was it herself, maybe, some hidden, unspoken part she’d decided wasn’t worthy of softness?
Ivy could have asked. Could have curled into her side, let her fingers trace that tense line of her spine and whispered a dozen questions into the quiet between them.
Why didn’t you tell me? What were you afraid I’d see?
Was any of this real? But instead, she reached toward the nightstand, pulled her sketchbook into her lap, and turned to a fresh page.
Her pencil was already there, always was, tucked into the spine like it knew it would be needed.
She pressed it gently to the paper and let her hand begin to move.
She didn’t draw Giulietta the way she tattooed her clients—no outlines, no precise anatomy, no clean, clinical composition.
She sketched instead by feeling. The slope of a shoulder remembered in touch.
The turn of a jaw she’d kissed in silence.
The gentle fall of hair she had brushed away from sleeping eyes more times than Giulietta would probably admit.
The lines weren’t perfect, but Ivy didn’t care.
What mattered was the truth in them, the intimacy of drawing someone not from sight but from knowing.
The honesty of admitting she might never have the whole picture and choosing to draw it anyway.
She left the sketch unfinished. Not out of hesitation, but out of reverence.
Because Giulietta wasn’t finished. Because maybe love wasn’t about demanding the whole story before it’s ready to be told.
Maybe it was about letting someone write it in their own time and simply staying close enough to read it when they did.
At the bottom of the page, Ivy scrawled the words before she could overthink them.
Stay, if you can. Not a plea. Not a challenge. Just a truth.
She didn’t know what Giulietta would say if she ever saw it, if she’d scoff or look away or trace the letters with that same distant reverence she wore when emotion got too close.
But Ivy wasn’t drawing for Giulietta. She was drawing for herself.
For the woman who had never needed certainty to feel something deeply.
For the artist who had always known that the most meaningful work rarely came with guarantees.
For the lover who chose to believe that desire didn’t need a roadmap to matter.
She closed the sketchbook and set it gently aside, then turned back toward Giulietta, studying the rise and fall of her back, the quiet way she breathed like the world wasn’t chasing her for once. Ivy didn’t move to touch her. She didn’t whisper anything into the stillness. But she stayed.
Because she wasn’t done. Not yet.
And maybe love, real love, wasn’t about crossing every distance or unearthing every secret. Maybe it was about waiting at the threshold with the door cracked open, a hand on the frame, and the patience to let someone choose when they’re ready to walk through it.