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I laughed despite myself, pulled out of the parking lot, and did not look back at the building.

Chapter eight

Samantha

Iblame the sunset.

San Antonio sunsets did not play fair. They did not do the polite pastel thing coastal cities got away with. They came on heavy: copper, gold, and the kind of orange that made even a parking lot look intentional. And when that light hit my windshield just as I was trying to talk myself out of doing something stupid, the universe tipped its hand.

I sat in my car outside the training facility, camera bag in the back seat, phone in my hand, a text drafted and deleted six times.

Here’s the thing, Sam. You could go home. You could open your laptop, edit forty photos, and wake up tomorrow having made no decisions you would need to justify to Bella or to whatever therapist you eventually hire.

Or you could send this text.

The sunset burned. A car alarm went off somewhere across the lot, and nobody cared.

I hit send.

Me: Meet me at Paramour tonight. Eight o’clock. One drink. No pictures. Just a drink.

No softening. No escape hatch. Just an invitation from a woman who had spent three years keeping everyone at exactly the distance required to prevent this exact situation.

I waited for the three dots to appear.

Nothing.

One minute passed.

Then two.

By minute four, I had decided he was either ignoring me, dead, or typing a legally binding rejection with footnotes.

Congratulations, Samantha. You’ve just invited Mr. Sunshine to a rooftop bar with a view that could make a monk question his vows, and now you’re being emotionally held hostage by a blank text field. Excellent boundary management. Your future therapist is already taking notes.

My phone buzzed.

Evan: Yes.

I drove home and stood in front of my closet for eleven minutes, which was ten minutes longer than I had spent getting dressed for anything since the Exposure Quarterly incident. Black top. The kind of fabric that did not try. Boots with enough heel to say I had thought about it, but not enough to say I had spiraled about it. Hair down, because pulling it back would have felt like suiting up for work, and tonight was not work.

I left my camera on the kitchen counter. On purpose. With the conscious intention of being a human being instead of a lens for one night.

This was either the most mature thing I had done in months or the opening scene of a disaster. Both felt exactly the same from the inside.

My phone buzzed as I locked my door.

Bella: Where are you going? My surveillance instincts are tingling.

Me: Out.

Bella: Out WHERE? With WHOM? What are you WEARING?

Me: Goodnight, Bella.

Bella: I WILL find out. I have subpoena power and no boundaries.

Paramour sat above the Museum Reach like San Antonio had decided subtlety was for cities with less heat. Rooftop views. Soft lighting. Enough polished surfaces to make me aware of every decision I had made since leaving my condo. Beyond the patio, the city spread out in layers: hotel towers, river lights, and the distant needle of the Tower of the Americas pulsing against the dark.