The next morning, Lena woke with the taste of restless dreams still on her tongue. She had dreamt of paintings, not hers, not even Damien’s exactly but strange, incomplete shapes bleeding into one another, shadows that felt warm when they brushed against her skin.
It was ridiculous. She didn’t even know the man. Yet somehow, after a single night of reading about him, it was as though he had crawled into her head and rearranged the furniture.
The kettle whistled sharply in her tiny kitchen. She poured the hot water over instant coffee and sat at the wobbly table, laptop open in front of her again. Damien’s paintings glowed from the screen like they had been waiting for her.
It wasn’t just the nudity. That much she could admit now.
It was the way the subjects looked like they had been se
