Chapter 8
1133 Words
Chapter Eight: The Versions We Bury
The first lie she told herself was that it would get easier.
The second was that she still had control.
Lena sat alone in the library, a sketchpad open in her lap. It wasn’t hers—Nikolai had left it for her, silently, next to her breakfast. Just the pad, a single pencil, and a note in his clean, unhurried handwriting:
“Draw what you think I see.”
She hadn’t touched it for hours.
Because she didn’t know the answer.
Because she didn’t want to know.
Outside, the Tuscan sun poured across the cliffs like honey. The air smelled of old stone and blooming lavender. The villa was quiet—too quiet.
Nikolai had left that morning without explanation.
His absence unsettled her more than his presence ever did.
Not because she missed him.
But because she’d grown used to the constant pressure of being watched.
And now, without it, she wasn’t sure who she was anymore.
**
She finally picked up the pencil.
At first, the lines came soft. Unsure. She sketched an eye. A curve of a cheekbone. A mouth that wasn’t smiling.
She didn’t draw herself the way she looked in magazines.
She drew herself the way she felt in Nikolai’s studio.
Naked. Not just physically.
But stripped of narrative.
She didn’t finish the sketch.
She tore it out, folded it once, and slipped it into the pages of a book she knew he’d read.
Let him find it.
Let him see her version.
The incomplete one.
The honest one.
**
He returned just after sunset.
No announcement. No words. Just the soft sound of the door unlocking and the deliberate echo of his steps across the stone floor.
She was waiting.
Not because he’d asked her to.
Because she wanted to be.
Nikolai paused when he saw her in the foyer. He looked tired—but not uncomposed. He never looked uncomposed. Just slightly… cracked at the edges.
“Where did you go?” she asked quietly.
“To disappear for a while.”
“Without telling me?”
A long pause.
“I didn’t think you needed me to.”
Lena stepped closer. “I didn’t need you to. But I wanted you to.”
That made him pause.
And something in his expression shifted.
“Why?” he asked.
She lifted her chin. “Because if I’m being honest with you, you don’t get to hide from me.”
His jaw tightened. “I wasn’t hiding.”
“You always are,” she said, stepping forward again. “You hide behind the way you see me. Behind devotion. Obsession. Art. But you? You stay untouched.”
He didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
So she pressed her hand against his chest. Right over his heart.
“I let you in,” she whispered. “Now it’s your turn.”
His breath caught.
And she knew she’d struck the truth.
**
Later, he brought her to the basement.
Not the gallery.
Not the locked room.
Deeper.
Past a door she’d assumed led to utilities or wine.
He typed in a new code.
The lock clicked.
The space beyond was… nothing like the rest of the villa.
It was unfinished.
Raw concrete, no windows, dim lighting. Cold. Empty.
Except for the canvas.
Only one.
Large. Unframed. Covered in a cloth.
Lena stared.
“What is this?”
Nikolai walked past her, fingers trailing the edge of the covered painting.
“This,” he said softly, “is the first one I ever painted of you.”
Her stomach twisted. “I thought you said the ones in the gallery—”
“Those came later. This one… I started before I even knew your name.”
She didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
“I saw you in a campaign ad for a perfume launch,” he said, voice low. “It wasn’t even the main image—just a behind-the-scenes shot someone leaked online. You were standing in the rain, furious. Makeup smeared. Your eyes were wild. Alive.”
“You saw something no one else did,” she murmured.
“I saw the real you.”
“And you painted it.”
“Yes.”
She stepped forward. “Show me.”
He hesitated.
Just a second.
Then pulled the cloth off.
Lena sucked in a breath.
It was… violent.
Not physically. Not in the subject.
But in emotion.
The image was raw, chaotic. Her hair wild. Her mouth open like she was mid-scream. Hands clenched into fists. No glamour. No grace. Just rage and desperation and defiance.
She didn’t look beautiful.
She looked terrifying.
Alive.
Real.
“I didn’t even know who you were,” Nikolai said. “But I knew I had to find you. That was the beginning.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes away. “You fell in love with a version of me I didn’t know existed.”
“I didn’t fall in love,” he corrected. “Not then.”
“When, then?”
He looked at her.
“Now,” he said.
The word dropped like a stone into still water.
Now.
Present tense.
Lena turned to him, pulse thundering.
“You love me.”
“Yes.”
“You told me you didn’t believe in love.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what changed?”
“You did.”
She stared at him.
And for the first time in their entire strange, tangled story—
She saw it.
Not the obsession.
Not the control.
But the man beneath it all.
The boy, maybe, who had once wanted to capture beauty so badly he forgot to live inside it.
The one who had painted her not to possess her…
But to understand her.
And now that he finally did—
He didn’t know what to do with it.
**
They didn’t touch that night.
Didn’t kiss.
Didn’t even speak much.
But Lena curled into him in bed, and his arms wrapped around her like armor. Like prayer. And for once, he didn’t try to possess her with his hands.
He just held her.
And she let him.
Because power didn’t always look like control.
Sometimes, it looked like stillness.
Like trust.
Like letting yourself be held by the man who once worshipped you from a distance—
And now couldn’t survive the idea of losing you up close.
**
The next morning, the sketchpad she’d left was missing.
But a new drawing appeared by her breakfast plate.
It was her again.
But different.
Smiling.
Eyes closed.
Hair tangled.
Completely at peace.
And for the first time, Lena realized—
He wasn’t just painting the woman he wanted her to be.
He was painting the woman she was becoming.
And she was starting to believe in her.
Too.
- Writer
