Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
RACHEL
The viewing was nothing like I expected.
No crowd.
No wine.
No buzz.
Just a white room that smelled faintly of paint and cleaning solvent, the kind of space where sound went to die and everything felt louder because of it.
René stood near the back with his hands folded behind him like a museum guard. Two other people lingered by the far wall, speaking quietly in French.
I recognized them both.
One was a photographer I’d assisted twice in the past month. The other had art directed a shoot René sent me on last week.
Not strangers.
Witnesses.
No one acknowledged me when I arrived.
Accidental or not, it felt planned.
For a moment, I thought I was early. Or late. Or in the wrong room.
Then I saw the images.
Mounted in a loose line along the far wall.
Not framed. Not precious. Just there.
My work.
My stomach dropped so fast it felt like missing a step on a staircase.
He hadn’t told me this was about me.
I stood in front of them and felt something in my chest tighten — not pride, not fear, but a strange, hollow clarity.
This wasn’t a viewing.
This was an autopsy.
My wounds were on display.
They didn’t look like my other work.
They weren’t clean. They weren’t impressive. They weren’t trying to prove anything.
A missed hand on the métro.
The soup night stairs.
My own reflection blurred in glass.
Her laughing.
And then — like a final, deliberate cruelty — Dominic.
Not posed. Not aware of the camera. Just him, mid-sentence, mouth open in a smile like he’d forgotten was there with my camera. That I could see him.
The image punched the air out of my lungs.
I hadn’t even remembered adding it.
Or maybe I had, and I just hadn’t wanted to admit what it meant.
They looked… human.
Uncomfortable. Incomplete. Like they’d been taken by someone who hadn’t known what she was doing and hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise.
René didn’t speak for a long time.
He let the silence do its work.
And it suffocated me.
Finally, he said, quietly, “This is the first time I have seen you stop hiding.”
The words didn’t feel like praise.
They felt like a charge sheet.
One of the others shifted behind me.
Not a comment. Not a critique. Just the quiet sound of someone taking notes.
I stared at the image of her — the one I’d almost deleted — then at the one of Dominic — the one I’d apparently never meant to show anyone — and realized with a kind of sick calm that these were the first things I’d made in months that hadn’t been designed to survive.
They weren’t careful or strategic. They were honest.
And they hurt.
René continued, still not looking at me. “You have been very good at making yourself useful. That is not the same as being present.”
I swallowed, but the lump in my throat hurt so much it wouldn’t go down. My eyes burned. I kept the tears back. I would not cry.
“You confuse productivity with excellence,” he said.
“Many people do. It makes them very employable. And very empty.”
The words slid into me like cold water.
I wanted to argue.
I wanted to explain.
I wanted to justify.
But there was nothing left to stand on.
So I just stood there and let the room feel as small as it was.
As small as I was.
René finally turned toward me.
“Whatever you are afraid of,” he said, “is already in your work. You are just pretending it is not.”
I didn’t answer.
There was nothing left to say.
As soon as I could escape with some dignity, I fled. I didn’t dress it up and call it strategic or graceful.
I left.
I didn’t go home.
I didn’t go to the office.
I just walked.
No destination. No plan. Just movement, like if I kept going the thoughts wouldn’t catch me.
Paris blurred past in pieces — a bridge, a bakery, a woman arguing on the phone, someone laughing too loudly outside a bar. Life happening without me, effortlessly, while I carried my own around like a weight I couldn’t set down.
You are disappearing.
Trying isn’t deciding.
Do you let people take care of you?
Stop hiding.
I realized, suddenly and painfully, that I had built an entire identity around being needed but never actually known.
Useful. Reliable. Capable.
Never chosen.
Never choosing.
Just… avoiding.
I sat on the edge of a fountain for a while and stared at my phone.
No calendar.
No email.
No productivity.
Just a name in my messages that I had finally allowed to exist.
Kiara.
I typed.
Deleted.
Typed again.
Stared at it like it might judge me.
Then, because I was tired of being clever and empty, I wrote:
I want to cash in that rain check. Are you around?
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Then:
Her:
Yes. I am. Do you want my address?
My chest tightened.
Me:
Yes.
A pin dropped into my map a second later.
Not far.
Of course it wasn’t far.
