Semua Bab Painting with Blood: Bab 1 - Bab 7

I stepped off the plane at JFK, and bam—New York City hit me like a tidal wave. The air was thick with that mix of exhaust fumes, hot pretzels from some vendor cart, and just… people. So many people rushing everywhere, yelling into their phones in a dozen languages. I’d been dreaming about this for months—NYU, art history scholarship, a whole semester in the Big Apple. Paris is chaotic in its own elegant way, but this? This was raw, unfiltered energy. I loved it already. “C’est incroyable,” I muttered to myself, grinning like an idiot as I hauled my suitcase through the terminal.By the time I got to my dorm near Washington Square, I was wiped. Jet lag was kicking in hard, but no way was I crashing yet. Bella, my new roommate—she’s this bubbly Italian-American girl I’d chatted with online—had already texted me a million times. “Get your cute French butt over here! We’re going out tonight!” But first, I needed to breathe. Unpack a little, maybe. The room was tiny, like a shoebox, but i

I was still thinking about him the next morning.The tall guy with the ice-blue eyes and the leather jacket. The one who’d looked at me like I was either a problem or a puzzle he didn’t want to solve. I’d replayed the moment in my head about fifty times while brushing my teeth, while making instant coffee in our tiny kitchenette, while Bella was still snoring dramatically under her mountain of throw pillows.I mean, come on. It was just a stare. A really intense stare. Nothing more.But it had stuck.Bella finally emerged around eleven, hair a wild halo, wearing an oversized NYU hoodie and the tiniest sleep shorts known to humankind. She took one look at my face and went straight into best-friend interrogation mode.“Okay, spill,” she said, hopping onto the counter and stealing my coffee mug right out of my hand. “You’ve got that dreamy-horny-confused look again. Who is he?”I laughed despite myself. “There is no ‘he.’ Not really.”“Bullshit. You texted me last night about a mysteriou

I was starting to think New York hated me personally.The subway had been delayed twice already—some signal problem at 14th Street—and by the time the downtown 1 train finally screeched into the station, the platform was so packed I barely had room to breathe. I squeezed in at the very last second, one hand gripping the pole, the other clutching my sketchbook against my chest like a shield.Rush hour. Everyone smelled like coffee breath and desperation.I wedged myself between a guy in a suit reading the Times on his phone and a girl with giant headphones who was aggressively chewing gum. The doors hissed shut. The train lurched forward. I exhaled.That’s when I felt it.The shift in the air behind me.Someone too close. Too deliberate.I didn’t turn right away—people press in on the subway all the time—but something made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I shifted my weight, trying to create space. The guy behind me shifted too. Mirrored me.My stomach dropped.I glanced sid

I couldn’t stop replaying the car ride in my head.The way Dmitri’s voice had gone from warm and teasing to ice-cold in the space of two seconds. One minute we were laughing, my knee brushing his when he shifted gears, the next he was practically shoving me out of the car like I’d done something unforgivable. No explanation. No goodbye. Just that sharp “Get out” that landed like a slap.I’d walked the last block to the dorm with my stomach in knots, cheeks burning, telling myself it didn’t matter. He was just some guy. A hot, complicated, probably-straight-or-closeted guy who’d kissed me once like the world was ending and then acted like I was invisible the next time we spoke. I’d been here before. I knew the script.Still, it hurt more than it should have.By the time I pushed open the door to our tiny shared apartment, Bella was sprawled across the couch in sweatpants and one of my old Sorbonne hoodies, eating cold lo mein straight from the carton with a pair of chopsticks. She look