The gallery smelled faintly of oil paint and citrus wine.
People floated past me like ghosts in curated clothing, all smiles and nods. I saw none of them. Only him.
Skillar stood near a wall-sized painting, smears of gold bleeding into thick black strokes like something ending and beginning all at once.
He saw me before I even moved.
And when our eyes met, he smiled. no surprise, no effort, just something quiet and kind like he was glad I was there. Not surprised. Not relieved. Glad.
"Hey," he said as I approached. His voice was warm. Grounded.
"Hey," I replied, and instantly hated how small it sounded. Like I didn't know how to use my own voice anymore.
But he didn't make it awkward. He didn't fill the air with compliments or try to tease. He just stepped aside and said, "I was hoping you'd come. This one made me think of you."
He nodded to the painting.
I glanced at it. black and gold, light wrestling with dark, a mess and a masterpiece at once.
"Because I'm a chaotic smear of color?" I said.
"No." He looked at it again. "Because you look like someone who survived a storm and never asked for anyone to know."
That made my throat tighten in a way I didn't expect.
He didn't wait for a reaction. He handed me a glass of wine and changed the subject, pointing toward another piece, telling me the artist was a reclusive genius who painted with fragments of glass in her oils.
I followed him through the gallery like I wasn't completely aware of every breath he took, every step closer. He didn't push. And that was what pulled me in.
We ended up in the quietest corner of the gallery, tucked between two tall canvases, away from the mingling crowd. I didn't remember how we got there. I just knew I hadn't laughed like this in years.
"You're kidding," I said, trying not to spill my wine.
"I'm not. I knocked over a sculpture worth six thousand euros," Skillar said, grinning. "It fell like a slow-motion movie. One arm. Then the head. Then the crash. I still have trauma."
"And they didn't ban you from every gallery in Europe?"
"Nope. Apparently, they liked that it brought attention to the piece. They renamed it 'The Fall.' Sold it for twice as much."
I laughed again.
And then, without thinking, I asked, "Why did you invite me?"
He didn't pretend not to know what I meant.
"I think we're alike in ways that would surprise you," he said. "You walk like someone who never expects a door to be held open. You speak like silence is a shield. And I…" He paused. "I notice things. Especially the things people try to bury."
I went very still. This was the moment. The moment I always pulled back.
The part where I turned cold. Sarcastic. Busy.
The part where I retreated into the safety of alone.
And for a second, I almost did.
I opened my mouth to say something dismissive. To draw the line before it got blurry. But I didn't. Instead, I asked quietly, honestly
"What do you see when you look at me?"
He didn't answer right away. And when he did, it wasn't flirtation. It wasn't fantasy. It wasn't poetry. "You look like someone who's been her own armor for a very long time," he said.
"And?"
"And maybe it's okay to put it down sometimes."
Just like that, the air shifted. The gallery, the wine, the people, all of it faded. Only his words remained.
We stepped outside around ten. The rain had stopped, but the sidewalk still glistened with leftover light. I didn't want to go home. But I didn't want the night to stretch too long either.
Too much light, and I'd burn. Too much time, and I'd start to want. We walked a few blocks in silence. Not awkward. Not heavy. Just… shared. Then he stopped in front of a corner bookstore. The kind that shouldn't exist anymore but somehow still did.
"This is my favorite place in the city," he said. "Closed now, but I come here when I need to feel human again."
I didn't answer. I was too busy memorizing the way he looked in this moment. his hands in his pockets, his eyes reflecting streetlight, a boyish softness behind the grown-man calm.
He turned to me. "Thank you for coming tonight, Oriana."
I nodded. "Thank you for inviting me."
We stood there for a moment too long.
The kind of pause that usually ends with something reckless. A kiss. A confession. A mistake.
But he didn't close the gap. Didn't reach for my hand. Didn't take more than I offered. He just smiled again. that smile and said, "Goodnight."
Then he walked away. Not looking back. And for the first time in years, I wanted someone to look back. But I also knew… This wasn't the end. It was the beginning of the moment I stopped running from myself. I stood there for a while after he left.
The city pulsed around me. honking cars, scattered laughter from a bar nearby, the muffled rhythm of a bus disappearing down the avenue. Everything moved, but I stayed still. For once, I wasn't trying to stay ahead of it all. I wasn't calculating my next move. I wasn't hiding behind the mask I wore so well.
I leaned back against the bookstore's brick wall and stared at the sky. moonless, cloudless, blank.
My phone buzzed again.
A message from Adrian, my lead consultant: "Investor check-in at 8:30 tomorrow. I'll prep the brief."
Back to work. Back to the real world. Back to what mattered.
I typed a short reply, slid the phone back in my coat pocket, and exhaled through my nose.
It was always like this. A flicker of something different. connection, emotion, and then the return to the blueprint. The Oriana I'd constructed. Polished. Perfected. Impenetrable.
But tonight, something had cracked. Just a little.
I reached up and brushed a hand over my cheek. It wasn't wet. I don't cry. Not for strangers. Not for stories. Not for men who see more than they're supposed to.
Still… I couldn't deny it.
Something had shifted. Something inside me that had been asleep for years was stirring, stretching. A dangerous thing. Because once you begin to feel again, it's much harder to keep pretending you don't need anyone.
When I finally got home, I didn't go straight to bed. I poured a glass of water, kicked off my heels, and stood barefoot on the cold tile floor of my kitchen. Everything looked the same. Minimalist. Sharp lines. White counters. Black cabinets. Clean, elegant… empty. I'd built this space to reflect who I was: in control. Self-sufficient. Not to be softened. But now, standing there with my hair still damp from the rain, makeup smudged from the long night, and my coat still on, it felt too quiet. Too neat.
I set the glass down and reached for my phone again.
No new messages.
I pulled up Skillar's name in my contacts. I hovered. I didn't text. But I saved his contact this time. Not just as "Lennox – gallery."
This time, I typed his first name.
Skillar.
Then I turned off the lights and went to bed. And for the first time in months, I didn't fall asleep planning tomorrow. I fell asleep remembering a laugh.
A gold-and-black painting.
And a man who saw through armor like it was made of glass.