Anna's second regression, Alpha regrets it

Chapter 17 — The Painting That Spoke

Mateo’s studio had become a place I visited when I wanted to feel the world in color. The air there always smelled like turpentine and possibility; canvases leaned against walls like people waiting to be introduced. He’d been working on a series about absence and return, and the newest piece dominated the room: a woman’s profile rendered in strokes that were both violent and tender, the colors bleeding into one another like memory.

“It kept asking for you,” he said when I walked in, voice low. He handed me a cup of coffee and watched me as if I were a subject he’d been studying.

I stood before the painting and felt something like recognition. The face wasn’t mine, not exactly, but the tilt of the head, the way the light hit the cheekbone—there was a truth in it that made my throat tighten. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It’s honest,” he corrected. “I painted what it felt like to lose you and then find you again. To realize that absence is not a blank but a shape.”

We talked about art and fear and the ways leaving had hollowed him out. He told me about nights he’d spent painting until dawn, trying to understand why he’d run. He didn’t ask for forgiveness. He asked for the chance to be present, to be less afraid.

When he kissed me, it was with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with wanting to be seen. The kiss was messy and tender, a confession in motion. We moved through the studio like two people learning a new choreography—hands tracing, laughter in the dark, the kind of intimacy that feels like discovery.

Later, as we lay on a blanket among canvases, he asked me a question that surprised me. “If you could paint one thing about us, what would it be?”

I thought of the list I kept in my notebook—curiosity, boundaries, honesty—and answered without hesitation. “The moment we choose each other again and again. Not the fireworks, but the small rituals: coffee, notes, the way we show up.”

He smiled and reached for a sketchbook. He drew a small study: two figures on a balcony, coffee cups in hand, the city a soft blur below. He handed it to me like a benediction. “Keep asking the right questions,” he said.

The painting in the studio felt like a mirror. It showed me not only what had been lost but what could be reclaimed. It reminded me that art, like love, is a practice—an act of showing up, of being honest, of making something out of absence.

That night, I walked home with paint on my fingers and a new kind of hunger in my chest. It wasn’t the frantic need to be chosen; it was the appetite for a life that included color and courage. I felt giddy in a way that had nothing to do with being pursued and everything to do with being the author of my own desire.