The night's perfume had followed Lila home and crawled into the curtains.
Sleep came in stuttering reels; when it finally released her, the city at her window was pale and undecided, the kind of gray that makes even certainty look like a rumor.
She primed a small canvas because motion steadied her. Gesso lifted under the brush in chalky waves. The heater coughed, remembered its job, and gave her a strip of warm air across the shins.
She wanted silence that felt like rest; she got silence that felt like a held breath.
The buzzer rasped.
She froze. No deliveries. No model. No reason.
"Yes?" she said into the intercom.
A voice she knew far too well smiled through the static. "It's Ryan."
She stared at the speaker as if it might offer a different answer. "Why?"
"Relax," he said. "I brought breakfast."
Ignoring him had never made him vanish. She pressed the door release, hating herself for the reflex and for the tiny hitch of curiosity behind it.
His steps came up the stairs patient and practiced. Then he filled her doorway in a navy coat that pretended at modesty and a grin that had gotten him too many favors.
In one hand, a white paper bag; in the other, two coffees with plastic lids.
His glance slid around the room—the heater, the stacked canvases, the chalkboard wall—cataloguing, as if he were making sure all her vulnerabilities were where he'd left them.
"Congratulations," he said, walking in without waiting. "You set the building on fire."
"My building," she said, taking one coffee from his hand because otherwise he'd put it somewhere paint would claim it. "What do you want, Ryan?"
"To see how you are." He set the bag on her worktable and pulled out two croissants, a little dented but still golden. "And to talk like civilized people. Not in front of wolves."
"We talked last night," she said. "You said storms burn out."
He smiled and took a bite, flakes escaping like confetti. "They do. Doesn't mean they're not spectacular first."
He leaned back against the table as if it had been built to hold him. "You kept the chalkboard wall," he said. "Good. You think better standing."
She didn't ask how he remembered. Two years ago, before the coffee meeting that taught her the shape of his help, he had stood right where he was now and watched her draw a composition map in soapstone, correcting nothing, asking everything, the kind of attention that makes a person taller.
She had liked the version of herself his gaze invented. That was the danger.
"What do you want," she asked again.
He held up his hands as if the room were a witness. "To help."
"Help looks like control when it comes from you."
"From me it looks like protection," he said, rinsing the word and setting it down carefully. "Last night you walked onto a field that isn't about art. It's appetite. It's algorithms. Your name is delicious right now."
"My name?" She laughed, and it sounded like someone else's certainty. "I saw the captions."
"The ones I warned you about." His eyes softened just enough to feel like concern. "Sit with me, Lila. Please."
Politeness was the trap she most reliably set for herself. She sat on the stool because arguing with furniture would waste the sharp part of the morning.
He sipped his coffee, then folded his hands like a negotiator who wants the room to love the word reasonable. "You know I have reach," he said. "Collectors who listen when I say a voice is worth hearing. Agents who value my screeners. I can clean this up."
"By doing what?" she said. "Announcing I'm not a rumor? Or offering them a better one?"
"By giving them a narrative they can spend," he said, owning it. "Preferably one with fewer knives."
"And the price?" Her voice was steady. She was proud of that.
"Terms," he corrected. He slid a slim manila envelope from his coat and placed it on the table, angled so the flap faced her. "Trial representation. Six months. No exclusivity. Ten percent only on sales tied to my introductions. I broker a quiet show to buyers who sign checks, not selfies. No press. No Moretti."
The last two words landed between them like a stone—rings, silence, implications.
She didn't touch the envelope. "No Moretti?"
"You're an artist, not a headline." He leaned forward, low and coaxing. "Men like him don't mind if you burn. In fact, they prefer it. It's brighter."
"And you don't?" she asked. "You warned me last night out of the goodness of your heart?"
He looked at her long enough that honesty had time to show up. "Out of wanting to be right," he said finally. "And because when I called you promising, you made me want to be more careful with that word."
The memory stepped forward uninvited: a café table, winter light, the heat of his hands, the way he talked about paint like it had a pulse, the offer wrapped in mentorship, the lock under the ribbon.
She had practiced all night to say the sentence that refused him: I want help that doesn't cost my hands.
The next morning, he had stopped introducing her to collectors and started introducing her to character.
"Let's be honest," she said. "You didn't come to protect me. You came because he noticed me first."
"Correction," Ryan said, smiling as if corrections were gifts. "He noticed you loudest."
"That's not different."
He considered that and left it where it lay.
She stood and went to the window because the room had too much of him in it.
Outside, the block rehearsed ordinary: a dog negotiating a puddle; a florist shoving a bucket of hydrangea into the sun; an old man in a flannel coat arguing with the weather through a cigarette.
Ordinariness looked like mercy. She wanted it in her lungs.
Behind her, paper whispered. He had unsealed the envelope and set a single glossy page where she'd have to choose to ignore it.
Bullet points. A signature line. A neat space where her name might go to live with the right fonts.
"I'm not asking you to be mine," he said, gentle and devious. "I'm asking you to refuse being his."
"Interesting," she said, "how those sound the same."
His grin thinned, then returned with professional charm. "You're better when you're angry."
"I'm better when I'm painting."
"Then let me arrange the world so you can." He tapped the sheet. "Dinner with a private buyer. A discreet two-page spread in ArtForm. Four red dots by month's end. No hashtags. No trend noise. Just oxygen."
She let herself imagine it for a flicker: bills paid without arithmetic, paint chosen without apology, the studio warm because heat was no longer a decision.
Calm is a hard drug to refuse when you've been hungry.
"And in return?" she asked.
"In return," he said softly, "you don't take calls from a man who collects images of women standing near him."
"That's not a term," she said. "That's jealousy."
"It's math," he said. "You cannot serve two appetites."
