Page 15 of Hooked On Victor
“I’m here to do a job,” she said. “That’s all.”
Victor didn’t argue.
He didn’t need to.
She refused to turn back around. She yanked the door open, letting in a gust of cold wind that stirred the papers on his table and tugged a lock of hair loose from her braid. Without another word, she walked out, boots thumping on the warped wooden porch.
She didn’t look back.
When the door shut behind her, silence crashed back over the little house like a wave.
Victor exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. It rattled in his chest, hitching on bruised ribs. He winced and shifted slowly, easing himself upright against the faded floral cushions. The upholstery smelled like old dust and salt.
He stared at the floor for a long moment.
Then he reached for the sketchbook on the windowsill.
His fingers closed around the battered leather cover, cool and familiar. He settled it in his lap, the spine cracked from too many openings. He thumbed it open to a blank page.
The pencil lay exactly where he’d left it—a cheap mechanical thing, bite marks near the eraser where he’d chewed it while thinking.
He stared at the paper.
White. Empty. Waiting.
He drew the curve of her jaw first. Clean. Sharp. The way it tightened when she was annoyed. He worked slowly, draggingthe graphite carefully, reverently, as if he could coax her essence out of the page if he tried hard enough.
Her mouth next. Pressed in that tight, skeptical frown she wore like armor. A line that said she wasn’t here for bullshit or easy smiles.
The pencil scratched quietly in the small room.
Her eyes were the hardest.
He drew the shape. The lashes. The slight furrow of her brow. But not the glint. Not the way they held steady even when he tried to rile her.
Not the way they didn’t look away.
He paused, pencil hovering.
Who the hell was this woman?
No one had ever looked at him like that.
Not with pity. Not with fear. Not with awe.
Just… direct.
Level.
Like he was a problem to solve, not a threat to fear.
She wasn’t soft, not in the way people usually meant it. She was forged. Every word from her mouth sounded like it had been tested, tempered, sharpened before she let it go.
He liked that.
Too much.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
