Page 28 of Heat Unwritten
It was his bag. The battered leather messenger bag he had been clutching like a shield. He must have left it behind in his scramble to escape my lamp-swinging wrath.
I knew I shouldn't touch it. I knew it was an invasion of privacy, a petty retaliation, but I found myself kneeling down next to it anyway.
The leather smelled like him, burnt sugar, graphite, and stale coffee. It was a scent that made my stomach clench with a phantom memory of long, calloused fingers.
I flipped the flap open.
Inside, nestled between loose pencils and erasers, was a heavy, black, hardbound sketchbook. The spine was cracked and worn, clearly well-loved.
I pulled it out. It fell open naturally to the middle; the binding giving way to the page he had spent the most time on.
I stopped breathing.
It was a drawing. Charcoal and ink.
It was me.
But it wasn't the "Graduation Girl." It wasn't the meme of the girl in the wet dress crying on stage.
It was a woman on her knees, head thrown back in ecstasy, her hair a wild halo around her face. Her hands were gripping the arms of a chair, her back arched in a perfect curve of surrender. The shading was exquisite, loving, worshipping the lines of her throat, the curve of her hip.
She looked powerful. She looked consumed. She looked beautiful.
I turned the page.
Another one. Me, sitting in a window seat, looking out at a storm, a pen in my mouth.
Another. Me, sleeping, wrapped in blankets that looked soft enough to touch.
And then, the last few pages. Sketches that were clearly from last night. Frantic, jagged lines capturing the chaos of the kitchen floor. But even there, in the depictions of my breakdown, the perspective wasn't mocking.
He hadn't drawn a victim. He had drawn a storm.
I traced the line of my own face on the paper; the charcoal smudging slightly under my fingertip.
"He saw me, really saw me," I whispered to the empty room.
And for the first time in ten years, the idea of being watched didn't make me want to hide. It made the heat in my belly flair, hot and sharp and demanding.
I looked at the locked door. I could hear Daniel’s slow, deep breathing on the other side.
Unless you beg.
I gripped the sketchbook tight, my nails digging into the leather cover.
"I won't beg," I hissed.
But as I looked at the drawing of myself unraveling in ecstasy, I knew it was a lie.
The deadbolt feltcold under my palm, a solid, unyielding knot of brass that separated me from the rest of the house. Fromthem.
I pressed my forehead against the painted wood of the door, listening.
On the other side, the silence was heavy, vibrating with the presence of three large men. I could hear the faint, rough scrape of fabric against the wall; Daniel was shifting his weight wherehe sat guarding the hallway. He wasn't leaving. He had promised to stay on the other side of the threshold, but his presence leaked through the cracks like smoke.
Unless you beg.
The words were a rusted hook in my chest, pulling at something deep and wet and terrified.
