KAIDEN
She wavesat me with a quick, involuntary flutter of her fingers. Before I can form a response, she turns and disappears in the crowd.
I stand there with the ticket in my hand, replaying the last ten minutes. My instinct is to look for the angle. In my world, there is always a pitch, a business card, or a hidden camera waiting to capture a Hammond in a staged moment of charity. I wait for her to circle back. I wait for a journalist to emerge from behind a pillar.
Nothing happens.
The lobby hums with quiet conversation. Visitors drift past, yet I remain frozen. I don't even know her last name. I shouldn’t care, but the spontaneity of her reaction leaves me unprepared. She wasn't performing. She was just... being.
I turn toward the east wing, away from where she went. I came here to clear my head of my father’s voice and the corporate espionage threats lurking around ELK. The first room is full of pieces that feel aggressive and demanding. I stop in front of a sculpture that looks like a scream frozen in metal and wait to feel something, anything, but there is only the familiar, heavy vacuum of my own exhaustion.
My attention keeps snagging on things that aren't hanging on the walls. A flash of blonde hair in my peripheral vision makes my pulse jump. I tell myself I’m being thorough. If I’m drifting toward the west wing, it’s purely to ensure I haven’t been followed. It is a security check, not a pursuit.
I find her after four rooms.
She is standing in front of a sculpture of tangled wire. Her head is tilted, and her entire body leans into the art with focus. She pulls a small notebook from her bag and begins to sketch. Her hand moves in quick, sure strokes. I want to see what she’s capturing, but I stay back, lurking in the shadows of a large installation.
She pushes a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, but it frees itself almost immediately. With a soft huff of irritation, she rummages in her bag and produces a plastic claw. In three efficient moves, she gathers the honeyed mass and pins it up.
I have never been a man who fixated on a woman's neck, but I can't look away from hers. The skin is pale and looks impossibly soft, the curve of her nape revealing a vulnerability that hits me like a physical blow. She is bent over her sketchbook with a feverish energy that reminds me of my own late nights over a new blueprint.
I should stop acting like a man who has never seen a woman before. Instead, I find a position where I can watch her without being obvious. I tell myself it’s caution.
The other explanation is that she feels like a language I don't speak.
She moves to the next room, and I follow at a distance. I lose her between a video installation and a gallery of mirrors.
I am about to turn toward the exit when I see the painting.
It takes up nearly the entire wall. It is a landscape of gray and charcoal, heavy and dark like a storm that has been building fordecades. Cutting through the center of that darkness is a single, defiant streak of blue.
I can’t look away. The tension I’ve been carrying since my father’s call begins to ease. The painting asks nothing of me. It doesn’t want my name or my compliance. It just exists, fighting its way through the gloom.
I understand this one.
I don't hear her approach, but I feel the shift in the air. A warmth settles at the edge of my awareness. I turn my head slowly and find her standing a few feet away. Her sketchbook is open, and her hand is moving. She isn't looking at the painting.
Our eyes meet, and she freezes. Her cheeks flush a deep, beautiful pink. She snaps the sketchbook shut against her chest as if she’s been caught stealing.
“You found me,” I say. My voice sounds lower than usual. I wonder why I said it like that, as if I had been waiting for her to find me.
“Sorry, I wasn’t—” She stops, because we both know what she was doing. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
I glance at the book pressed to her heart. “Were you drawing?”
“The painting,” she says too fast. “I was drawing the painting.”
I lift an eyebrow. She is a terrible liar, and I find it oddly charming. “What do you think of it? The painting.”
She turns to face the canvas, and I watch the way her shoulders soften. “It’s the one I came to see. My friend told me about it. She called it life-changing.”
“And? Is it?”
“I don't know yet.” She tilts her head, studying the blue streak. “Ask me in an hour.”
She delays her answers as if she is afraid to commit. I find myself wanting to know why.
“What do you see?” she asks, turning back to me.
