CLARA
The paint smeared beneath my fingertips, leaving dark streaks across the page. My sketchbook lay open on the long oak table by the window, pages filled with trees, wolves and fragments of faces I dared not admit I was drawing. The forest had become my obsession, and so had he–whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not.
The exhibition was only weeks away, yet every line I drew betrayed me. Each canvas breathed with the shape of Silver Pines, each stroke carried the shadow of Rhys.
I exhaled sharply and set the paintbrush down. My hands trembled, not from exhaustion but from the silence that pressed against the walls of Rhys’ room. He had been gone since dawn. Again. He left with no word and no explanation. Only the faint scent of pine and smoke lingering in the sheets.
He was hi