"You mean yours and his."
He offered a little bow. "I mean the market's and the myth's. I play the market. He plays the myth. The myth will eat you if you stand still long enough."
"You fed the myth," she said, the realization arriving as she spoke it. "You pushed the rumor."
His eyes flinched, then smoothed. "I… accelerated inevitabilities. Better a controlled burn than a wildfire."
"You lit a match beside my name so you could run in with a bucket," she said.
"To prove you needed a shepherd," he said. He didn't blink when he said it. "And yes—I wanted to be the one who put the fire out."
"Get out."
He lifted his hands, palms soft with surrender. "Be furious. You're allowed. I'll still answer when the line goes quiet and the bills don't."
She walked to the door and opened it.
He folded the page, slid it back into the envelope, and for a foolish second she thought he might leave the croissants—the way a thief sometimes sets down a coin as apology.
He didn't.
He tucked the envelope away, then paused on the threshold like a man about to say something human.
"Men like him don't ask where your line is," he said. "They redraw it when you're tired."
"Then I won't be tired."
He gave a small, admiring huff. "Everyone is, in the end."
When he was gone, the studio's quiet returned with edges.
She washed her hands until the water ran cold, as if the conversation were a pigment she could scrub off.
The heater rallied. Her breath found a steadier shape.
On the chalkboard wall, beneath the old question—what does restraint cost?—she wrote a new one: what does protection demand?
Her phone buzzed.
From: Arts & CitySubject: Feature Inquiry — L. PrescottWe'd love to run your work (not a profile): 3–4 images, short captions on process. No gossip, no quotes needed. If you approve, we can publish tomorrow.
She exhaled a laugh that wasn't joy so much as relief's cousin.
She typed Yes—art only. Captions attached. Then she photographed three pieces with her own hand, making sure no man was in the frame, even as a rumor insisted otherwise.
The buzzer rasped again.
A second assault? She pressed the intercom carefully. "Yes?"
"It's Faye," came the thinned stairwell voice. "I won't hover. May I?"
Lila let her in.
Faye stepped inside unarmored: flats, a sweater, a face that admitted fatigue and refused to be defined by it.
Her gaze traveled the room and softened when it landed on the primed canvas. "Looks like work," she said.
"It is," Lila answered.
Faye held up her phone. "I assume Ryan came by."
"He brought breakfast," Lila said. "And a leash named 'trial representation.'"
Faye's mouth tilted. "He always did like velvet rope." She set her phone on the table, screen dark. "I came to say two things. One: I'm proud of how you stood your ground last night. Two: standing costs energy. Spend it where it purchases time, not just heat."
"Translation?"
"Pick your battles," Faye said. "And let me do some of the fighting you think you have to do alone."
The words landed where tenderness lands and immediately threaten to undo a person.
Lila nodded because anything else would let out more than a yes.
Faye reached for one of the mangled croissants and tore it in half without ceremony. "I know what he offered. I also know what he's already taken. If you ever want me to broker a buyer dinner without Ryan, I can. Quiet room, honest collector, no photos."
"Thank you," Lila said. "Not yet."
Faye dusted crumbs from her hands. "Understood."
They stood a moment in good silence. Then Faye's phone chimed—the kind of tone a person assigns to emails that change schedules.
She checked it, lifted a brow, and turned the screen around.
From: Office of the Moretti Arts FoundationSubject: Courtesy Invitation — After-Hours ToastMs. Prescott,If you wish to avoid mid-day attention, Mr. Moretti suggests a five-minute toast in the Moreland side salon after closing tonight.Private room. Two witnesses present (Ms. Moreland + Program Director).No press. Champagne will be served.If you prefer, reply DECLINE, and we will not follow up.Respectfully,M. Vass
"Champagne," Faye said dryly. "He's very good at clocks that sparkle."
Lila didn't answer. The invitation carried two things that rarely travel together: strategy and courtesy.
Five minutes. Witnesses. No press. The shape of restraint. The taste of pressure.
"I should say no," she murmured.
"You should say what you can live with," Faye replied. "If it helps: I'll be in the room. So will Mila. Five means five."
"And if he tries to redraw the line?"
"Then I'll lay a ruler across his knuckles," Faye said, the ghost of a smile. "Figuratively. Mostly."
Lila stared at the email until the words lost their edges.
Across the table, the manila envelope in Ryan's pocket seemed to have a shadow even when he was gone.
Two roads, both paved in someone else's certainty.
She wanted neither map. She wanted a door she could open and close herself.
"Let me work," she said finally. "I'll decide by evening."
Faye nodded, touching her shoulder once, light as punctuation. "Decide in a way that lets you paint tomorrow."
When she left, the studio remembered how to be a room.
Lila tied her hair, shoved up her sleeves, and mixed gray until it looked like weather.
The first stroke bristled loud against gesso; the second softened the line; the third whispered something she believed in.
The city moved outside her window with its indifferent grace.
Her phone lay face down, as if modesty might keep it from ringing.
She painted until the heater sighed, until her shoulders lowered, until her breath forgot strange rhythms and remembered work.
At 5:31 p.m., the screen lit the desk like a small stage. A new email slid into focus without a chime, as if the device were colluding.
From: Aurelia ReservationsSubject: Courtesy Hold — L. PrescottPer MAF request: Table 12 is on hold under your name, 6:05–6:10 PM, tonight only.No photographers will be admitted to the dining room during this time.If you Decline, reply with CANCEL.With respect,Aurelia Host Desk
Six-oh-five. Five minutes. Champagne & secrets in a room designed to keep them.
Lila looked at the clock. Then at the canvas. Then at the word CANCEL on her screen, blinking like a bet.
She didn't type it.
She reached for a rag, wiped gray from the webbing of her fingers, and picked up her coat.