Dawn lightens the sky outside the window, casting new light across my violent canvas. The ghost shifts with it, changing perspective with each passing hour. Like me, it refuses to be pinned down to a single truth.
I set the phone screen-down on my workbench, forcing myself to stop checking for a response that isn’t coming. Ezra is waiting for me to stop looking backward at my grandfather’s legacy, at the forgeries that built my reputation, at the ghosts that haunt both canvas and conscience.
He’s waiting for me to see what lies ahead.
The antique pocket watch feels heavy in my palm, its gold case worn from being tucked against Tobias Crane’s chest for years.
I run my thumb across the engraved initials, not mine or even Tobias’s. It belonged to someone who sold it at an estate sale without knowing its value. The timepiece ticks, marking seconds in a life I’ve borrowed rather than lived.
I drop it into the trash bin, the metallic clunk satisfying in its finality.
Next, I pull Lorenzo’s Italian silk scarf from the drawer. The fabric slithers between my fingers, cool and slick as water. I drape it around my neck above Ezra’s collar, the way Lorenzo wore it at gallery openings across Europe. But it sits wrong, the silk catching on my stubble. I’ve always hated the way scarves constrict, the constant adjusting, the performance of it.
With a decisive yank, I pull it off and toss it onto the growing pile of discarded lies.
“Who wears scarves indoors, anyway?” I mutter to the empty loft, my voice rough from disuse.
My fingers find Elias Knox’s tortoiseshell glasses, the lenses clear glass rather than prescription. I slip them on, watching the world sharpen into the crisp lines Knox preferred, everything categorized, analyzed, and distanced by academia. The weight on my nose annoys me now, the frames pinching my temples.
These, too, join the discard pile.
Item by item, I dissect the men I’ve pretended to be. Knox’s leather-bound journals filled with observations on art forgery techniques I’ve known since childhood. Lorenzo’s gaudy rings that draw attention to hands I prefer to keep anonymous. NicoDuran’s unassuming black server uniform, perfect for fading into backgrounds while scouting security systems.
With each discarded piece, I search for what remains, for what belongs to Ren rather than his creations. The answers emerge slowly, like photographs developing in chemical solutions.
Small truths, scattered pieces of a man I barely recognize.
The pile grows, taking up too much space in my workspace. My focus drifts to the violent canvas from earlier, the ghost trapped in its center, a blur of negative space and color, and frustration builds in my chest.
This painting isn’t me, either. It’s rage splashed across canvas, reaction rather than creation.
I push it off the easel, then step on it, the thick paint still wet in places beneath my heels and leaving colorful footprints on the floorboards. I cross to my bed, dropping to my knees to reach beneath the frame. There, wrapped in acid-free paper and tucked away where I wouldn’t have to see it, lies a drawing I never finished.
The charcoal feels right in my hands as I unwrap it, the paper soft and familiar beneath my fingertips. Ezra’s face emerges from careful strokes, younger, softer than he is now, caught in sleep, in dreaming.
I thought I was capturing the real Ezra then, the boy beneath the collector’s confidence. But I was wrong. His softness was the mask he wore to make me believe I held some power in our dance.
The fresh sheet of paper crackles as I unfold it on my drawing board, and my fingers itch with purpose.
I open my charcoal set, selecting pieces with care. The soft vine charcoal for broad strokes. The harder compressed charcoal for definition. Blending stumps for the shadows that live beneath his cheekbones.
The first strokes are confident, mapping the architecture of a face I know better than my own. I’ve drawn him hundreds of times, as Knox studying a subject, as Ren memorizing a lover. But this time, I draw him as he is, the hunter I didn’t recognize until it was too late.
I harden the line of his jaw and sharpen his eyes, capturing the predatory assessment always lurking there. The distinctive silver in his hair becomes less a mark of an accident and more a badge of survival. His mouth curves in the slight, knowing smile he wore in the gallery bathroom when he said,“You’re finally starting to understand.”
My fingers smudge charcoal across the paper, building depth from shadow, creating dimension from flat space. This isn’t the boy I thought I knew. This is the Ezra Rockford who never stopped hunting me.
Coffee cups accumulate around me as the day slips away into night again, the bitter scent replacing the Earl Grey Tobias preferred. Each sip clarifies another truth. I’ve never actually liked tea, its subtle flavors lost on a palate that craves stronger stimulation.
The realization seems small, but it sits heavy in my chest. How many other preferences have I adopted for the sake of a persona? How many of my own desires have I buried beneath my disguises?
The charcoal breaks on the paper, and I use the jagged edge to build texture in Ezra’s hair and the shadow of his throat. There’s violence in my strokes now, not born of anger but of recognition of the dangerous man I crave in my bones.
Dawn breaks as I place the final strokes, the rising sun casting warm light across the finished portrait. Ezra stares back at me from the paper, neither demon nor angel.
My perfect Alpha.
Who else could have captured me so completely? Forced me to stop running, to tear open my heart and scrounge around in its bloody depths for anything worthy to offer him?
