The silence between us wasn’t empty.
It was a living, breathing thing, thick with the memory of a kiss that had scorched its brand onto my lips.
For two days, Rhys and I had communicated through stilted, professionally courteous emails, each one a masterclass in avoidance.
We talked about vendor contracts, but the real conversation hummed in the space between the words: *I felt your hands in my hair. I can still taste the whiskey on your tongue. What the hell have we done?*
My perfectly planned life, once a neat grid, now felt like a map set on fire.
The engagement party had detonated everything. I, Ava Morgan, professional wedding planner, had danced with my ex-boyfriend (the groom), and then, in a fit of what I could only describe as temporary insanity, had been kissed senseless on the balcony by his best man. . . who was also *my client’s brother*.
This was no longer a “complication. ”
This was a five-alarm, career-ending, reputational-suicide fire.
A curt email from Chloe this morning was the catalyst that finally shattered the truce of silence: *“Meeting the photographer, Julian Vance. He’s at Rhys’s studio. Today at 2. Don’t be late. ”*
And so, at two o’clock on the dot, I stood outside a nondescript warehouse in the meatpacking district, the address Rhys had forwarded without comment.
The building was old brick and rusted steel, a world away from the polished glass of my office. This was his territory, and I felt like a trespasser already.
The door creaked open before I could knock, and he was there, leaning against the frame.
He wore a simple black t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders and dark, paint-splattered jeans that clung to his thighs. He looked rougher, more elemental.
More dangerous than he ever had in a tux.
“Ava,” he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated straight through my sensible heels. “Punctual as always. ”
“It’s a professional meeting, Rhys. I’m a professional. ” I tried to keep my tone brisk, but it sounded fragile to my own ears.
He smirked, a slow, knowing curl of his lips that made my stomach clench. “Of course. Come in. ”
He stepped back, and I walked into a cavernous, open-plan studio. The air smelled of dust, turpentine, and the faint, metallic scent of darkroom chemicals.
It was a mess of beautiful chaos—canvases leaned against walls, lighting rigs stood like skeletal sentinels. But my eyes were drawn to the walls. They were covered in his work.
Stunning, life-sized portraits.
Not the society photos or sterile landscapes I might have expected from Chloe’s brother, but raw, intimate captures of people from all over the world. A wrinkled fisherman in a Greek village, his eyes holding the wisdom of a thousand tides.
A young ballerina in a dusty Moscow studio, her expression a mix of fierce determination and crippling exhaustion. A laughing child in the favelas of Rio.
Each photo was a story. Rhys hadn’t just captured their images; he’d captured a piece of their souls. He saw them. Truly saw them.
And suddenly, the “chaos agent,” the sarcastic, whiskey-drinking antagonist I thought I knew, was replaced by an artist of profound depth and empathy. The realization was a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.
“They’re… incredible,” I breathed, moving toward a portrait of a woman staring out of a rain-streaked window in Tokyo. Her face was a landscape of quiet longing.
Rhys came to stand beside me, his proximity a brand of heat along my arm. “She was waiting for a lover who was never coming back,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it.
“She didn’t know I was taking the picture. It felt wrong to capture that moment, but it was too honest to ignore. ”
I turned to look at him, my professional armor cracking. “You saw all of that in one moment?”