Chapter 3: Charcoal and Scars
Caleb Sterling's POV
Concrete dust coated the back of my throat, gritty and bitter with defeat. Eighty stories above Manhattan, the wind screamed through exposed steel skeletons, its cadence the city's – a frenetic, empty pulse. Here, in the steel skeletons of Julian's latest monument to heartless ambition, I could almost breathe. Almost forgot the rot in my bloodstream. Sterling blood.
Ava. Wind tossed chestnut hair into a wild halo, tugged at her no-nonsense work shirt. She clutched blueprints as a shield, narrowed eyes in that maddening mix of awe and resolve. Light curled around her, turning her into a damn spot in this grimy half-built purgatory. Sunlight on rotting wood. The concept was a twist of a blade. I turned back to my own sketchbook, charcoal pressing into the paper, etching the jagged line of the skyline. I draw beauty because I'm made of rot. She doesn't belong here. Doesn't belong next to me.
Footsteps crept, hesitant on the scraping. I didn't look up.
"Caleb?" Her sharp voice, even in the windy air, cut through my own self-imposed silence. "Julian told me to be sent up. He wants my input included in the west elevation structural revamps." She presented the rolled plans as an offering.
I too grunted, finally inclining a glance. Wind. It had roughed up her cheeks. It had shoved her garments against her figure, outlining curves my mutts in protest were itching to map. Stop. My gaze darted back to my sketch – a rusty pier, her pier design, recreated in black silhouettes. "Leave them in. the crate." My tone was harsher than the wind.
She stayed. She moved closer, eyes locked on my sketchpad. "That's… the Hudson Yards concept? But it's…" She paused, head cocked. "Broken."
"Everything beautiful breaks eventually." My charcoal snapped in my fingers. Like people. Like me.
She surprised me. Rather than flinching, she leaned in, examining the broken lines, the intentional rot. "It's honest," she breathed, as much to herself as to me. "More honest than the polished version.
My head jerked up. Her eyes weren't judging; they were. sympathetic? Daring glint. "Honest?"
"Abandoned spaces," she replied, not averting her gaze from me. Her colour was the warm earth, with depths I should not explore. "They don't lie. No facade. Just the stark truth of what's left behind." She gestured vaguely over the city below. "Like this, I suppose. Before the glaze covers the skeletons.".
Why do you draw abandoned things? The question I had not asked seared in the quiet of us. Her response was a gut punch. They're truthful. She had seen it. Seen the rot I'd attempted to banish onto paper. Seen me. It had been frightening. Thrilling.
I found my voice, low and scraping. “You sketch them too.” It wasn’t a question. I’d seen her battered sketchbook peeking from her bag days ago, filled with derelict warehouses and overgrown lots.
A faint smile touched her lips, surprising us both. “Guilty. They tell stories polished walls scream over.”
Our gazes met. Gales blew, but here, upon this spindly promontory, a bubble formed. Only her truth, my shadows, and terror draw between them. Vanilla and graphite, her scent, permeated the concrete dirtness. Light. Decayed timber. Ava, flee. Ava, flee from me. But she did not turn away, that glint in her eyes holding mine hostage.
My loft wasn't home. It was a creativity and chaos bomb site. Spray paint cans scattered the floor, canvases half-painted leaned against walls made of exposed brick painted in beautiful, angry graffiti. The air thick with the smell of turpentine, weed, and takeout scents left too long. Sanctuary. Prison.
Ava was in the middle, looking hopelessly out of place but somehow. right. Like a splash of colour on a black-and-white negative. She'd insisted on discovering where the "structural revisions" were coming from, a flimsy excuse that neither of us accepted. Julian would have an aneurysm.
Is this where the Sterling black sheep shows up to paint his masterpieces?" she teased, holding up a can of that dazzling cobalt blue, turning it between her hands. Her fingers were long and slender. I imagined them covered with charcoal. Deadly.
"Sheep are herd animals," I complained, dropping onto a scuffed sofa, sketchpad open on my knees. My refuge breached, vulnerable. But I couldn't send her away. "I don't play well with others. Or follow."
"I bet." Her tone was deadpan. She strolled over to a gargantuan canvas – a snarling, expressionistic wolf in red and black strokes. "This is… intense."
"Life's intense." My gaze was drawn back to her profile, against the grimy window. The sharp edge of jaw, the curve of neck, the way a strand of hair stuck to her temple. My fingers moved without consideration. Charcoal crackled across the page, capturing the hard beauty, the tempered strength.
She turned, catching me. "Drawing the abandoned site again?"
Heat crawled up my neck. “You’re not abandoned.” Yet. The word hung unspoken, heavy.
She walked over, curiosity overriding caution. “May I?” She gestured to the sketchpad.
Self-hatred grappled with a morbid compulsion for her to behold. I let it pass in silence. She looked down. Her breath stilled. It was not the view of the city. It was she. In black, smudged charcoal. Her ferocity, her inner spark, in harsh lines and gentle shadow. Page upon page, full of her. Sketches of her hands, her laugh lines, the fierce focus when she worked. Obsession laid bare.
Her hand trembled on the pad. She locked eyes with me, her eyes dilating, not with fear, but with increasing, tense understanding. "Caleb… all of these…?"
I was out of the chair in an instant, covering the distance between us. The sketchpad sailed to the ground. I held her against the cold, hard brick wall with my hands flat on either side of her head, taunting her. Turpentine and vanilla filled the air. Her eyes, crazy and black, raked over mine. Not fear. Fire.
"See?" I snarled, my face inches from hers. My voice was raw and unkind. The pulse pounded at the hollow of her throat. I longed to taste it. To devour. "See what you do to me?" I dropped my gaze to her lips, full and softly parted. The air was electric with unspent lightning. All my nerves were shrieking. Destroy her. Take her. Repel her. "This is why you shouldn't be here. Now get out."
But my body would not move. Her breath hitched, burning against my jaw. Her eyes flashing into mine, not begging, but… demanding. Waiting. Her chest rising and falling rapidly, brushing against mine. Inches of air between us hummed. I could feel the warmth radiating off her skin, the shiver running through her. One touch. One kiss. One sip of sunlight.
My command was on a thread, threadbare in seconds. I leaned forward, pulled by some irresistible force. Her lips were inches from mine. Her eyes had fluttered shut—
My phone had viciously buzzed in my pocket, shattering the charged stillness. The magic was broken. We both jumped back as if we'd been hit with electricity. Ava covered her hand over her chest, gasping, her eyes locked on mine, wide with confusion and the aftertaste of that stomach-knotting heat.
I pulled out the phone, a snarl forming. The screen lit up with a name that coursed ice through my veins: Victoria Hayes.
The message was brutal, concise:
Tell Ava the truth about her mother, or I’ll bury Julian with the waterfront scandal. Tonight. Choice is yours.
The words grew distant. The loft, Ava, the scent of her skin – all receded, lost behind the cold, constricting grasp of Victoria's venom. Truth about Isabelle? What truth? And the waterfront scandal… the one I knew could destroy Julian, Sterling Architecture, everything. Victoria wasn't menacing. She had the evidence. She'd use it.
I raised my head from the glow of the screen. Ava was still gazing at me, her expression shifting from dazed desire to wary fear. "Caleb? What is it?"
The light was gone. Only the rot remained. Victoria's ultimatum in my mind. Tell her. Or murder Julian. The second was a blade, either way. Either would repel her, kill the tender, illicit thing that had almost flared against my tagging-scabbed wall.
I smashed the phone in my fist, the plastic burrowing into my palm. The taste of concrete dust and betrayal stuck to my lips. The decaying wood groaned under the burden of the sunlight it could never hold.
