Edwina
Thestudiobreathedofacrylic 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 abackpack 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.
