The hours blurred.
Sometimes I missed the moment. Sometimes I nailed it. Sometimes René cursed in French and made everyone reset. Sometimes he was silent, which was worse.
An assistant appeared at my elbow at some point, holding out two paper cups.
“Coffee,” she whispered, like we were in a church instead of a fashion shoot teetering on the edge of something indecent.
I took one with a muttered thanks and handed the other to René.
He took it without comment, eyes still tracking the model now draped across a velvet chair inside, legs crossed just so, gaze unfocused in a way that felt intimate without being explicit.
“You’re shaking,” he said quietly, not unkindly.
“Caffeine deficit,” I replied, taking a careful sip. “And possibly adrenaline poisoning.”
“Hm.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “You last longer than most.”
“So do you.”
That earned me a look—sharp, assessing, and faintly amused. “Do not get comfortable,” he said. “You are still wrong often.”
“I know.” It was almost a challenge to not smile, but I managed by studying the room and the models. I swore, my eyes were blurring.
“Good.”
Outside again, the air had turned cool, the stone slick beneath our shoes. A model leaned into the cold, bare skincatching light like porcelain. I adjusted my settings on instinct now, not thinking so much as reacting.
René nodded once. “There. You see it.”
I did.
The exhaustion had burned away the hesitation, stripped everything down to instinct and timing and light. My mistakes were faster now, my recoveries cleaner. When something didn’t work, I felt it immediately instead of second-guessing myself.
At one point, René gestured me closer. “Here,” he said. “You take this.”
The model’s breath fogged in the cold. The chill was unexpected, or maybe I just hadn’t paid attention the weather reports. Her eyes flicked to me, then away, as if she’d already forgotten I was there.
“Wait,” René murmured.
The wind shifted. A lock of hair slid across her mouth.
“Now.”
I pressed the shutter.
The image glowed on my screen—raw, luminous, alive.
“That,” René said softly, almost reverent, “is why you are here.”
I swallowed hard, fingers tightening around the camera.
For a moment, despite the cold and the exhaustion and the ache in my shoulders, I felt… like I was exactly where I was meant to be.
The shoot didn’t slow as the night deepened. If anything, it sped up even as the demand heightened.
Inside, the air grew heavier with heat and perfume and the faint, metallic tang of nerves. Outside, the courtyard had gone cold enough that breath showed in pale clouds, each exhale briefly visible before disappearing. Heaters were set up for breaks, but they threw off the light so they weren’t used for the actual photos. The models moved between those worlds—warmlight to dark, velvet to stone, silk to skin—until even they began to blur.
People got quieter. Not calmer. Quieter.
