His Lens Never Had Room For Me Chapter 03

His Lens Never Had Room For Me Chapter 03

Three days before the awards ceremony, an unsealed international express package arrived.

Inside, a framed certificate from the International Star Registry caught my eye, its gold lettering gleaming against the paper.

It listed the coordinates: 18°36’56” east longitude, 38°47’01” north latitude.

Lyra.

Beneath the precise coordinates, a name was printed in elegant script.

[Sienna Rowe]

The naming date was the very night he had given up the comet to capture “The Light.”

At the bottom of the certificate, there was a small card tucked inside, handwritten by Everett.

[A star can live for billions of years. This one is my permanent exposure, meant only for you.]

I looked at that card in silence.

He had spent a fortune buying a real star in the universe and putting Sienna’s name on it.

He had hung her name in the Milky Way, beside Vega itself.

I had folded one thousand and ninety-six paper stars, and he had never opened a single one.

A star made of paper and a star in the sky had never weighed the same.

I closed the frame exactly as it had been and placed it in the center of his desk.

When Everett came home that evening and saw it, his expression stiffened for a split second.

He quickly grabbed a heavy photography monograph to conceal the frame, shifting the subject with practiced ease.

“The organizers want me to prepare a five-minute acceptance speech. Since you’re just sitting around the house anyway, write it up for me.”

“What do you want to say?”

“Write about a photographer’s devotion to absolute darkness, and how I overcame every obstacle to banish light pollution.”

I picked up a pen, and the words came easily.

Because for the past five years, I had been the one who stood beside him in that absolute darkness.

I had also been the one whose every light he had driven away.

The next day, Everett pinned his printed Alaska itinerary to the whiteboard.

“After the awards ceremony, I’m flying to Alaska.”

My hand paused halfway through packing clothes into my suitcase.

“Alaska?”

“The last window of aurora season. Sienna and I have been planning it for three months. There’s a perfect viewing site up there. Absolutely no light pollution.”

That was my destination.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Ten days.”

I looked at the red note written in the final day’s column of his itinerary.

[Photograph Sienna under the aurora. Continue “The Light” series.]

“Everett,” I said with my back to him.

“You once said we would go see the northern lights together.”

His hands stopped moving over the equipment case, and his brow pulled tight.

“Elena, why are you digging up ancient history? It drops way below zero up there at night. With your nerve damage, your hand flares up the second it gets cold. Going would just be pure misery for you.”

“Is Sienna not afraid of the cold?”

“She’s a professional field assistant. How can you compare yourself to her? Can you not make trouble for me right now?”

“I understand.”

I turned away and stopped looking at him.

Then I pulled my twenty-inch carry-on out from under the bed.

I quietly placed my passport, my work visa, and a few thick sweaters inside.

This apartment was large.

But everything I could take with me did not even fill half a suitcase.