53. Sage #2
I carefully flipped the thick paper over. In the bottom right corner of the back, there was a faint, faded signature written in elegant, cursive ink.
I squinted, holding it up to the morning light filtering through the window.
Jane? I tilted the paper. No… Joan? “Hmm. Weird,” I murmured to myself, rubbing my thumb over the dry ink.
Maybe one of my professors or a classmate from the university had slipped it into my portfolio by accident?
Or maybe someone had left it as a strange, anonymous gift?
I turned the painting back around, trying not to think too much about how it had actually gotten onto my desk, and let my eyes trace the image.
It was a sprawling, dark gothic manor sitting high on a hill.
The stone architecture looked ancient and imposing, surrounded by a labyrinth of overgrown, red and white rose bushes.
The colours were incredibly vivid, the heavy greens and crimsons contrasting sharply with the stormy sky painted above.
But as I looked closer, I could see people in the painting.
Down in the overgrown garden, sitting on a stone bench surrounded by the roses, was a girl.
Beside her sat a tall, dark-haired man, his posture leaning towards her in a way that felt incredibly intimate, protective almost. Curled up near the hem of the girl’s dress was a small, shadowed blob of a cat.
High above them, in one of the dark arched windows of the manor, stood another man. He wasn’t detailed—just a tall, imposing silhouette looking down at the couple in the garden. But the energy radiating from that single, painted shadow made my stomach instantly drop.
I looked back down at the girl on the bench.
I stepped closer to the window, the morning light fully hitting the painting when a sickening wave of shock crashed over me.
The familiarity was unsettling. She had dark wavy hair. She had the exact same slope of my nose, and she was looking over her shoulder with dark, too familiar blue eyes.
I found myself staring at the girl in the painting, a mirror almost, unable to shake off the impossible, terrifying similarities in our appearances. It wasn’t just a resemblance. It was me.
My hands started to shake. I dropped the heavy, aged paper back onto the drafting table like it had burned me, stepping backwards until my hip hit the edge of the kitchen counter.
Someone was in my apartment last night.
I looked frantically around the room, than back towards the sliding glass door in the kitchen. The lock was still engaged, but the terrifying, undeniable truth was sitting right there in front of me. I hadn’t painted that. And whoever did knew exactly what I looked like.
I couldn’t stay in that apartment for another second.
The walls felt like they were rapidly closing in. Nausea washed over me at the terrifying realisation that I wasn’t alone last night. I threw a knit sweater over my shirt, shoved my laptop and a sketchbook into my tote bag, and practically ran out the front door.
Twenty minutes later, I was huddled in a corner booth at the busiest cafe I could find.
The chaotic noise, the hiss of the espresso machines, the overlapping chatter of uni students, the constant chiming of the door bell, was supposed to be grounding.
The steam from my black coffee curled into the air as I gripped the scolding mug, my knuckles pale. My laptop screen felt blinding. Between the demands of my new Archeology units and the weight of an Art History essay looming over my head, I felt like I was drowning in the past. Literally.
My mind was a constant graveyard of the ancient world, yet I couldn’t seem to unearth a single coherent thought today.
I’d started the degree to ground my art in something real—to understand the bone and stone of history—but tonight, the ruins of Rome felt just as fractured as my own concentration.
You’re losing it, Sage, I told myself, I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, a punishing weight that did nothing to quiet the noise in my head.
I took a slow, shaky breath and turned my head to look out the large, rain streaked front window of the cafe, watching the hurried morning commuters rush past on the crowded sidewalk.
Walking past the glass, moving against the crowd with a fluid, predatory grace that did not belong among the sea of tired students, was a man. Broad shoulders. A dark, heavy jacket. Pitch-black hair.
“Julian,” I gasped, the name ripping out of my throat unfiltered.
I abandoned my coffee and my laptop, my chair screeching loudly against the tile floor as I jumped up. I scrambled through the crowded tables, ignoring the annoyed looks and spilled drinks of the people I bumped into, desperately pushing my way through the sea of people.
I shoved the heavy glass door open, bursting out onto the damp, freezing sidewalk.
“Julian!” I called out, spinning around frantically, my eyes scanning the mix of umbrellas and thick winter coats.
Nothing.
I took a few steps down the street, checking the alleyway between the buildings. Empty. There were just ordinary, miserable people hurrying to work in the rain. He was gone.
Or, more likely, he had never been there at all.
I let out a frustrated exhale, my shoulders slumping as I leaned back against the wet brick wall of the cafe. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering in the cold air.
He’s not here, I reminded myself repeatedly, squeezing my eyes shut. He has twenty-nine days left. He’s not here. I need more sleep.
I rubbed my pounding temples, a migraine was definitely brewing.
Between the random painting sitting on my desk and the endless gruelling all-nighters, I’d been pulling to finish my final studio projects, my brain was now short-circuiting.
Extreme sleep deprivation, caffeine, and an obsessive, desperate longing for a man thousands of kilometres away, were a dangerous combination.
I wasn’t being stalked. There wasn’t anybody in my apartment. I was just hallucinating from exhaustion. I desperately needed to get some deep sleep tonight, before I lost my mind.
I pushed off the brick wall and headed back inside to gather my things, totally unaware of the man sitting in a black SUV parked across the street, watching my every move with cold, calculating eyes.