“Now I know why, but it took a while.”
I finish the section and sit back again, stretching my fingers.
He turns his head slightly. “How does it look?”
I hold up my phone.
He studies the image. “The feathers,” he says.
“I know.”
“You can see them.”
“Two more sessions and you’ll be able to count them.” I set my phone down. “Lie still.”
He does, and I return to the machine.
Outside, a car passes. Then another. Then the street settles.
I’m working on the final section of tonight’s shading, the wing’s inner edge, the finest lines of the piece, when I hear it.
The engine.
Low, steady, a particular idle I’ve heard three times a week for most of my life. The sound of my father’s truck, which I can identify the way people identify voices, without effort, without having to think about it.
My hand stops.
Not a flinch. A stop. The needle lifts from the skin before I make a conscious decision to lift it.
“Ava?” Reece questions when he hears the change in the machine’s sound.
“Don’t move.” My voice comes out even, which is its own kind of miracle, because my heart has just gone from a normal resting rate to something considerably less resting in the space of two seconds. “And don’t sit up.”
“What?”
“My father’s truck.” I set the machine down. “It’s outside.”
The silence that follows has a different quality from all the other silences tonight. Reece goes completely still, not the relaxed stillness of a good session, but the held, tactical stillness of someone assessing a situation. I’ve seen him do it. He processes quickly, which I’ve always appreciated and appreciate more than ever right now.
“Can he see in?” he says.
“From the street, yes. The front desk is visible through the window.” I’m already moving, not running, no sudden movements, nothing that would read as panic from outside. I walk to the front desk, take my place behind it, and open a design folder.
Normal.
Working late.
Alone.
“The chair,” I say.
“I know.”
Reece stays down.
I look up through the window without lifting my head.
The truck is parked across the street. Not directly outside, but three spaces down, which means he may have come from the stadium direction rather than the apartment. The engine is still running. Through the windshield, I can make out his shape, the familiar set of those shoulders, and the tilt of the head, but he is looking at the studio.
