Page 8 of Calculated Risk
Option A: Continue from a distance. Send helpful emails. Provide resources she can use or ignore.
Option B: Actually go to her studio. Offer hands-on help. Risk getting close enough that she sees through my carefully maintained walls.
My heart does something complicated in my chest, a rhythm that’s become familiar over these weeks, these months. It’s the feeling of walls coming down, of control slipping away, of allowing myself to want something I can’t calculate or predict.
Option A is safer. Smarter. Maintains the distance I've worked so hard to create.
Option B is terrifying.
I choose Option B.
Because Ethan's right. I can't leave this problem unsolved and Lilah Rodriguez is the most complicated problem I've ever encountered.
I get to the art studios which is in the basement of the Winters Building. I follow the sound of angry music and paint-related cursing until I find her.
Studio 7. The door is propped open. Inside, Lilah is attacking a canvas with what looks like controlled fury.
There’s a complexity to this moment that I can’t quite name. Something about the way past and present collide, the way carefully maintained boundaries start to blur when you least expect it.
The details come into sharp focus in that hyperaware way that happens when emotions run high. The particular quality of the light. The ambient sounds that normally fade into background noise. The temperature of the air against my skin.
She's wearing the same paint-stained overalls from yesterday, but now they're even more covered in color. Her hair is falling out of its bun. There's a streak of red paint across her cheek.
She's magnificent.
"Are you going to stand there all day or actually come in?" She doesn't turn around.
"How did you know I was here?"
"Your cologne. Expensive and subtle. Very you." She adds a slash of blue to the canvas. "Plus, you've been standing there for five minutes trying to decide if this is a good idea."
"Is it? A good idea?"
"Probably not. But you're here anyway." She finally turns around. "So either help or leave. I don't have time for spectators." The look on her face is neutral, telling me nothing if she’s happy or annoyed I’m here.
I step inside. The studio is chaotic. Paint everywhere, canvas stacked haphazardly, brushes soaking in jars of murky water. Sketches pinned to every available surface. Empty coffee cups forming a small mountain on the desk.
It should stress me out. The disorder, the lack of system, the pure creative chaos.
Instead, it feels like seeing something honest. Real.
"You used my timeline," I observe. There's a printed copy on her desk, marked up with notes and revisions.
"Your timeline was annoyingly logical. Turns out logic is helpful when you're drowning." She sets down her brush. "Don't let it go to your head." The side of her lip curls into the smallest smile, and if that’s so beautiful what will her full smile be?
"Too late. My head is enormous from all the validation."
She almost smiles bigger. Almost. "Why are you really here, Marcus?"
"To help."
"No. Why are you really here? You've avoided me for three years. Now suddenly you're Mr. Helpful. What changed?"
I could lie. Should lie. Maintain the pretense that this is just problem-solving.
But Ethan's words echo,Be honest with her.
"You scare me," I say before I can overthink it.
