Fucking fuck.
My grip tightened around the brush until my knuckles burned. I hadn’t meant to paint her. I hadn’t meant to see her face bleeding through the dark. But there she was, emerging beneath every stroke I laid down, the woman she had become, and the girl I had seen trapped beneath the glare of fractured headlights. The memory came back raw and vivid, the image of her skin too pale under the chaos of red and blue, the sound of her shallow breath that night before everything went still.
I tried to destroy it. Pressed the brush hard against the canvas, dragging the wet bristles through the curve of her mouth, through the outline of her eyes. I smeared the color until the shape was nothing but shadow, but even beneath the ruined paint, I could still see her. I could always fucking see her.
The brush slipped from my hand and hit the glass of water on the table, paint bleeding into it in slow, black swirls that spread through the clear. I watched it move, hypnotic, curling in on itself, the same way she did in my mind. Quiet, constant, impossible to erase. I should have burned the whole goddamn thing, should have watched the canvas curl into ash and taken her with it. But I didn’t. I just stood there, the taste of turpentine and whiskey still in the back of my throat, breathing her in as if the scent of her ghost could kill me.
I didn’t clean the brushes. I didn’t move. I stayed there surrounded by solvent and silence, staring at the half-formed face that refused to disappear. Edwina had become a haunting stitched into the marrow of my days, a pulse that refused to die, a shadow that followed even when the lights were gone.
I told myself it didn’t matter, that I’d wake up tomorrow, walk into the lecture hall, and not look at her. That I’d remember where the boundaries were.
But the canvas said otherwise. And somewhere beneath the guilt, beneath the discipline I wore like a second skin, beneath the quiet that passed for control, I already fucking knew this wasn’t the last time I would paint her.
Chapter Eight
Edwina
Thedaysunfoldedina strange suspension, as if I had stepped outside the rhythm of time and everything around me moved at half-speed, refusing to catch up or slow down. I told myself it didn’t matter, that the title meant nothing, thatassistantwas just a word on a résumé, a technicality, a harmless formality. I repeated that it was fine, that I didn’t care why Professor Stone had chosen me, or what quiet tension had taken root between us since that unnerving meeting in the lecture hall. But beneath all those careful lies, I knew the truth had already begun to ache through the cracks.
By Thursday, I gave in and went with Aster to the art course she’d been pestering me about for days, claiming it would be good for my head, that it might even loosen whatever knots I refused to admit were there. The class was tucked into aforgotten annex of the Fine Arts building, its walls glowing faintly with filtered daylight and carrying the scent of turpentine and clay, a soft, tangible quiet that made every sound feel deliberate. Students hunched over their sketchbooks, lost in the concentration of shadow and line, the hush between them almost reverent.
I sat at the far end of the room, a stick of charcoal smudging my fingers, my lines uncertain and my shapes uneven, until the page looked as though it had been dragged through frustration itself. But for the first time in what felt like weeks, my thoughts, the ones that circled endlessly around him, devouring everything else, finally began to dull. Not fade, exactly, but recede into the distance, softened into something that no longer demanded to be heard.
Aster, of course, was effortless. Her movements carried that unteachable grace, the kind that belonged to people who didn’t have to second-guess their instincts. Still, she didn’t hover. She only smiled when my paper tore under the weight of my hand, passed me another without comment, and said quietly, “It doesn’t have to be good. Just draw like no one’s watching.”
I didn’t tell her that I already felt watched, that even in stillness, something in me remained alert, as though his gaze lingered somewhere beyond reach. It wasn’t imagination, it was memory, threaded through the small moments of every day. I thought of him while standing in line for coffee, while flipping through unread novels, while brushing my teeth under fluorescent light, while reheating food I wouldn’t touch. I thought of him most when the world went quiet, at three in the morning, my phone dark on the nightstand, a faint song whispering in my ears while I lay motionless, trying and failing to drown out the sound of his voice in my head.
Aster and Gwen noticed, of course. Aster kept trying to pull me back into the art studio, offering brushes with soft insistence andsmall, knowing smiles that carried the patience of someone who understood exactly what kind of unrest lived beneath my skin. Gwen, on the other hand, waged her own brand of intervention from behind a screen. Hourly texts filled with memes and mock suspicion.How’s working for your mortal enemy going?On a scale from one to setting his office on fire, how tempted are you today?Their concern reached me through the static of my detachment, and I appreciated it more than I would ever say. But I didn’t answer. The truth was simple. Hayden had already taken up residence in my mind, a quiet occupation that spread until there was no space left untouched by him. I despised that intrusion, and I despised him for making it happen.
By Monday morning, the cold had sunk into the bones of the city. The sky hung low and colorless, pressing against the skyline with the weight of something unsaid. I arrived at the university earlier than usual, my breath ghosting in the air, my coat wrapped tightly around me as though it could muffle the restless ache beneath my ribs.
The corridors were sharper that morning, emptied of warmth, each step echoing louder than it should have, threading through the silence until it felt like the building itself was holding its breath. I stopped before the frosted-glass door, eyes lingering too long on the name etched across it in black serif:
Professor H. Stone.
The sight alone drew a tightening in my stomach. I knocked once.
“Come in,” came his voice, low and even.
I stepped inside. He didn’t look up immediately, though I could sense that he knew exactly when I entered. The office was awash in pale winter light spilling through the blinds, thin beams cutting across the walls and dissolving into shadow. He sat behind the desk in his usual black shirt, slacks, sleeves rolled to the elbow, every detail exact. A pen moved between his fingerswith deliberate precision, tracing lines across an ivory notepad. His composure was complete, the kind that belonged to men who had turned restraint into a kind of art.
“I said noon,” he murmured, still focused on the page.
“It’s eleven fifty-eight,” I answered, keeping my tone smooth but letting a quiet provocation thread beneath the civility.
“Then you’re early.”
I lingered near the door, allowing my gaze to trace over him for just a moment. “I thought professors appreciated punctuality,” I said, my tone smooth, teasing with just enough edge to test the line.
His head lifted then, his eyes locking on mine, cold and clear. “I appreciate precision,” he said, the words carrying weight far beyond their simplicity.
Something in the air shifted. His stare held me in place, unreadable and unwavering, until my spine felt uncertain beneath it. There was no warmth in his expression, only scrutiny, sharp, consuming, relentless.
“Sit,” he said finally.
I crossed the room and obeyed, setting my bag beside the chair, fingers brushing the worn leather as I tried to ground myself. The folder in my hands was still warm from being held against my coat, I focused on its edges, on the neat alignment of papers, anything to keep my thoughts from unraveling under his attention. He didn’t move, but his focus did. I could feel it. Careful, constant, dissecting without mercy. His stillness was not indifference, it was study.
I drew a shallow breath and slid the folder toward him across the polished desk, the soft sound of paper on wood seeming louder than it should have been. He closed his notebook with unhurried precision, fingers moving over the cover before interlacing his hands and resting them atop it. The silence that followed was not accidental, it was a held thing, heavy,intentional, a control I could almost feel pressing against my skin.
