Chapter 16
Sixteen
FEAR
FEAR ~
TODAY, I discovered that Phillipe was hiding something from me. It’s funny how you can be close to someone and not sense something so very obvious.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve posed, and Phillipe has painted. When we first started out, he told me that he wanted to touch the world and share beauty and emotion with it. Now, he seemed to be keeping the paintings close, keeping me close, and I wanted to know what was holding him back.
I couldn’t help but wonder if it was fear of the critics or fear of the unknown. Either way, I was determined to make him see what I knew the rest of the world would see. I found him down in the arbor this afternoon, and I finally got to the bottom of things.
“How long have you been out here?” I asked as my cane hit the bench.
“An hour or so,” he replied.
I could tell he’d stopped whatever it was he was doing.
“Are you finishing up Acquiesce?”
I could hear the crunch of the gravel as he moved, and then he took my hand, entwining our fingers.
“Yes, I just finished it now. I was trying to get the background just right.”
Nodding, I smiled, knowing what a perfectionist he really was, before I decided to just ask him what was on my mind. “When are you going to take the pieces to that little gallery we talked about?”
He released my hand. I felt him turn and walk away from me.
“Phillipe?” I asked quietly. Something was definitely bothering him. “Talk to me. Why don’t you want to go to town? That’s all you’ve talked about since we first started.”
As the silence stretched between us, I moved to the bench, sitting down. “Will you tell me what’s going on, please? Why won’t you call the gallery owner?”
“I don’t think I want to anymore,” he mumbled.
My mouth dropped open in shock. “What do you mean, you don’t want to? That’s all you’ve ever wanted.” I paused, trying to work out what might have changed his mind. “Is it me? Do you want a different model? I won’t be offended.”
Before I knew it, I felt him sit beside me and take my hands. “Are you crazy? No,” he answered, bringing my knuckles up to his lips.
“Then what?” I asked, running my hand through his hair. “Tell me.”
He turned his face so his lips touched the center of my palm. “I’m scared,” he confessed.
My heart clenched as I tried to understand this complex man I was hopelessly in love with. “Of what?”
“The world.”
Laughing a little, I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Only months ago, you wanted to conquer it.”
There was silence for a moment, and I could hear his breathing. One steady breath in, and one long breath out. “Months ago, I had nothing to lose.”
I continued to thread my fingers through his hair, luxuriating in the thickness of it. “And now you do?”
“Yes,” he told me before he leaned forward, laying his lips on mine. “Now, I have you.”
“Yes, you do. I’m not going anywhere.” I gripped his hair, tugging on it. He relaxed and let me pull his head up. “Is that what you’re worried about? That I’m going to go somewhere?”
I felt a brush of air as he touched my cheek.
“Where would I go, you crazy man?” I asked. “I will only be as far as your heart lets me go.”
“They won’t understand.”
“Who won’t?”
“The world, your parents—they won’t understand what I see when I look at you, how I feel when you play, or the way that I love all of the simple things that make you whole. Some might even say it’s wrong.”
Turning, I told him, “I don’t care about everyone else. I care about you, and I care about me. Do you feel like this is wrong?”
“No,” he replied, letting out a deep breath.
I stroked the shell of his ear. “Then that’s all that matters. Share this with the world. They need to see it. They need to see me as you do.”
Phillipe Tibideau had one fear, and I planned to help him conquer it by never leaving.
As I sit here on a soft chair that Phillipe moved into the corner of the music room, I look at him over the journal. We’ve been down here a little over two hours.
After the soul-destroying way he took me earlier, I’m finding it hard to concentrate on anything other than the man who is sitting directly across from me as he sketches my portrait.
At first, I rejected the idea because I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be studied so closely, especially after having him inside my body so intimately. Who knew what he would see on my face?
His voice intrudes into my thoughts. “What did you just read? You look…pensive.”
I read the last line to him. “Share this with the world. They need to see it. They need to see me as you do.”
He stops sketching. Frowning, I decide to just ask him what I want to know.
“Do you think they did?”
“Do I think they did what?”
“You’re doing it again,” I say, lowering the journal.
“What can I say? I don’t like journalists, but this you already know.” He blows out a breath and runs a hand through his hair.
“Do you really think that I’m going to write something terrible about you?” I ask.
