“Tell me what you need,” he said.
The simplicity of it—no qualifiers, no dramatic vow—made my throat ache.
“I need you,” I said honestly. “Just … there. In the room. Knowing you’re there.”
Something moved in his expression. The smallest crack in the armor, letting warmth through.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Not might. Not if. Not depending.
Will.
I leaned down and kissed him. Soft. Slow.
He kissed me back like he was memorizing it.
By late afternoon, the threat level had shifted into something quieter.
The men Ellsworth had put in place were still around. But now it felt … relaxed. Not sloppy, not careless—just less tight. Like the world had stopped bracing for impact.
Merrick was dead.
The name still tasted like iron in the back of my mind, still carried the echo of what he’d done. But the immediate danger—whatever had been circling Connor, hunting him—had snapped.
For the first time, Connor’s shoulders weren’t held at the constant readiness of a man expecting an ambush. The vigilance was still there—always would be, I suspected—but it wasn’t consuming him.
It left room for other things.
Like me.
Like my work.
Like pride.
We left The Sanctuary only as needed. The rest of the day unfolded in small trips—Ellsworth coordinating, Connor moving with me when he could.
That evening, when we stepped out of the car near the gallery space, Paris was dressed in dusk. Streetlights had begun to glow, turning puddles into coins. People clustered outside cafés, coats half-buttoned. The air smelled like rain and perfume and warm bread.
The gallery itself was modest—an intimate white-walled space tucked on a quiet side street, the kind of place you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. It wasn’t the Louvre. It wasn’t a career-making institution.
But it was a door.
And Élodie had handed me the key.
Inside, my photographs hung under clean lights, spaced with intention, not apology.
Seeing them on the wall did something to me. It was like watching a version of myself I’d only met recently step forward and take up space.
I wasn’t hiding behind beauty anymore.
I wasn’t photographing Paris like a tourist collecting evidence.
I’d captured closeness. Friction. The way light fell on skin. The way bodies leaned toward one another without knowing they were being seen. The space between faces right before a confession. Hands almost touching. A woman on the métro holding her own wrist like restraint. A man at the river staring into water like it might answer him.
The sequence formed an arc. A feeling.
It looked like my life here.
