Chapter 14: Fractures on the Surface

The studio smelled of turpentine and skin—oil paint mingling with the sterile tang of antiseptic from Elena's tattoo station. Late afternoon light filtered through grimy windows, turning dust motes into drifting gold as Lucas lingered near the doorway, his shadow stretching like a silent accusation across Elena's unfinished canvas. She didn't glance up, but her charcoal pencil pressed harder against the paper, carving a dark, jagged scar where a rose's thorn should have bloomed.

"You're blocking my light," she said flatly, voice brittle as cracked glass.

Lucas stepped aside, but not closer. Always orbiting, never landing.

"We need to talk."

"We did talk. Last night." Her thumb dragged across the charcoal

thorn, smearing it into a blurred wound. "You said you'd try."

"I am trying." His hand rose toward her shoulder but faltered midair, caught in the invisible web between them. "But you're not telling me what's wrong."

Elena laughed—a sharp, brittle sound that fractured the silence. "You're really asking that? After your disappearing act this morning?"

His eyes flicked to the coffee cup he'd left overturned on her dresser—a dark Rorschach stain neither could decipher.

She pushed to her feet abruptly, knocking the sketchbook to the floor. Pages fanned out like scattered memories: studies of Lucas's hands, the tattoos winding over his ribs, the scar above his eyebrow she'd never dared ask about. "You want to know what's wrong? I'm terrified I'll become your collateral damage." Her voice cracked, raw and unguarded. "That I'll pour myself into you just to watch you pour yourself out."

Lucas closed the distance in three strides, catching her wrist—not to hold her back, but to anchor himself. His thumb found her pulse, steady but racing. "I stayed away because I…" The labyrinth on his forearm seemed to writhe beneath the sheen of sweat. "I woke up and realized I didn't know your coffee order. That you hate lilies because they remind you of funerals. That I've been so consumed by my own ghosts, I forgot to learn your language."

The studio door slammed open, Maya's Doc Martens crunching shards of glass from a shattered pigment jar neither had noticed. "Christ, you two." She tossed a pharmacy bag at Elena. "Your dad's meds. Delivery guy said you weren't answering calls."

Elena's face drained of color. Lucas's grip on her wrist tightened—not possessively, but like a lifeline.

Maya's gaze flicked between them. "Oh hell. You didn't tell him."

The unspoken truth swelled between them like a bruise.

Lucas's mind flashed to Daniel's medication bottles lined up like soldiers on their bathroom sink—the sterile smell of antiseptic wipes and hopelessness. "Tell me what?"

Elena yanked her hand free, pressing her palm against the cold brick wall. Her nail split against the mortar. "My father's dying. Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Just… crumbling, piece by piece." Her voice was a fragile whisper. "And some days I think loving you will feel exactly like that."

Lucas did something he'd never done before—he knelt. Not in pity, but to gather her fallen sketches. His fingers lingered on one: a self-portrait of Elena, half her face erased by charcoal smudges, raw and incomplete.

"Here." He pressed the drawing into her hands, then placed her palm against his chest. "You want my language? It's this. The heartbeat. The breath. The fucking terror that you'll walk away because I'm still learning how to stay."

Outside, a street musician's violin soared through the open window—a mournful rendition of La Vie en Rose. The same song Daniel used to hum while making coffee. Lucas didn't flinch. He let the melody wash over them, bitter and sweet.

Elena's fingers curled into his shirt. "You'll come with me? To see him?"

Lucas pressed his forehead to hers, breath mingling warm with coffee and possibility. "Try and stop me."

Around them, the studio exhaled—paint drying, needles sterilizing, a single page fluttering to rest against Maya's abandoned Doc Martens.