Shaking his head, he moves the sketchpad as he crosses his ankle over his knee. “I don’t know, Gemma. For all I know, you might go home and write a story about how I seduced you and clouded your mind.”
“Would it kill you to trust me?” I snap, closing the journal.
“No,” he states calmly. Those green eyes are now frigid as they connect with mine. “But it might kill you.”
Phillipe watches as Gemma digests his words.
Her shoulders straighten. “You can’t scare me away.”
Raising a brow, he nods. “Okay.”
“You can’t.”
“Okay.”
He starts sketching again. He knows she’s watching him, studying his responses. Nothing makes him more uncomfortable than someone watching his every move. It’s ironic, since he used to wish that one person in particular could watch him—just once.
“So? Do you think the world ever saw her the way that you did?” Gemma asks.
Gritting his teeth, he peers at her through the hair that has fallen forward over his eyes. “No, I don’t think that they did,” he finally answers, “but I think you do.”
He can tell she wasn’t expecting that answer, because she tilts her head to the side.
“What do you mean?”
Continuing to sketch, he looks at her blonde hair, now messy from his hands. The long, soft strands are still ruffled from where he held her as he pushed his cock between her lips. He can’t help the stiffening between his thighs.
“I mean you see her. Every time you look at her, you see her as I did. They didn’t, and they still don’t.”
She nods as she sits up in the chair, leaning forward to rest her hands on her knees.
He knows that she is about to ask a question he doesn’t want to answer.
“Why do you think they don’t get it? Why didn’t they see what you do? Or, for that matter, what I do?”
He wonders if she is prepared for the answer.
“Because they were too busy looking at me and how I looked at her,” he states. He knows he’s talking to her in riddles, but he also understands this is the best way to explain it.
“I don’t understand,” she tells him.
“Haven’t you noticed the things that your colleagues have written about me?” he asks, voice full of venom. “They were all so busy writing about my obsession and my perversion of the poor little blind woman that no one bothered to get to know her. No one bothered to look closer.”
She blinks, trying to comprehend, and then swallows. “I’m looking closer,” she finally whispers.
Phillipe stands and walks over to where she is seated. “And what do you see?”
Licking her lips, she stands, wanting to keep them on even footing. “I see a man who is broken from an experience he couldn’t control. I see you in a way that they didn’t.”
Phillipe shakes his head. “God, you’re so na?ve.
I’m not just broken. I’m twisted inside my own fucking nightmare that never goes away.
I’m fucked on the inside. You’re only seeing what I want to show you.
” Agitated, he firmly grasps the sides of her face.
“There’s a part of you, Gemma, that’s so fucking sweet, and I want to steal that part of you, even though I know I shouldn’t. ”
He cups the back of her neck, tugging her in close to him. She places her hands on his chest. Leaning down, he presses his lips to hers.
“They said I took something beautiful and destroyed it. Slowly, image after image depicted a tale of seductive debauchery. People ate that shit up. They loved it. Until, of course, they got their biggest story: An alluring mixture of dark eroticism that is now enhanced by its devastatingly haunting sadness. The angels must be weeping.” He pauses, letting out a deep breath.
“She was the fucking angel. That’s what no one understood. ”
I feel his breath slide inside of me and can sense the tension rolling off him in waves.
“Why, then? Why didn’t you tell everyone they were wrong? Why did you make it seem like she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone? Why keep her hidden?”
His eyes narrow as he drops his hand from my neck.
He takes a step away. “She didn’t want to be in the public eye.
That was her choice. I respected it, but no one understood that.
They all just assumed that I brainwashed her, leading her astray and making her strip down so I could have my wicked way with her.
” His whole body seems to be vibrating with tension.
“What do you think, Gemma? Was she brainwashed? Should the story of her innocence be retold?”
Shaking my head, I move a step closer to him. “No. I think she was in just as deep as you were. The way she wrote about you showed the level of her own desperation. She was enamored with you.”
“And what about you?”
I place my hand on his strong, solid chest. “I’m entangled with both of you.
If the way you wanted her was perverse in any way, then I am guilty too.
I’m guilty of wanting you both with a hunger that I’ve never had before.
Maybe you are the common denominator, but now, I’m just as much a part of this equation as she was. Phillipe, no one is brainwashing me.”