Her assistant, Marceau, had learned to leave things outside her door. Sketchbooks. Coffee. Fabric swatches. Even his knock had been reduced to a soft tap-barely there. Celeste had no patience for noise, or people, or any distraction from the work. The work was everything.
Or at least, it had been.
Today, something was off.
She could feel it long before she turned from the mannequin she'd been pinning-a slow, crawling sense of disruption, like a thread being tugged from the inside out.
The buzzer rang.
She didn't move. Didn't answer. It would go away. It always did.
But then she heard it again. Not the buzzer.
A voice.
Male. Deep. Too close.
She turned sharply.
Across the studio, just beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, a man stood still-framed in shadow. He wasn't knocking. He was waiting. Watching.
Celeste froze.
Her first thought wasn't fear. It was impossibility.
The man standing outside was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in black. The light caught just enough of his face to make her stomach tighten. Sharp jaw. Grey eyes. Composed posture.
It was him.
Not someone like him.
Him.
The man she'd been sketching for over a decade. The muse she never met. The ghost she called Lior.
She blinked.
And he didn't disappear.
She walked slowly across the room, each step deliberate, every muscle wound tight with disbelief. Her hand touched the brass handle of the door, hesitated-then pulled.
The door opened with a soft click. Cold air rushed in.
He didn't smile.
"Celeste Varenne?" he asked, his voice smooth, British, with an edge she couldn't name.
Her throat tightened. "Who are you?"
"Lucien Wolfe," he said. "We have a meeting."
She frowned. "I don't schedule meetings."
"You didn't," he replied. "Your investor did."
Damn Adrien. He'd been pushing new capital for months. She ignored every message.
"I'm not taking clients," she said, already beginning to close the door.
"I'm not a client."
Her fingers stopped.
Lucien stepped forward, gaze unshaken. "You designed me. Years before this meeting. Don't you want to know how?"
The door remained open.
---
He moved like he belonged in her space. Not arrogantly, but with familiarity. His eyes roamed the studio-resting on the mannequins draped in charcoal wool, deep green silk, unfinished suits with lines chalked like scars.
He walked straight to the centerpiece: a figure in ivory suiting, faceless, barefoot, untitled. One of her oldest pieces. One no one ever saw.
"This was the first one, wasn't it?" he asked.
Celeste didn't respond.
"You named him Lior."
Her heart thudded in her chest.
Lucien turned slowly to face her. "What if I told you I remember standing here before? Not in dreams. Not in theory. Really here. Before you ever put my face on your canvas."
She took a breath, then exhaled like it hurt. "You're delusional."
"Maybe," he said calmly. "But that makes two of us."
---
She served him coffee only because she needed something in her hands. The tension between them wasn't sexual. Not yet. It was something more dangerous: recognition.
He didn't ask about her work. He didn't flatter. He simply watched her like someone solving a riddle they'd written themselves.
"Do you believe in unconscious memory?" he asked quietly.
Celeste tilted her head. "I believe in discipline."
"You've designed the same man for over ten years," Lucien said. "No changes. No variation. Just different suits. Different names. But the face? Always the same."
"Coincidence."
"Is it?"
She hated how steady his voice was. How close it sounded to the one she'd imagined in her head all these years.
Lucien leaned back, fingers tracing the porcelain of the coffee cup. "What happened to you, Celeste? That you turned someone like me into a ghost?"
She stood suddenly. "You need to leave."
But even as she said it, she didn't walk to the door.
He rose, slow, deliberate.
Their eyes locked.
"I'll be back tomorrow," he said.
She didn't say no.
Didn't say anything at all.
Because the man she thought she invented-
Just walked out of her studio like he remembered being born there.
And part of her
Was terrified he was right.