“What?” She looks me full in the face, and it suddenly occurs to me how close we are. Our outer thighs are pressed together. Lips within kissing distance. Her white skin is pink and patchy from the way we’ve been talking, and I think I could smooth it all away with my touch. I lean in. I need to take her mouth for my own. Dive into its heat, own her in seconds, claim what I should’ve days ago.
She exhales a breath I can practically see, and I stop an inch from her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
So much. So much is wrong with this. Cheating is the one thing I can’t do again. I’ve been scalded, and I’m still one giant scar. I’m vulnerable as fuck to Halston’s spell, but I knew that before she walked in the door. I have only myself to blame for feeling helpless. “Nothing,” I say, easing back. “It’s my issue. Not yours.”
“What issue?”
I shouldn’t have to tell her she has a fucking boyfriend. Isn’t that enough to explain why I won’t touch what doesn’t belong to me? “What was I saying?”
Her shoulders fall. “That the photos need something. They’re not right?”
“Yeah. No. They’re right.” I rub my jaw. I shaved for her. Did she notice? “I want your words.”
She blinks a few times. “My words?”
“As the caption.”
“No.” Her eyebrows draw in. “No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, I didn’t write that for anyone but myself.”
“And I told you, you should. You have a gift. Don’t waste it.”
“But it’s no good. I went to business school.” She shifts forward, away from me. “I look at art, I don’t create it.”
“Then why do you write?”
“To get it out. To feel something.”
“Why do you have to write to feel?”
She looks away. “I have a good life. Simple. My dad is conservative, and so are our clients. He’d be embarrassed if anyone in the industry found out.Iwould be embarrassed. I’m past the stage of my life where I need to shock people.”
Maybe that’s a valid reason, but I recognize her fear. It took me almost ten years to work up the courage to take a second chance on my art, and even now, putting it out there isn’t easy. My best work comes from vulnerability, and nobody wants to be judged with their walls down. But I have yet to regret it. “Then nobody has to know,” I say. “Just us. I’ll make sure you remain anonymous. Promise.”
She presses her lips together, suppressing either a smile or a frown, I can’t tell. She touches her palm to her chest. “My heart is racing. The thought of someone looking at me like that . . . or reading my stuff. I shouldn’t want to do it, should I? I don’t know.” She takes the camera from me and examines each photo again. “I think I do.”
Shemay not know, but I have some idea. All the hints I’ve been collecting—the bra, the tattoo, the forbidden thoughts—tell me what I need to know. If she was raised conservatively, then she’s probably been burying her sexuality in this journal for a while, hiding it even from herself, and it’s seeping out in other ways.
I’m not about to explain it to her, though. I don’t want this to stop. “Is that a yes?”
She exchanges the camera for her coffee, and after a pause, looks at me. “That’s a lot of trust to put in you.”
“I told you earlier—you’re safe with me.”
“I’ve critiqued people’s work,” she says. “Sometimes solicited, sometimes not. If I put something out there . . .”
“You’re opening yourself up to criticism. But does it feel less scary if nobody knows who you are?”
Slowly, she nods. “A lot less scary.”
I relax. I’m too relieved to get something I didn’t know I wanted a few minutes ago. “Then I’ll post this picture with your words, and you’ll see. People will love it. And if you’re still scared after that, I’ll take it down.”
“And if I’m not?”
