When I lifted the camera to my eye, the world made sense again.
I photographed hands—Luc’s as he gestured animatedly, Henri’s smudged with charcoal, Amaya’s wrapped around her mug. I caught light as it fell across Élodie’s shoulder, the way her reflection fractured in the window. Ordinary moments, rendered newly intimate.
At one point, as I adjusted a setting, my fingers brushed the edge of a memory—Connor’s hand at my waist, his voice low and certain as he told me he wasn’t going anywhere. The recollection sent a quiet pulse through me. Not distraction. Alignment.
I wasn’t split between worlds, as I’d feared. I was integrating.
During lunch, I slipped outside with Amaya, the air cool and bright against my face. We sat on the low stone wall near the entrance, sharing a baguette like we often did.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said after a while. “But you can.”
I considered her profile—the way she watched the street with one eye, always alert, always taking in more than she let on. “My apartment was broken into,” I said quietly.
She stilled. “Mila?—”
“No one was hurt,” I continued quickly. “Nothing major was taken. It was … intentional. Like someone wanted me to know they’d been there.”
Her jaw tightened. “I told you Paris could be dangerous.”
I nodded. “I know. I just didn’t think—” I exhaled. “I didn’t think it would feel so personal.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand. “That’s the thing about cities like this. They don’t come for you all at once. They wait until you’re attached.”
I swallowed. “I don’t want to leave.”
She smiled softly. “Of course, you don’t.”
“I want to be careful,” I said. “But I don’t want fear to make my choices for me.”
Amaya studied me, then nodded once. “Good. Then don’t let it.”
Back inside, I lost myself in work again, grateful for the way art demanded my full attention. By the time afternoon light slanted low across the floor, I felt more like myself than I had since the break-in. Not untouched—but intact.
When Élodie stopped by my desk, I was mid-edit, refining contrast on a shot of the stairwell near my building. The image was stark, the geometry clean, the shadows deliberate.
“You’re closer,” she said after a moment.
“To what?” I asked.
“Yourself,” she replied. “The camera is no longer a shield.”
The observation sent a quiet thrill through me.
As the day wound down, I packed up slowly, savoring the familiar motions. Outside, the city hummed, alive and indifferent. I stepped onto the sidewalk with my camera snug against my hip and felt a swell of something that surprised me.
Resolve.
The break-in had rattled me, yes. Had exposed a vulnerability I hadn’t known I carried. But it had also clarified something essential. I was no longer interested in disappearing quietly. In moving through the world like an observer only.
I wanted to live inside my life.
As I walked, my thoughts drifted—not anxiously, but curiously—toward Connor. Toward the way he existed at the edges of my days now, not as a disruption but as a counterpoint. I didn’t need him to define my choices. I wanted him to witness them.
Whatever came next—whatever dangers lingered at the edges—I would meet them awake, grounded, and unwilling to give up the life I’d chosen.
Paris was changing me.
I was no longer afraid of that.
