Celeste's POV:
I didn't decide to go to Lucien's penthouse that night. Not the one above the gallery. No. His real penthouse. His real world.
Not in the way one makes a choice about dinner or a dress. It wasn't logical. It wasn't planned. It was something older than reason — a gravity pulling me from the inside out.
Damien was asleep when I left. Or pretending to be. He said earlier that he will be going out of town for work. The lights were low. The silence thick. I didn't leave a note. Just slipped into my coat, grabbed my keys, and closed the door without looking back.
The address he sent was in Tribeca. A private elevator. No guard. No name on the buzzer. Just the soft sound of the door unlocking before I even knocked.
He'd been waiting.
---
The door clicks shut behind me, sealing me inside Lucien's world — all shadow and velvet, steel and silence.
It smells like him.
Dark, woodsy, expensive.
Like something that doesn't ask for permission.
I take cautious steps down the hallway, my heels nearly silent on the polished floors. The place is less opulent than I imagined and more… deliberate. Every piece of furniture looks chosen, every angle curated. Like the home of a man who doesn't need to flaunt his wealth because he is the power in the room.
The silence stretches. I pass a low-lit study, then a sitting room with floor-to-ceiling windows that spill city light across the floors. The skyline gleams like temptation.
Then I see it.
Tucked beyond an archway that opens into what looks like a private gallery — dimly lit, with rich walls and moody frames.
A single spotlight beams down on one large canvas.
I freeze.
It's me.
Not abstract. Not disguised.
Me.
I am on my knees. It doesn't seem like in surrender— but in defiance. Spine straight. Hands open. Eyes closed in power. The tilt of my neck. The fall of my hair. The line of my back caught in half-turn, my face just barely visible.
But it's unmistakable.
It's not how Damien would see me — poised, composed, the perfect social mask.
This painting is raw. Candid.
---
My stomach knots.
I want to look away. I don't.
Instead, I walk closer. Each step makes my pulse louder, my throat tighter. The closer I get, the more the details blur — as if the image itself resists being studied too long.
I raise a trembling hand, but I don't touch it.
His voice comes from behind me, low and unhurried.
"I commissioned it before you ever spoke my name."
I close my eyes. "Why?"
"Because I saw you."
I turn slowly. He's leaning in the doorway now, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled, collar open. He looks at me like the painting does — with quiet certainty.
I don't move away. I don't move at all.
---
Later, we sit.
Not close. Not far.
The silence isn't awkward. It's watchful. Waiting.
"I feel like I'm becoming someone I don't recognize," I tell him, picking at a thread on my skirt.
"No," he says gently. "You're remembering who you are."
I look at him then. Not the tailored suit, not the calm exterior. Just the man. The impossible man who's torn open something in me I'd buried so deep, I forgot it had a name.
Lucien doesn't try to seduce me with touches. Not tonight.
Tonight, he seduces me with stillness.
With the quiet way he listens. With the fact that he doesn't offer solutions or apologies.
Only presence.
Only heat and gravity and something dangerously close to understanding.
And I, like a fool—or maybe not a fool at all—stay longer than I should.
---
When I return home, the house feels colder.
Damien isn't there. Out of town for work, or so he says.
I don't care enough to confirm.
Nadia calls as I step out of the shower, and I answer, towel wrapped around me, heart still pacing from everything I didn't do—but almost did.
"You sound strange," she says. "Everything okay?"
"I don't know," I admit.
She's quiet for a beat, then, "Is it him?"
The fact that she knows without me saying it makes something behind my ribs crack open.
"I'm in trouble, Nads."
"No," she says gently. "You're in awakening. Trouble comes later."
I laugh. A little. Because I don't know what else to do.
---
That night, I lie awake in bed.
The bracelet still on my wrist.
The echo of Lucien's voice still in my ears.
I think about the painting. The rawness of it. The reverence.
I've never been looked at like that.
Not even by myself.
And as my eyes drift closed, the last thought that curls around me is not fear or shame.
It's this:
If I am falling…
Let it be into something that feels like mercy.
---
The next morning, Nadia texts me:
Coffee? Or are you hiding from the world again?
I send back a single word: Please.
She doesn't ask questions when I meet her on the corner of Spring and Mercer. She just orders for me—extra shot, oat milk, no sugar—and hands it over like a lifeline.
We sit in the little park nearby. The one with too many pigeons and not enough benches. I let my body angle toward hers, needing the gravity of something familiar.
Nadia eyes me over the lid of her coffee. "You look like you just committed a war crime or had phenomenal sex. Maybe both."
I huff a laugh, then go quiet. Too quiet.
She watches me for a beat. "Celeste."
I sip slowly. Then, "Have you ever wanted something so much you started fearing it?"
She doesn't blink. "Every goddamn day."
I nod. "But what if that thing—" My voice falters. "—sees right through you? Not just the good, but the ugly parts too. And doesn't flinch?"
Nadia leans back, thoughtful. "That's not fear, babe. That's recognition. We're all just hoping someone sees the whole mess and doesn't run."
I look down at my hands. "He didn't run."
She still don't know his name but she doesn't need to know. She's too smart for that.
Instead, she says, "Maybe it's time to ask yourself why you keep running from him."