I laughed softly at that — the universe having a sense of humor while I didn’t.
Come over.
She added.
No pressure. Just… you.
I stood up.
For once, I didn’t check my calendar first.
Her building was older, narrower, the kind with uneven steps and a door that stuck slightly when you pushed it open.
I hesitated in the stairwell, suddenly aware of how fast my heart was beating. Not nerves exactly — more like my body recognizing what I was doing.
I knocked.
The door opened almost immediately.
Kiara stood there barefoot, hair loose, wearing something soft and oversized that made her look like someone for whom being normal came effortlessly.
The sight of her cracked something open in my chest I hadn’t realized had been locked. Like my body had been holding its breath all evening and only now remembered how to exhale.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I replied.
No dramatic pause. No speech.
Just the quiet recognition between one person who had finally run out of excuses and another who had known exactly what those excuses were. She stepped aside to let me in.
Her apartment was small and warm and smelled faintly like something sweet — powdered sugar and vanilla and clean laundry. The kind of scent that suggested comfort without trying to impress.
Soft light glowed from mismatched lamps instead of overhead fixtures. There were framed photos on the walls — not professional, not curated — just moments. Friends mid-laugh. A beach somewhere bright. A blurry group selfie where everyone looked slightly drunk and very happy.
Books were stacked on the coffee table in uneven piles, spines cracked, pages dog-eared.
A jacket was thrown over the back of a chair like she’d meant to hang it up and gotten distracted by something better.
A half-empty mug sat by the sink, ringed with dried foam, next to a plate with the ghost of a pastry.
Nothing matched. Nothing was optimized.
It looked lived in. It looked real.
I stood in the middle of it and felt my throat tighten for reasons I didn’t have a word for yet.
Not jealousy. Not longing.
Just the strange, aching awareness of how rarely I let myself exist in a place that didn’t feel temporary.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
I shook my head, probably the most honest I’d been in forever. “No,” I said. “But I didn’t want to be alone with it.”
She nodded, like that made perfect sense.
“Come here,” she said.
Not commanding.
Not seductive.
Just… offering.
I crossed the space between us.
She didn’t rush me.
Didn’t fill the silence.
Just rested her forehead against mine, hands light on my arms, like she was giving me permission to just be there while she held me.
I exhaled.
For the first time all day, nothing inside me was screaming.
We didn’t talk much after that. There was no big decision. There was just her hand sliding from my arm down to my wrist, her fingers lacing through mine, and the gentle, insistent pull toward her bedroom.
It was a small room, lit by a single warm lamp on a nightstand, and the sheets were soft and rumpled, like she’d been reading in bed before I’d texted. The scent of this room was her, the tease of her perfume that haunted me at the last shoot.
She turned to me, her expression open and without question. Her hands came up to frame my face, her thumbs stroking my cheekbones. I leaned into the touch, a silent plea for more. For something to anchor me.
She kissed me.
It wasn't like the frantic, desperate kisses I was used to. It was slow, soft, a gentle exploration. Her lips were full and warm, and they moved against mine with a tender curiosity that made my chest ache. She tasted like peppermint toothpaste, and the hint of something chocolate.
I felt a tremor run through me, a release of tension so profound I hadn’t even been aware I was holding it. My hands found her waist, gripping the soft fabric of her shirt, and I kissed her back, letting myself sink into the feeling, into the quiet connection that was already forming between us.
The kiss deepened, a slow, languid dance.
Her tongue traced my lower lip, a question I answered by parting my lips for her.
The first touch of her tongue against mine was a revelation.
It was gentle, sure, and it sent a jolt of pure desire straight through me.
The stroke of her tongue on mine a decadence I’d forgotten how to savor.
This was what I’d been denying. This was the connection I’d feared to name.
Her hands moved from my face, sliding down my neck, over my shoulders. Her fingers found the hem of my jacket, and she paused, giving me a chance to pull away. I didn’t. I shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor. Her hands smoothed down my arms, her touch a balm against my skin.
She broke the kiss to pull my shirt over my head. The cool air of the room made me shiver, but it was nothing compared to the heat in her eyes as she looked at me. Her gaze wasn’t predatory or possessive; it was appreciative, like she was seeing something beautiful and rare.