Connor wasn’t there.
I hadn’t expected him to be. Not truly.
Still, the disappointment hit like a bruise. Quiet, but tender.
I found Amaya near the bar. She took one look at my face and lifted her glass in mock sympathy.
“Bad French boy?” she asked.
“Not French,” I said.
“Always French,” she corrected. “Even when they’re not.”
“I think I just got … hunted,” I said, half joking.
Amaya’s eyes sharpened with interest. “Hunted?”
I regretted the word immediately. It sounded dramatic. Like something from a book.
But Amaya only nodded. “Yes. That happens.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” I asked.
“No,” she said simply. “It is supposed to be real.”
She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “You must learn the difference between attention and intention.”
My pulse flickered. “And how do you tell?”
Amaya’s gaze held mine. “Intention has patience,” she said. “Attention is hungry.”
The words struck harder than they should have.
Patience.
Connor’s patience.
My throat went dry.
Amaya took a sip of her drink, unbothered by the effect she was having on me. “Come,” she said. “There is a back room. Better art. Less … French boy.”
I let her lead me through the crowd, past a velvet curtain I hadn’t noticed. The shift in atmosphere was immediate. The back room was dimmer, quieter, more exclusive. Fewer people. More intent. The work back here wasn’t designed to be Instagrammable.
It was designed to be felt.
Large canvases hung with dark, layered paint—violent strokes softened into something almost tender. A sculpture of intertwined hands, fingers digging into flesh, not quite gentle, not quite cruel. A series of photographs that made my stomach tighten—close-ups of mouths, collarbones, wrists with faint bruises like fingerprints.
Consent and possession, tangled.
My breath caught.
“This artist,” Amaya murmured, “he is controversial.”
“Because it’s … violent?” I asked softly.
“Because it’s honest,” she corrected.
I stepped closer to one photograph—an image of a woman’s throat, head tipped back, a man’s hand around her neck. Notsqueezing. Holding. Claiming. The woman’s mouth was parted, not in fear, but in something that looked dangerously like surrender.
