30. Chapter 28
Darcy
I shouldn’t have fucking touched her. I know I shouldn’t have. I didn’t even realize I was reaching for her until the back of my knuckles brushed hers.
Has it really only been a week since I last saw her? Held her in my arms? Now I can barely look at her—not because I don’t want to, but because I want to do more than just look.
My sneakers scuff the staircase as we climb up to the mezzanine, where my senior students and I have our own, larger spaces compared to the cubicle maze that makes up the ground floor of The Warehouse.
From here, I can gaze down and look into each space, since they have no ceilings, and watch each of my students work.
They all have walls separating them from each other and doors that lock if they feel the need.
The far wall has a sink that runs the full length of the windows looking out across the industrial park, where they can clean their tools, with drying racks and other stations for cleaning with things harsher than water.
We have one other space, down a half level into the loading bay area, which is where all the artists that require heat or heavy machinery work.
The sculptures that leave that space have been beyond impressive recently, and I’m looking forward to The Warehouse’s next open house, where we open up the building to the public and show off any completed work that my students are brave enough to share.
But that isn’t until after my next exhibition, which returns me to my current predicament and snuffs out my pride in my students faster than a candle being blown out.
Having her model for me is a fucking terrible idea. I should cancel the contract. I should put both of us out of our misery and tear it up so that we don’t have to spend prolonged periods of time with each other, especially when I disappear into my art.
But that will mean that the one and only connection point I have with her will be gone.
I won’t have any way to show her that I’m here for her.
By cutting this tie I have to her, I’ll be cutting off our connection completely.
And if this is the only chance I have to show her who I really am and who I want to be for her, then I’m going to have to push through.
And as fucking juvenile as it makes me feel, I’m going to pine for this girl like I’m a goddamn teenager with a curfew. Letting her slip through our fingers is not an option. She is it for me, for us. She is the missing piece to our little puzzle.
Beyond all of that, she is the inspiration for this next exhibit. She can’t be replaced, not for this. So even if we can’t bring her back into our lives the way we want her, I can at least have her for this.
It is both my opportunity and my goodbye. Only time will tell which.
By the time I’ve led her to my space, my heart has settled back into a normal rhythm within my chest. I let my eyes fall close as she passes me, inhaling deeply to catch the scent of her.
Perfume. Something floral and delicate.
Whatever the hell it is, it’s delicious and has my gut heating and blood flowing south like I didn’t jerk off this morning before I left my house so I wouldn’t have this exact problem.
Pulling myself back together is not as simple as I want it to be, and by the time I’ve got my eyes open and the door shut behind me, Emmy has made it to the middle of my space, unwittingly standing beneath the beam that will be used to support her through most of our sessions.
Emmy turns in a circle, slowly surveying the area, and I am filled with an unreasonable need to explain everything to her. I clench my jaw to stop that shit from flowing out. I need to keep this about the modeling, not anything else.
She has made that very clear.
After taking in the three arched windows that overlook the concrete yards and other buildings, the exposed brickwork, and the wall of cabinets and drawers covered in every art supply I have ever collected, she stops to face me, a questioning look on her face.
Approaching her, I gesture behind her toward the privacy screen I have in here for models who need to change. “You can change behind the screen. I’ve laid out a nude set for you to wear. Call out if you need any help with your arm.”
Her big hazel eyes stare up at me, nervousness making them wider than usual, before she nods and takes her backpack with her behind the screen, pausing momentarily when she spots my duffel bag near its base, filled with my ropes.
My heart squeezes in my chest that she might back out, but she continues around the screen.
I putter around the space, waiting for her to come back out, listening to the rustle of her clothes as they slide from her body.
Actually, I’m going to start setting up. Distraction. Yep, definitely need a distraction.
Treading as quietly as I can manage, I creep over to the duffel bag and collect the handles, lift, and retreat to the center of the room. Then I go to the cabinet with my camera gear.
While this collection is going to be a series of sketches of Emmy in different poses, supported by my ropes, I’m still going to need to take photos.
Some of the poses I will have her in, I can’t keep her in for endless hours without causing her harm.
The photographs will be necessary to fill in the details once I have gotten at least her main form line down.
Pulling out my camera, I contemplate the tripod. Being able to move more freely might be best for now. I lock up the cabinet, then return to the center of the room, snapping photos of the room and using the natural light filtering in to make adjustments.
My back is to the privacy screen, but I know the exact moment she steps out from behind it. The air shifts and my body locks tight. Being in this space with her, without being able to be with her, is torture. She is so much more to me than the muse for my next collection.
I’d give up the entire collection just to hold her in my arms.
