take her in my arms and breathe her in. Her bones are so delicate, almost as if she could take flight. Her breath hitches. “Is he… is he coming here now?”
“Someone will be here by sunset.” The morning sun is already bleeding out. It’s not even noon, but the day is running away from us. “Someone always comes by sunset. I don’t want to be here a minute longer than necessary.”
“Then let’s go.” Madison brightens, a weight lifting off her shoulders. “Let’s... let’s rent a car and escape. We can use my name. Nobody will ever know where you went, unless you want them to.” She whirls around and puts her hand on the doorknob.
“Madison.”
She turns toward me, hope and fear battling in her blue eyes. “Yes?”
“Be sure.”
A deep breath. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. Please, Erich. Let’s go.”
She opens the door. It’s that easy—just opens it and walks out. There’s nothing keeping us here. None of Zeus’s men wait in the hall, or on the stairs, or down below on the sidewalk. The morning is still fresh as it bends toward noon. Madison takes a hard left and starts walking, fast, and I match pace with her. It’s not hard. She’s short, and I’m tall. I hide her from the windows as we go by, my heart beating fast. This is flight. This is freedom. No more watching that whorehouse. No more envelopes. No more commissions.
Only Madison.
“Is this what you want?” Her voice rings clearly over the breeze, and her eyes catch mine. I could spend hours painting the variations in that color. “You want me?”
“I love you,” I tell her. It’s stupid to say out loud, reckless. Irresponsible. And true. My entire being thrums with it. “It’s not right.”
She fists the front of my shirt and uses her momentum to push me into the wall, into the brick between two windowed storefronts. And kisses me hard. Harder. So hard she draws blood.
I don’t mind.
“It’s right.” She shakes the front of my shirt. “It’s right.”
I put an arm around her waist then, drawing her back into flight. “I love you.” It tastes so good to say it.
“I love you,” she says, the wind picking up her words and brushing them across my ear. A giggle. “It’s not right. But I want you.”
“I’m all you’ve got now.”
“More than enough,” Madison says, and then we turn a corner and disappear.
Epilogue
Madison
A storm sweeps over the city that night, and Erich stretches out next to me on the bed in the hotel room we’ve rented. It turns out that getting a car was all we could handle before we needed to find our way to a bed. We’ll get started tomorrow morning. Into what life, I don’t know. All I know is that I want all those dark, hidden parts of him.
I want the light ones too. I want the man behind the canvas and the one in front of it. The one who pushes his dark hair out of his eyes and the one who watches me like I’m a ripe apple. The one who paints.
His face is finally relaxed.
My whole body is relaxed. Tired and spent.
He’s reading a paperback from the gas station, of all places, the spine cracked open, and I’m going through his photo album. At the back is a packet of loose photos. The first one is of a man who isn’t looking at the camera. He’s very tall, and even from this angle, I can see the pain etched in his face. It’s an interesting study. I’d like to paint it. He’s trying to hide it; I can tell. Dark clothes. Hands in his pockets. It chills me.
“You have a lot of pictures,” I tell Erich.
“Hmm,” he says.
I flip to the next one. It’s a woman with curls spilling over her back. Her face is tilted toward the sun, but something about her makes my heart stop. A performance. It has to be a performance. Doesn’t it? My mouth dries out. What is it that makes me feel like my core is frozen? What is it?
The next photo.
The same woman.
This time, my heart stops.
She’s in the same setting as before. Surrounded by flowers and green. Life bursting into bloom all around her. But in this one, she’s looking straight at the camera.
And her eyes….
Her eyes.
They’re gray.
No—silver.
Silver, just like Erich’s.
“Who is this?” I whisper.
He tosses the paperback over the side of the bed, and it lands on the carpet with a muffled thud. Erich plucks the