Chapter Thirteen
Edwina
The studio breathed of acrylic and silence, the air thick with the scent of turpentine and ghosts of unfinished work.
Wednesday light filtered through the tall windows in fractured ribbons, softened by streaks of paint left from old mistakes, careless hands, half-hearted cleanup.
I liked that, the imperfection, the quiet rebellion of it.
The way the room didn’t demand order, only presence.
Aster and I usually came here on Thursdays.
It was our ritual. She painted the way some people prayed, and I sat beside her, pretending to belong in the same kind of devotion.
My brushes never obeyed. The colors clashed, the shapes refused form, but she never cared.
Thursdays were for silence and making a mess that meant something.
But today was Wednesday, and I needed to vanish.
I’d told her I was buried under projects, told Gwen the same.
The truth was simpler and uglier. My head was too crowded.
Too full of fragments, of half-dreams that felt too tactile, of a man whose touch hadn’t existed outside my imagination yet still marked every thought.
I found a blank canvas near the back, warped at the edges, forgotten by someone who’d probably given up on it. It suited me. I wanted something that didn’t ask for perfection. Something I could destroy.
The brush moved fast at first. Red, too much of it, until it screamed. Then green, to drown the red. Then black, to bury what neither could hide. I wasn’t painting an image. I was trying to erase a memory.
The strokes slowed. My arm grew heavy. I should’ve turned on music, something loud, pulsing, stupid enough to drown thought, but I hadn’t. Maybe I needed the quiet. Maybe I wanted to hear what silence said when it wrapped its hands around you.
His voice found me there. Not in sound, but in memory, the deep timbre of it, the edge he hid behind civility. The way his eyes had lingered too long in that corridor, not by accident, not by mistake, but by choice.
My hand stopped. The brush stilled mid-air. And then the air changed. That subtle shift that always happened when a presence filled a room before the body arrived made me turn. He was standing under the skylight, still as if the light itself had shaped him there.
Hayden.
But not the version I was used to. No ironed suits or silver cufflinks, none of that armor of professionalism he wore like a second skin.
Instead, jeans, a black T-shirt, the hem just slightly creased, sneakers that had seen real use, a single strap of a backpack cutting across his chest. Unstudied.
Disarmed. And somehow even more dangerous for it.
My pulse stumbled hard against my ribs.
He didn’t speak. Of course he didn’t. Silence was always his first move, the way he filled a room until you had to look at him just to breathe.
I straightened instinctively, catching the smear of green on my wrist, the charcoal smudge near my elbow, strands of hair curling against my cheek. I looked unguarded. And he noticed.
Our eyes met for a heartbeat too long. I tilted my head in acknowledgment, kept my expression cool, detached, lowered my gaze back to the canvas.
Pretending. Always pretending. My fingers, however, betrayed me.
They trembled just enough to drag the wrong line through wet paint.
I tried to lose myself in color again. Tried not to think of his mouth, his hands, the dream that had left my skin too aware of itself.
He took the seat beside me, far enough that our bodies didn’t meet, yet near enough for the air between us to thicken, weighted and alive. I could feel the pull of him. The awareness that he could hear the shift of my breath if I wasn’t careful. God, it was humiliating.
He drew in silence, pencil moving in measured arcs across the page. I caught a glimpse, bookshelves, the outline of a reading lamp, the shadow of a stairwell. A library.
A library?
My eyes betrayed me again, tracing the motion of his hand, the quiet flex of tendons at his wrist, the calm precision of his fingers, the faint tension beneath skin when he paused to shade a line.
His mouth stayed neutral, unreadable, but his lashes lowered in a way that felt too intimate for daylight.
And then—
“How much longer are you going to stare at me?”
His voice unfurled through the quiet, smooth and edged in something darker, a sound that slipped down my spine and settled deep in my chest before I could catch my breath.
I startled, pulse leaping. My hand froze mid-stroke as I forced my gaze back to the painting. “I…I wasn’t looking at you.”
“No?” He didn’t look up. The pencil continued its patient path across the page, each movement too controlled to be casual. “That’s a shame. I was enjoying it.”
The words hit harder than they should have, slow enough to feel intentional, playful enough to sound dangerous. Heat flared across my cheeks, sharp and traitorous. He paused then, finally turning to face me, his attention precise and unhurried, pinning me where I sat.