The memory of the last time she was in my arms, unconscious and broken, tries to steal my breath. It’s been sneaking up on me, several times a day, since finding her in that house. How pale she was. The blood on her cheek. Her vacant stare.
Swallowing, I allow the memory to hold for a second, then push it away, inhaling deeply as I turn to face her, bracing myself for what the nude two-piece is going to look like on her.
When I first selected the set, all I had in mind was ensuring her form stayed unmarred, no bubbling fabric or creases not caused by her own skin or my ropes. I’d considered a one-piece, but fabric wouldn’t submit to the knots and weaves the way skin will.
Now, the consequences of my choices are hitting me like a Mack Truck flying down a highway.
Even with how small she is trying to make herself, arms wrapped around her exposed middle, the dark brace around her wrist, and her long brown hair out and falling like a shield as she stares at the ground, she is gorgeous. Broken, but gorgeous.
My broken princess.
But not right now. Right now, she does not need, or even want, me in her life. She is simply here honoring a contract she signed before everything changed for her. I need to honor that too.
Shoving aside all my internal bullshit, I force the usual demeanor I have with models—warm but professional.
“Everything okay with the outfit?” I ask, returning my attention to the camera and fiddling with settings that are perfectly adjusted already.
“Uh, yeah. It was tight with the brace, but it’s okay now.”
It is incredibly hard to ignore the vulnerability in her voice. Every fiber of my being wants to run to her and make it better. To giver her the shirt off my back and force us back into the space where she trusted me completely while I had her naked, tied up, and spread open for anyone to see.
But I don’t. Instead, I gesture at the bag in the center of the room and at the beam. “If you could stand beneath the beam, I’m going to take a few photos for lighting, and then we will begin.”
Silently, Emmy walks to the center of the room, wariness rolling off her in waves. Once she is there, I raise the camera and take a photo, the electronic shutter loud in the room.
“This collection is about the restraints that societal norms have on us.” Click.
Two steps closer. “It will showcase how the strings of what is considered acceptable stop us from moving forward with life, trap us from accepting the things we want. They tie us up and twist our reality until we can’t reach the things that will actually make us happy. ”
Emmy finally looks up at me, and at that exact moment, I press down on the shutter and pull the camera away from my face so that I can check the picture. Heartbreak. Yearning. Need. All of it, captured right there in the digital image.
All of which has been wiped off her face by the time I drag my eyes back to the real-life girl. Now her face is carefully blank, controlled—like a mask she has worn so often, it’s a part of her.
Legs feeling like they are bound to the floor, I force them to move, taking several steps in an arc around her, raising my camera again.
“For the first few weeks, I’m going to be concentrating on simply drawing you in different positions.
I want to get used to the lines of your body and how they translate to canvas so that when it comes time to draw the actual pieces, you won’t need to spend days holding one pose.
We will start off simple, and once you no longer have to wear the brace, we can try a few suspension poses.
Other models may join us for a session or two, but they will not be the feature. ”
She tracks me with her gaze as I continue to move around the room with the camera, sometimes taking a photo and other times just viewing her.
“And how long do you think it will take you to learn the lines of me?” she asks, a hint of disdain in her voice and a single raised eyebrow.
I use the camera to hide my smile at her little spark of sass and take a picture of her, just like that. “It takes as long as it takes. The exhibit has not been given a date yet. It is entirely dependent on my muse.”
I’m not entirely sure what she mutters, but I do catch something about timeframes and open-ended bullshit. This time, I have to turn my back, because hell yeah, I have an open-ended timeframe.
There is not even a sliver of a chance that I’m not going to take full advantage of every moment I have with her to show her that I’m not going anywhere.
None of us are. We will all be here, silently supporting her, no matter how loudly she fights us.
We will take every drop of venom that falls from that pretty little mouth because we all know that we deserve it.
And even though she called red, Xavier is right—she doesn’t truly understand what that means. The concept, sure, but the complete and utter removal of us from her life, no.
This girl has never had anyone fight for her.
She’s been passed around over and over, left behind, traded in.
No one has ever stood by her side when things have gotten hard.
Us included. She has fought through everything life has thrown at her, on her own, making the best decisions she could simply to survive.
But now she has us, and we don’t want to see her just survive; we want her to thrive.
And if that means we have to create intangible strings that tie her to us, then we will.
We’ll strengthen those ties every single day, pouring all the comfort, safety, and support into them that she has missed out on her entire life, until she knows what it’s like to move through life with confidence, not just a heightened survival mode.
If she chooses to cut ties with us after that, only then will we let her go. But I’m really hoping she’ll tie us all into a single knot to keep us by her side.