The problem with Adrian Holt was that he didn't just enter a room—he stayed in it, even after he left.
It was hours later when I finally locked up my office, the winter air biting my cheeks as I stepped into the city's evening hum. The plan had been to head straight home, pour a glass of wine, and try to ignore the fact that Holt's voice still lingered in my head.
Instead, my phone buzzed.
Unknown Number: Studio. 9 p.m. Don't be late.
No name. No address. But I knew exactly who it was.
I should've ignored it. I had every reason to. Yet at 8:55, I was pushing open a heavy steel door in a converted Brooklyn warehouse.
Inside, the space was warm and smelled faintly of turpentine, old wood, and something darker—like the air itself had soaked up years of cigarette smoke and late-night confessions.
He was there, sleeves rolled up, standing over a massive canvas lit by a single overhead bulb. The painting was chaos—thick swirls of black and grey, slashed through with an almost violent streak of red. Crimson, wet and glistening under the light.
"You came," he said, not looking up from the canvas.
"You invited me," I replied, stepping in.
"That doesn't mean people always show."
"I'm not people," I said.
That earned me the faintest smirk. "Good."
The floor was littered with paint tubes, brushes in jars of cloudy water, and canvases leaning against walls. Some were abstract, all motion and color. Others… others were bodies. Faces. Moments so intimate they felt like secrets I shouldn't be seeing.
"This is where you work?" I asked, running a finger along the edge of a battered table.
"This is where I live."
"You live here?"
He shrugged. "Home's a place you sleep. This is where I breathe."
I didn't say it out loud, but I understood that. Art was his oxygen.
He finally looked at me, and the full weight of his gaze landed hard. "What do you see?"
"In what?"
He gestured to the canvas between us.
I took a step closer. The red cut through the darker tones like a wound. "Conflict. Obsession. Maybe anger."
"Maybe?"
"It's not just anger," I said quietly. "There's… hunger in it. Want."
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he dipped a brush into the crimson paint and, without breaking eye contact, dragged it across the canvas in one long, deliberate stroke.
The silence stretched.
"You should know," he said finally, his voice low, "I don't let people see my work in progress."
"Why me?"
"Because you're going to be hanging it on museum walls. I want you to understand what you're dealing with." He paused. "And because you don't look away."
Something in my chest tightened.
"That's not always a good thing," I said.
"It is for me."
The way he said it, I could feel the heat under the words.
I told myself I'd only stay fifteen minutes. I stayed until midnight.