“I asked you a question.”
My heartbeat climbed until it thudded in my ears, frantic and ungraceful. I swallowed, searching for composure that refused to come. “I was just looking at your sketch. It’s good. I didn’t know you were into art. That’s all. It surprised me.”
Too many words spilled too fast, an answer that revealed more than it should have.
His mouth curved, not a full smile, something rarer, more dangerous. “And I didn’t know you had an artistic side either.”
“What? Oh—no. I’m just mixing some colors. I didn’t draw anything.” I gestured toward the blurred mess on my canvas. “Drawing isn’t really…my thing.”
“What are you painting?” he asked, voice dipping into that half-amused rhythm that always managed to undo me.
I turned back to the chaos in front of me, the brush trembling slightly between my fingers. “Chaos.”
“Intentionally?”
“Isn’t that the only way it counts?”
He didn’t answer, but the silence carried his attention just as clearly.
“This is…unexpected,” I said finally, forcing the words past the tightening in my throat.
“It wasn’t planned.” His eyes left the page, finding me instead. “But I suppose that’s how most things begin.”
The room shifted around us. The air pressed closer, thicker, and I became aware of how empty the studio had become, the hum of the lights, the faint creak of the easel, the subtle scrape of his chair as he leaned back, watching me.
“Do you come here often?” he asked, the question slow, conversational on the surface, but threaded through with something that didn’t belong to casual talk.
“Usually with Aster.”
“But today you’re alone.”
I hesitated, letting the pause drag a little too long. “I needed to clear my head.”
“And have you?”
“No.”
A silence followed, not empty but alive, pulling taut until I could feel it in the pulse at the base of my throat. Then his voice came again, softer, warmer, but edged with a quiet danger that made the air around us shift.
“Do I have something to do with that?”
The question landed between us with the precision of a knife. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His gaze dropped to the canvas, studied it for a moment, then found me again.
“You always paint when you’re running from something?”
“I’m not running,” I said, the words sharper than I intended, though my voice betrayed me, too thin, too careful to sound untouched.
“Hmm.” He stepped closer to the second easel, not touching it, his attention grazing over me instead. “You’ve used five colors and three brushes in under ten minutes. That’s not painting. That’s bleeding.”
I lifted my chin, defiant but trembling on the inside. “I didn’t realize you were an expert in artistic intention.”
“I’m not.” His gaze met mine, and the stillness between us deepened. “But I’ve studied enough human behavior to know when someone’s trying not to scream.”
The quiet that followed stretched until it felt fragile, strung tight between our bodies, waiting to break under the weight of one wrong word. Neither of us moved. Neither of us looked away.
“What are you doing here?” I asked at last, pretending to study the brush in my hand even though I couldn’t remember which color I’d dipped it into.
“Should I not be?”
“You’re not usually here midweek.”
Something dangerous pulled at the corner of his mouth, lazy, crooked, the hint of a smirk that could undo a person if they weren’t careful. His eyes held that familiar glint, sharp enough to catch on my breath.
“Are you stalking me, Miss Carter?” he asked, his voice smooth and dark with humor that wasn’t innocent at all.
The words slid into me, warm and unwelcome, and my stomach twisted. The way he said it, it wasn’t just teasing; it was a challenge, one that made my pulse skip and my skin tighten.
I folded my arms, hoping he wouldn’t notice how my hands shook. “Please. Don’t flatter yourself.”
He tilted his head, studying me with that quiet patience that made the air feel too heavy. “Too late for that.”
“I needed space,” he said.
My voice came out quieter than I wanted. “From what?”
He didn’t answer. His silence wasn’t absence, it was pressure. It filled the air between us until I felt it in my throat.
So I turned slightly, forcing the words past the quickening in my chest. “Or from who?”
Something flickered behind his composure, a tightening around his jaw, a muscle working just beneath the skin.
“Be careful, Miss Carter,” he said softly. “You might not like the answer.”
My breath caught. “So I do have something to do with it,” I murmured.
He tilted his head, voice low, dangerous in its quiet. “Do you want to?”
“I asked first.”
“That’s not how power works.”
I turned to face him fully now, the brush still trapped between my fingers, my wrist stained green. “Then what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a pause that made my stomach twist tighter. “And that should concern both of us.”
It should have. But it didn’t. Not the way it should have.