Chapter 5: Smudged Lines

AVA'S POV

My clothes still smell of him. The odor clings obstinately like – acrid charcoal powder, harsh turpentine, and underneath that, something wild, ferally alive. I wake with a jolt in my small Chinatown apartment. My palms press hard on my flushed cheeks, trying to repress the sharp memory.

But behind my eyelids, I see nothing else but the shadowed hollow of Caleb's throat, the rough whiskers on his chin, the way his eyes – dark pools smoldering low – had me pinned against cold brick. Inches. That was all there was between us. His mouth inches from my own. His breath, hot and harsh, punctuated with my shallow gasps. "See what you do to me? " A raw snarl, a ripped-out confession, a brand branded across my skin.

The echo hums inside my bones. Idiot. The cold splash of self-blame cuts through the haze. I toss off tangled, sweat-wet covers. Cold air wafts over exposed legs, not enough to douse the treacherous heat burning low in my belly – an ember he sparked.". I was brought to Sterling to build skylines, not to drown in taboo fire with the estranged, hot-headed boss's son. But the memory… it's a physical thrum, a low hum beneath my skin. The blunt nudge of brick against my shoulder blades. The hard, unrelenting angles of his body pinning me, radiating heat, his proximity a physical presence. Not fear. Raw, terrifying anticipation. A magnetic pull to a grand unknown, a ledge I shuddered and craved. Then the sharp phone ring lacerating the charged quiet.

Leaving me gasping, in the devastation of what had almost been, the ectoplasmic pressure of his weight a masochistic echo.

Hours later, the glacial shine of Sterling Tower's lobby blinds like a slap. I clutch my tablet as a lame shield. But then, cutting through the clinical air – vanilla and grit. The ectoplasmic scent hits as I walk by Victoria Hayes' gleaming glass cubicle. She materializes in my line of vision, an ice-blue silk apparition, with steaming herbal tea in hand. Her smile is a velvet-wrapped razor. "Ava, sweetie. Burning the midnight oil? Or. something else distracted you from sleep?" Her lifted eyebrow curls. She thrusts the burning cup into my hands before I can respond. Heat bites. "Such dedication. Truly." Her frosty gaze shoots pointedly over at the design elevators. ".Don't let the pressure break your enviable concentration. Fragility is so unbefitting." She creeps closer, her whisper a toxic stroke. "Some secrets, sweetheart, are best left in the ground. For everyone's sake." Heavy jasmine flowers thick, suffocating my throat. Secrets?

About Caleb? Marcus? Julian? Me? Hook questions bite sharply. I escape to my sanctuary desk – blueprints, scale models, freshly printed paper smell. And there it is. Folded into geometric niceness utterly foreign to Caleb's sloppy world, set out on my portfolio like an offering. My ivory cashmere scarf. Vanished in the tempestuous fury of his loft, just before the near-kiss. My breath catches. A small, pale white slip is tucked into the folds. Trembling hands pull it out. Three words in a bold, slashing hand: "You left this." No signature necessary. The world reeks. My heart lurches hard. Shaking, I hold the soft wool to my face. Vanilla. Fresh. Rain. Residued. And underneath, faint but certain – the pungent bite of turpentine, the rich grounding of charcoal. He held it.". He kept it secure.

He gave it back to me. Warmth permeates my frozen limbs, thawing out Victoria's chill.  Tangible proof. Proof I wasn’t a fleeting sketch. Proof the fire in his eyes was achingly real.

With trembling fingers, I iron the scarf. I picture the artist: hunched over his sketchbook, raw passion in his lines depicting a destroyed pier, the abandoned factory – naked truth under decay. “They don’t lie,” I’d whispered, drawn to the raw truth bleeding onto paper, the same brutal honesty in his turbulent gaze when it locked on mine. He saw me too. Past the ambitious junior architect, past Marcus’s stepdaughter, to the core that sketches crumbling warehouses because their fractured beauty feels more real, more alive, than sterile glass towers. That connection… terrifying in its depth. Addictive in its intensity. Forbidden on strangling levels: Julian's grim disapproval. Marcus's shielding bulk. Victoria's toxin. Caleb’s self-destructive storm. Getting close is professional suicide wrapped in personal chaos. A collision course set in motion.

I tug my portfolio open, needing the anchor of clean lines, deliberate angles, control*. Taking cue from the plaza design, I take solace in its tidy predictability. A low, insistent chime breaks concentration. An email pulses menacingly:

From: Eleanor Finch (EA to Mr. J. Sterling)

Subject: Meeting Request - Ava Thorne

Message: Mr. Sterling requests your presence in his office today at 6:00 PM sharp. Ensure punctuality.

6 PM. The words pound like a warning sign. Julian. Alone. Post office hours. The quiet office floor stirs, watchful. Does he know? Did Victoria unleash her venom? Does he sense the forbidden flow linking me with his estranged son? Or is this all about the disputed waterfront amendments… or something much more sinister, related to the 'truths' Victoria threatened? My gaze sweeps over the ivory scarf murmuring Caleb, rain, and terror longing. Then to Julian's cold, commanding call.

Two paths stretch out before me, dark with concealed devastation.

Face Victoria's venom?

Ask her poisonous insinuations? Or walk into Julian Sterling's gold-plated, imperious office at 6 PM, on his terms, not knowing whether I face a routine critique… or a wrecking encounter that can annihilate my career, my place in this fragile family, all that I have struggled for? The vanilla and charcoal remain on my fingers, a ghostly reminder. I close my eyes. Caleb's burning, possessive gaze superimposes over Julian's icy calculating stare, which seeps into Victoria's wicked, evil grin. A spinning kaleidoscope of danger and illicit hunger. I take a shuddering breath – the air flavored with dust, unstated ambition, and the ghostly lingering sensation of Caleb's nearness, of the edge we almost tumbled off. "Okay," I breathe, the word a gossamer promise tossed into the stillness, barely louder than my pounding heart. It's signing on with the storm that's coming. "One step at a time. I will get through this." The future is not one of my precise, tidy blueprints anymore. It's walking a hair-thin tightrope high over broken glass, where one gasp might be the one that breaks me."