move. It is too much for my mind to comprehend. To take in. And yet, I can’t look away. She is
exquisite. Angelic. Pure and intoxicating by nature.
Even the simple curve of her arm as she holds the forbidden fruit in her palm appears deadly and
sinful. Magnetic. Everything about the image draws the viewer in. Harnessing the eye in a way that
only his artwork ever could.
He did this.
Mr. Vaughn did this.
The wind stirs behind me, carrying his scent on the breeze. He’s here now. Silent. In the shadows
behind me. Waiting and watching.
Rellek.
It is him, I realize. The other half of Mr. Vaughn. The artist who cannot help himself. The Jekyll to
his Hyde.
“Is this how you see me?” I whisper.
“How could I see you any other way?” he replies.
His body heat draws closer, even though his feet don’t make a sound. And then his breath is stirring
the hair just behind my ear, sending a shiver down the back of my neck.
“I am sorry, Chloe.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?” I ask.
He remains behind me. Masked in the darkness. Neither of us able to face each other as we
whisper our secrets into the night.
“I am sorry for how I treated you in class,” he tells me in a solemn voice. “And I am sorry that I
could not stay away from you when I should have.”
Silence descends over us, but it is not uncomfortable. It feels as though we have known each other
forever. Two souls reunited after countless lives searching.
“You are the entire reason I am here,” I confess. “I have followed your work since the beginning. I
have followed you.”
He is quiet and still behind me. And that fear is there, within me, as it always is. That he will reject
me. That he will leave.
But he doesn’t.
“I am not that man anymore,” he says finally. “I never was, Chloe.”