Chapter 2
1612 Words
Ava Monroe woke before her alarm, tangled in her sheets like a moth in a web. The city was quiet in that strange, early-morning way—soft hums of life just beginning to stir. Her loft studio smelled like turpentine, coffee grounds, and something faintly citrusy from a candle she forgot to blow out.
She stared at the ceiling, replaying yesterday’s encounter on an endless loop. The man with the black suit, the steady eyes, and that infuriating restraint. Julian Blackwell.
She’d Googled him the second she got home. Of course she had. She wasn’t proud of it, but she wasn’t above it, either. Manhattan’s real estate heir, business magnate, and rumored heartbreaker. He was the kind of man people either envied or wanted to sleep with—or both. And he hadn’t asked for her number.
She sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and pulled the hair tie from her wrist. A messy bun. No makeup. She liked starting the day raw.
Downstairs, her neighbor’s dog barked once—sharp and offended. Ava padded barefoot to the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and flipped her sketchbook open on the counter. The sketch of him stared back at her. Bold strokes. Clean lines. Unfinished. Just like yesterday.
She hated that she was drawn to him. She hated the cliché of it: the brooding, mysterious man who stirs something in the quiet girl with paint under her fingernails.
But it wasn’t that simple.
Julian hadn’t flirted. He hadn’t smirked or flexed or tried to impress her. He had simply been—present, direct, unnervingly sincere in the way he studied her work, and then, just like that, he was gone.
No number. No name. No game.
Except now she knew his name. And something about that made her feel like she’d lost the upper hand in a conversation that never even happened.
---
By the time she reached the gallery, the city was fully awake. Horns honked with purpose, steam hissed from grates, and people moved like they had places to be and weren’t thrilled about it. Ava slipped through the side entrance, nodding to Max, the gallery’s longtime security guard.
“You’re early,” he said, glancing over his coffee-stained crossword.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she replied.
“Big night yesterday. Heard some important folks stopped by.”
She shrugged, trying not to seem too interested. “Some guy in a Tom Ford suit looked at my painting and left. That’s about it.”
Max raised an eyebrow. “Was he tall? Dark hair? Looked like he hadn’t smiled since 2005?”
“That’s the one.”
Max chuckled. “Julian Blackwell. He comes through now and then. Never buys anything, but he looks hard. Like he’s searching for something.”
Ava’s stomach fluttered. So it wasn’t just her.
She wandered to the main room, where her canvas still held court on the far wall. “Solace,” she’d named it. Thick textures, bleeding color, a slow burn of grief and longing that she hadn’t planned—it had just come out that way. And he’d stood in front of it for a long time.
She didn’t understand men like Julian. Wealth didn’t intimidate her—she’d grown up around plenty of men with money and no sense. But power wrapped in stillness? That shook her.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Maddie, her best friend and occasional chaos coordinator.
Brunch tomorrow? You’ve been weirdly quiet. Spill everything. Bring gossip or don’t come.
Ava smiled. Maddie would drag it out of her whether she wanted to talk about it or not. She typed back a quick yes and set the phone down.
She turned back to her painting. Something about it looked different today. The reds felt warmer. The shadows deeper. She wondered if that was his doing—if his eyes had changed how she saw it.
And then her heart jumped.
There, tucked just behind the gallery wall’s molding, was a folded piece of card stock. Cream-colored. Elegant. She pulled it free with hesitant fingers.
A name was engraved on the front in dark, cursive script: Julian Blackwell.
Inside, a simple note:
Ava—
Your painting held me still. That rarely happens.
Would like to speak again.
Thursday. Eleven a.m.
Blackwell Tower. Penthouse.
—J
She stared at the card like it might self-destruct. Her pulse quickened, slow and thick. The handwriting was neat, but not overly formal. Measured. Controlled. Like him.
Penthouse?
What the hell was this?
She looked around, half expecting someone to jump out and yell gotcha! But the gallery was quiet. The card was real.
So he had wanted to see her again. Just... not right away. Not impulsively. Not in the chaotic, desperate way Ava sometimes craved. Instead, he’d waited. Planned.
Thursday.
Today was Tuesday.
She folded the card carefully and slid it into her pocket.
---
Thursday came too fast.
She stood in front of Blackwell Tower, clutching her tote like it was a shield. The building loomed above her like a cathedral of steel and glass. The kind of place that didn’t just whisper “old money,” it sang it in perfect pitch.
Inside, the elevator whooshed her up to the penthouse with barely a sound. The attendant—yes, there was an actual elevator attendant—gave her a polite nod but said nothing.
When the doors opened, she stepped into a space that didn’t look like a home. It looked like a magazine spread. Polished floors. Art that was likely worth more than her entire existence. Floor-to-ceiling windows spilling sunlight across sleek furniture.
And then he was there.
Julian.
No suit this time. Just a dark shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and black slacks. His eyes locked on hers the way a painter studies a subject. Not with hunger. With curiosity.
“Ava,” he said simply.
She nodded, throat tight. “Julian.”
“Come in.”
He gestured toward a low-slung couch. She sat stiffly, her hands clasped in her lap.
“You got my note,” he said.
“I did.” Her voice came out smaller than she intended.
He didn’t offer wine or coffee. No small talk. Just silence, comfortable in the way only powerful people could wield it.
“I didn’t ask for your number,” he said, voice low. “Because I didn’t want to do this wrong.”
She blinked. “What’s the right way, exactly?”
His lips quirked—barely. “Not sure. But I knew if I asked for your number in that gallery, I’d make a mess of it. I needed space. And I needed you to come because you wanted to, not because I was convenient.”
Ava tilted her head. “You always this dramatic?”
“Only when it matters.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “So what now?”
Julian leaned forward slightly, his hands steepled. “Now we talk. I want to know who painted Solace. Not just your name. The rest.”
She studied him for a long beat. Then, slowly, she let herself lean back into the cushions.
“Alright, Julian Blackwell. You want to know me?”
“I do.”
“Then pour us something to drink. I’m better at talking when my mouth isn’t dry.”
This time, he smiled. Fully.
And just like that, the tension between them cracked, not shattered, but split—just enough for something real to start pushing through.
Julian stood, crossed the room with unhurried grace, and poured two glasses of something amber and smooth. Whiskey. He handed her one without asking if she wanted it, but somehow, she didn’t mind. It felt like a gesture rooted in confidence, not control.
She took a sip. It burned just enough to make her feel present.
He sat across from her, elbows resting on his knees. “So,” he said, voice even. “Why paint something like Solace?”
She met his gaze. “Because grief doesn’t just show up after loss. Sometimes it walks with you every day, even when no one’s died.”
Julian didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. He nodded once. “That’s honest.”
Ava shrugged. “It’s the only way I know how to be. Honest... messy... stubborn. It all bleeds through.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the city glowing behind them, endless and indifferent.
“You said you needed space,” she said, swirling the drink in her glass. “Why me, then? Why now?”
Julian leaned back, watching her the way people watch a storm roll in—curious, cautious, captivated. “Because something about you feels unfinished. And I think we’re both tired of pretending we don’t notice the cracks.”
Ava laughed softly. “I’m not a project, Julian.”
“I know,” he said. “But maybe I am.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but the way he said it made her chest ache a little. She looked away, out the window, where the buildings reached for the sky like they were trying to escape something too.
She finished the whiskey, stood slowly.
“Thanks for the drink,” she said.
He rose too. “Will you come back?”
Ava looked at him—really looked—and for the first time, she didn’t feel like she was chasing something. She felt like maybe… she was being seen.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
Then she left.
Because even when the pull is strong, sometimes you have to leave space for gravity to do its work.
- Writer
