Chapter 7: Writing Desire
612 Words
Aria didn’t come out for hours.
Not until she was sure he was asleep again, or at least pretending to be.
When she finally stepped into the living room, the fire had died low. The cabin smelled like pine, sweat, and unsaid things. Rowan lay motionless on the couch, chest rising in slow, steady breaths. She watched from the threshold, her arms folded tight across her chest like a shield.
A monster.
That’s what she’d called him. She didn’t regret it.
She just hated that a small, shameful part of her wanted to take it back.
She needed space__ a distraction, anything. Her fingers twitched with the urge to write, but the notebook she brought had long since been stuffed under the bed, next to her grief and guilt.
Instead, she wandered.
Room to room. Not touching anything, just floating.
Until she reached the closet.
The one she hadn’t opened since arriving.
She wasn’t snooping, not really. Just… curious. Maybe she was looking for another blanket. Or maybe she was punishing herself.
But what she found wasn’t fabric.
It was paper.
Stacks of thick sketch paper, stuffed into a weathered portfolio shoved behind a box of expired hot chocolate mix. Aria hesitated, fingers brushing the edge.
Don’t.
She opened it anyway.
The first sketch was of a woman curled in bed, asleep on her side. Her hair spilled across the pillow like black silk. Her bare back was exposed to the light, the curve of her spine captured with aching precision.
It was her.
She knew it instantly.
She flipped the page. And the next. And the next.
Each drawing grew bolder, more intimate. Her sitting at the edge of the bathtub, knees drawn to her chest. Her face mid-laugh, eyes crinkled, head thrown back. Her in nothing but lace underwear, staring out a window, unaware of being watched.
Except… he had watched.
These weren’t vague, idealized women.
These were real. She was real.
Sketched in a hundred ways, sometimes dreamy, sometimes aching. Sometimes wild-eyed and messy like he’d caught her mid-fantasy. One sketch, the last one, showed her sprawled on a couch, body arched, eyes glazed. It looked like she was—
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Heat crawled up her neck.
He’d drawn her nude. Fully nude.
Every detail memorized. Revered. Worshipped.
Her first instinct was rage. Violation.
But that wasn’t what she felt.
Not really.
Her fingers trembled as she traced the curve of her own thigh in the drawing. The way he’d shaded her lips. The way her expression was soft, undone.
She looked like she belonged to someone. Like she wanted to.
Aria backed away slowly and collapsed into the nearest chair, heart hammering against her ribs like a drum she couldn’t silence.
She was supposed to feel disgusted. Offended.
But all she felt was a deep, unsettling pull in her gut.
Because the truth was, she’d thought about him too.
More than she should have.
She’d watched the way his back muscles flexed when he split wood. She’d memorized the veins in his forearms. She’d imagined, for too many nights now, what it would feel like to be pinned beneath that body.
Now she had proof.
He wanted her too.
She hated him.
But her body didn’t.
Aria wiped her hands on her thighs and stood. Walked straight to her room. She dug out her notebook, the one with her old poetry, and cracked it open to a fresh page.
And then, with her breath shallow and her pulse unsteady, she began to write.
Not about James.
Not about grief.
But about Rowan.
About the monster she feared.
And the man her body craved.
- Writer
