She shrugged. “We rarely do.”
We worked side by side for a while, but not in silence, exactly. Amaya layered soft sounds through her headphones—testing, adjusting, listening again—while I sorted through images and contact sheets.
The room settled into that familiar creative rhythm where concentration didn’t require conversation, where the absence of words wasn’t empty but shared. My mind drifted between images and possibilities, between doubt and hope, buoyed by the quiet knowledge that neither of us needed to explain what we were doing to be understood.
Then Élodie’s phone rang.
She stepped into the hallway to take it, voice low and clipped. I tried not to watch the door. Tried not to count the seconds.
There was a subtle shift in the air—something restless but not heavy. Not dread. Not the familiar tightening that usually accompanied anticipation. Instead, a quiet sense of alignment, like the moment just before a photograph resolves into focus.
I didn’t know what the call was about, but I had the strangest feeling it might be something good. Something meant for me. Not because I’d earned it through patience or endurance, but because I’d finally stepped into the right frame of my own life.
When Élodie returned, her expression was different.
“Mila,” she said.
My heart jumped.
“There’s been an opening,” she continued. “A small showing. Short notice.”
“How short?” I asked, breath caught.
“If you can have the photographs ready by tomorrow night,” she said, “you can be included.”
Tomorrow night.
The words landed like a spark.
“Yes,” I said immediately. “Yes, I can do that.”
Even as doubt whispered at the edges—Can you? That fast?—excitement surged, bright and electric.
Élodie nodded once. “Good. Don’t overthink it.”
As she turned away, adrenaline flooded me. I laughed softly to myself, half giddy, half terrified.
Could I do it?
I didn’t know.
But I knew this—I was done waiting for permission to be ready.
I reached for my camera, fingers steady despite my racing pulse.
Somewhere in the city, Connor was moving through his own dangers, his own reckoning.
And here I was—stepping fully into mine.
Paris had changed me.
And tomorrow night, if I was brave enough, I would let the world see it.
31
CONNOR
The plan was simple. Almost insultingly so.
