The way he says it—like he’s revealing a secret—makes my skin prickle. I drift closer to Maya, needing to check on her even though I’m supposed to be working the room. She’s holding a silver tray of chocolates, weaving between guests with this fixed smile that I recognize. It’s her professional mask, but underneath, she’s vibrating with tension.
“He’s good,” I admit grudgingly, watching Adrian demonstrate proper chocolate tasting technique to an elderly couple. The way he touches the woman’s wrist, guiding her hand to her mouth—it makes my stomach churn. “The presentation perfectly matches my aesthetic. But Maya...” I grab her arm, lowering my voice. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says automatically, but her eyes track Adrian’s every movement like he’s magnetic north and she’s a compass that can’t help but point.
“You seem distracted,” I observe, following her gaze across the room to where Adrian is arranging chocolate displays beneath my canvases.
The pairings aren’t random—blood-red truffles under “Crimson Constellation,” dark bittersweet pieces beneath my “Midnight Meridian.” It’s like he walked through my series and understood not just what I painted, butwhy.
“That’s what worries me,” I hear myself say, words tumbling out faster than I can organize them. “The way he’s arranged his chocolates with my paintings. The gloominess in my work—it’s like he understands it too well.” My hand gestures encompass the entire display, the perfect symmetry, the way his art complements mine in away that should be flattering but instead feels invasive. “It’s like he’s inside my head.”
Maya takes a chocolate from the tray and bites into it, and I catch that micro-expression—the one that means she’s hiding something big.Of course she is. She’s been hiding things for weeks now. Ever since that first tasting. Ever since Valentine’s Day and?—
The gallery door opens.
I notice him immediately because he moves wrong in this space—not badly, butdifferently. The typical gallery crowd walks in a performative way, as if they’re always aware of being watched. This man moves like he owns every room he enters but doesn’t need you to know it.
He’s tall, with dark hair shaved shorter at the sides in a distinguished way. The suit is expensive but not showy—charcoal gray, perfectly tailored. But it’s his hands I notice first as he reaches up to unbutton his coat. Long fingers, callused in a way that suggests musician or craftsman, not businessman.
He catches Maya’s eye and nods slightly—they know each other, how do they know each other—before approaching Adrian. The ease of their interaction makes my brain start connecting dots.They know each other. Well. This is Adrian’s friend. The one Maya mentioned? Or didn’t mention? Why didn’t Maya mention him?
“Amelia,” Maya touches my arm, pulling me from my spiral. “Come meet Adrian’s wine expert.”
Wine expert. Right. Except I’m noticing the way he stands—weight balanced, awareness of the space around him.
But then he’s standing in front of “Crimson Constellation,” and the way he looks at it steals my breath. Not the vacant appreciation of most gallery-goers who make theright sounds but see nothing. Not even the intense study of serious collectors who are calculating investment value.
He’sreadingit.
“The way the colors bleed together here,” he traces the air in front of the canvas without touching it—thank god, I hate when people touch the canvas— “reminds me of a Miles Davis solo I play. ‘Blue in Green,’ specifically. That moment around the two-minute mark when the notes blur into pure emotion and you can’t tell where the piano ends and the trumpet begins.”
My carefully constructed gallery persona cracks like old paint. “You’re a musician?”
“Jazz pianist. I run The Blue Room.” His smile reaches his eyes—gray, I notice now, like smoke or steel or storm clouds depending on the light. “Your work... it speaks to that same place music comes from. Raw, honest, unafraid to explore the shadows most people pretend don’t exist.”
Something in my chest unlocks. My shoulders drop from where they’d been tensed near my ears all evening. Becausehe gets it, he actually sees what I’m doing, not just what I’m showing.
I find myself leading him toward the corner—away from the main crowd. “This one is part of the series, but most people miss it. The constellation pattern is more subtle, hidden in the?—”
“Window reflections,” he finishes, leaning closer. I catch his scent—something woody with a hint of smoke and aged whiskey. “Cassiopeia, right? Five points mimicked in the apartment windows.”
“Yes!” The word bursts out too enthusiastically, and I don’t even care that I sound like an overexcited art student instead of a professional having a gallery showing, becausenobodyhas caught that detail. “I buried it in the layeringbecause I wanted—I needed it to reveal itself slowly, like when your eyes adjust to darkness and suddenly you see stars you didn’t know were there.”
“Like when you’re listening to jazz,” he says, voice lower now, more intimate. We’re standing closer than I realized. “The melody you think you’re hearing isn’t the real one. The truth is in the spaces between the notes. In the silence.”
My hand reaches out without permission, touching his arm as I gesture to another detail in the painting. I feel his warmth through fine wool, the solid reality of muscle and bone. “Exactly. That’s exactly it. The negative space is as important as what’s painted. Maybe more important.”
“Gabe Dawson,” he says, extending his hand properly.
“Amelia Stone.” His handshake is firm and warm, lasting a beat longer than professionally necessary. “But you already knew that.”
“I did. Adrian’s been talking about your work for weeks.”
That should worry me—Adrian talking about me, Adrian paying attention—but I’m too focused on the way Gabe is looking at the smaller canvas, seeing the things I hid there. The shadow figure in the doorway that most people miss. The way the streetlight creates a halo that’s more menacing than holy.
“You paint what you see,” he says quietly. “Not what people want to see.”
“Isn’t that what art is supposed to do?”
