The studio’s warmth, steeped in the fragrance of espresso, tightened like a drawn wire when she entered. Sandro felt the shift in his bones. He took a slow sip, the liquid bitter and perfect.
Seema. A decade had sculpted the girl into something devastating. Her gaze found him, and a slow, knowing smile touched her lips. It wasn’t a greeting; it was a reminder. I remember everything, too.
He fought the urge to touch his hair. His mullet—the messy, curly, artistic rebellion that was entirely her fault. She’d been the one, all those years ago in his shabby Roman apartment, who’d taken the shears to his long, dark curls. He’d watched her in the mirror, awestruck by her fierce concentration. Now, it was copied in fashion editorials and mocked by men who understood safety, not statement.
Dull men like Liam. The name was a sour taste in his mouth. Her sturdy, broad-shouldered boyfriend. The kind of man who built things from timber, not from dreams.
“Sandro,” she said, her voice a low cello note.
“Seema.”
The next hour was a quiet, humiliating experience. Posing in the first look—a column of ivory silk—she felt the disconnect. Sandro strode to the monitor, slipping his glasses on to scrutinize the test shots.
“You look,” he said, his Italian accent clipping the words, “like you are in a cult. Is this for him? The lumberjack? I can only see… hair. It is a landslide.”
He called over a stylist. “Can we see her face? Per favore. Just… try.”
The stylist tried to pin the vast empire of chestnut hair back. It refused to stay.
“Basta!” he snapped. The idea, terrifying and brilliant, crystallized. He stepped close, his fingers trembling slightly as they touched a silken wave. He saw it in her eyes: she was bored of conventional beauty. She was starving for the fervent, arrogant passion that matched her own.
“It has to go,” he murmured. Her eyes widened. “Headshave. We can’t have it like this.”
The air between them was a live wire. “Sandro, no. I can’t. Liam—”
The name—Liam—landed like a struck match. Sandro’s jaw tightened. “The lumberjack. Will I be in trouble with him?”
“Yes,” she stiffened.
“Good,” he purred. As the hair team descended, he raised a single hand. “Stop. I’ll do it myself.”
“What? Sandro, this is insane—”
“You are a masterpiece collecting dust, Seema. Let me remind the world what they’re forgetting.”
The defensiveness melted into a weary, vulnerable acceptance. “Fine,” she whispered. “Do it.”
Sandro’s demeanor switched to crisp command. “Clear a space. Chair under the key light. Mirror. Clippers. No guard. let’s make it more interesting. Let's shave your head with a straight razor.”
He took his place behind her. The clippers hummed to life, a hungry sound. He lifted the heavy curtain of her hair, exposing the vulnerable nape of her neck.
“Ready?” he murmured. He gave a single, sharp nod to the photographer. Now.
The first touch of the cold steel blades to the nape of her neck was a shock. A violent, shaving-hair feeling was transmitted through his fingers and into her skull. She gasped, her hands clutching the arms of the chair.
He began at the base, shaving her head with a focused, brutal efficiency. A wide, naked path opened up through the dense forest of chestnut. Great, heavy locks of hair fell away, soundless against the roar of the clippers. The physical weight of her past, of Liam’s preference, sloughed away onto the floor.
Shaved hair falling everywhere—over her shoulders, onto the ivory silk, piling at her feet like a discarded identity. Sandro didn't stop. He moved the razor over the crown, the blades shearing everything down to the skin.
The sensation was extraordinary: a deep, resonant vibration traveling through her scalp, rattling the cage of her ribs. She was giving him this. She was letting him erase the version of her that existed for the world.
Finally, he stood before her. The long hair was gone, but the work was unfinished. He picked warm lather. The studio held its breath. With practiced, steady strokes, he began the final transformation.
The blade scraped softly against her skin. She watched in the mirror as her smooth, shaved scalp began to emerge, pale and luminous under the studio lights. The headshaving was a ritual, a stripping away of every defense.
When he finished, he stepped back.
Sandro’s gaze was locked on her reflection. He watched as Seema's hands, tentative as birds, lifted from the arms of the chair. Her fingertips made contact with her own scalp.
Her eyes flew wide. Her palms flattened against the smooth, shaved scalp, a sensation so foreign it drew a sharp, shaky gasp from her lips. She skimmed the elegant architecture of her head—the shell of her ear now starkly elegant, the perfect dome of her crown.
“Seema,” he said, his voice a rough prayer.
She stared. Gone was the waterfall. In its place was total exposure. It highlighted the perfect oval of her face, the arch of her brows, the stunning expanse of her neck. It was radical. It was brutally elegant.
“It’s all gone,” she whispered. Her eyes found his in the glass. She thought of Liam, and for the first time, the thought didn't make her shrink. Liam would see Sandro’s fingerprints all over her, but more importantly, he would see a woman he no longer recognized.
Sandro saw the moment the fear turned into triumph. He stood, clapping his hands once.
“Now,” he said, his voice ringing with authority. “We shoot the clothes. And we shoot them on this. No more hiding.”
Seema looked at the woman in the mirror—stark, bald, and powerful. She could not deny the terrifying, exhilarating truth: she loved this version of herself more.
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