Epilogue
ANNA
THE ANNA COLE EXHIBIT
“ D o you want me to take you home?”
I shook my head vigorously, but I was tempted. I was sweating, and if I’d eaten anything today, I would’ve thrown it up already.
“I can’t go home. This is my first show.”
Carter and I lingered in the museum’s back office, waiting for the official reception to start. I finally stopped pacing and sat down in an armchair. He came behind me to rub my tense shoulders. His firm fingers worked the knots that had situated themselves there over the last several weeks planning the exhibition.
I sighed, relaxing into the sensation.
“Artists don’t have to be present at their shows. That’s what the curator is for.” He pressed a kiss to one of my temples.
Yeah, and I would leave, eventually, but I’d been waiting for this day for months. Technically, I’d been waiting for this day for years.
When I first decided I wanted to be a photographer, this was what I envisioned. An exhibit where I could use my images to tell a story and watch as the people slowly made their way through, finding that story one photograph at a time.
“Do you know how many people are outside?”
“I didn’t count them. Maybe a hundred?” Carter offered with a shrug. I turned around, frowning at him. He cupped my face and kissed me.
“Maybe?” I snapped, more annoyed than I needed to be. We weren’t all used to being right in the middle of the spotlight, though I should’ve been more used to it by now, after all the insanity of my father’s trial and the press that came with it.
For the first month, I could barely leave the beach house without putting the paparazzi in danger of being offed by my fiancé for coming too close.
“You got this, okay? You do it all the time. Milling around a crowd and making small talk? You’re a pro.”
If he was referring to the stuffy formal events I used to go to with my family, and now with him, yeah, I was. That didn’t mean I enjoyed them.
This was different.
Here, I was showing people my photographs. Putting a piece of myself on display. Somehow I couldn’t have felt more exposed even if I walked out there stark naked.
“If we go out there and you decide you’d rather hear the praise later in the paper and from the curator than right from the public’s mouth, we’ll say our goodbyes and leave right then.”
I closed my eyes, comforted by his tight grasp. But I knew there was another reason he was so eager to get me out of here. Why he didn’t really want me presenting in person at all.
And that reason just kicked, making me wrap a protective arm over my swollen belly.
“Okay,” I allowed.
“You know what beats stress?” Carter’s dark brow raised deviously. “Orgasms. Lots and lots of orgasms.”
I pushed him away as he laughed.
“I am not having sex in the museum’s office,” I snapped, unable to keep the smile off my face. Carter was so many things at once, it was hard to keep up. Living with a boyfriend wasn’t new to me, but living with him was. I was still uncovering new sides and shades of him every day. Some familiar, some not.
But each day I stayed with him, he seemed to relax into us just a little more and little by little, that boy on the beach was coming back to life.
“Nobody’s going to walk in. Besides, the door locks,” he said dubiously. “I checked.”
Of course he did.
I shook my head again, getting up to walk past him, feeling the weight of my round belly more heavily than usual.
He wasn’t totally wrong—normally, sex with him made me relax. He could get me out of my head and back into my body with a few well-spaced orgasms.
But I didn’t want to relax this time. I wanted to feel all of this, anxiety and nerves and all.
“It’s time,” I breathed, placing my hands over my belly. “Let’s go.”
Carter’s expression tightened a fraction, but he swept open the door despite his own unadmitted anxiety.
Heading out into the exhibition space, I took a couple of deep breaths to occupy myself with something other than my racing thoughts. I wiped my sweaty hands on my deep olive-toned dress, searching for one of the waiters.
One passed with a tray of champagne and what I wouldn’t give to take the edge off with one of those shimmering flutes…
“Could you bring my wife a glass of water,” Carter asked the waiter, stopping him with a grip on the elbow.
“Right away.”
“You have to stop that,” I chastised as the waiter scurried off to fetch me a non-alcoholic drink.
“Making sure you’re hydrated?”
“Calling me your wife.”
His sea blue eyes glimmered with amusement as he lifted my left hand and pressed a kiss to the diamond on my ring finger. “This is my ring on your finger, is it not, little siren?”
I tugged it from him with a coy smile. “Maybe.”
“And this.” He rubbed his palm over my belly, earning himself a little kick from the growing babe within. “This is mine, too?”
“Ours,” I corrected him.
“Ours,” he conceded. “And remind me again the name of this exhibit. Was it…the Anna Cole Exhibit?”
I swatted him. “That’s because I didn’t want the press of using the Vaughn name.”
“Well, Anna, darling, I’ve considered you my wife since the moment you said yes. And you know what I think?”
“What?”
He leaned down to flick my nose with his, whispering over my lips. “I think you like it.”
When he kissed me, my body hummed with feeling, making my belly tighten and a tingle shoot all the way to my toes.
I mourned the loss of him with a sad moan as he pulled away with victory in his stare.
“Come on, Mrs. Cole. We better get you out there before I change my mind and drag you back into that office.”
The crowd in the gallery looked about as big as he had estimated. People walked around the space, viewing my work in the way I intended, directed by the curator and her assistants.
I agonized for months over how to display it. The museum’s curator was a huge help, and I had Olivia and Summer to give me second opinions. A few group shots were blown up to the full wall-size. Immediately, viewers could feel like they were walking right into the Butterfly Room. They were a little more spaced out as you walked deeper into the room, so you could spend time examining each one in finer detail before moving on to the next.
The day before, I’d shown the gallery off to the harshest critics of all. My friends from the Butterfly Room had agreed that they didn’t want to come to the official opening. They didn’t want to have to answer questions about their lives from strangers. But each of them was thrilled to be featured and couldn’t wait to see how much each image would earn.
It was surreal—seeing them again. Carter flew them out from Chicago a day early and put them each up in a luxury suite. I brought the women into the museum yesterday, fully prepared for them to tell me they hated it. Instead, every single one of them told me they loved it. We laughed together, remembering the time Vanessa got food poisoning from eating expired chocolate cake, or when a patron tipped me 200% for convincing the DJ to play nothing but Shania Twain music for an hour.
They left me with long bear hugs in exchange for a promise that I’d visit them soon. I left the preview feeling like I was floating on air.
Now, I felt like I was nothing but a tiny spec in a sea of giants.
It was one thing for your trusted friends to tell you they liked your work. It was another to face the criticism of a hundred upper class art collectors, ready to tell you exactly how derivative you were.
I watched as patrons filtered in from the outside. Clutching their champagne, they examined each photo with expressions I couldn’t read.
Photographers snapped pictures of them in all their finery. Some frowned as they examined my photos, and a few laughed. I wished I could know they were having a real emotional reaction to the shots, or if they were laughing at me.
My stomach tumbled.
“Satisfied?” Carter asked. “Can I take you home?”
He brushed his arm against mine, a wolfish smirk on his face. That face made a shiver run down my spine.
I kissed him, knowing there were people with cameras around and not giving a single fuck. Seeing my name next to his on a tabloid site had been surreal the first time it happened. I always knew he was considered the city’s most eligible bachelor but I wasn’t ready for the attention, negative and positive, that the woman who managed to lock down a man like that ended up getting.
I received hate mail and congratulations at an almost 1:1 ratio. I couldn’t blame them. I was lucky. Possibly the luckiest girl alive.
“Am I interrupting something?”
I pulled away, seeing my mother standing there with a small smile on her face. My lips parted in shock as I self-consciously slid out of Carter’s arms.
“Mom, so glad you made it.” I swallowed, hands unconsciously going to my belly. She hugged me, pausing to say hi to the baby, and went to shake Carter’s hand.
He ignored it and pulled her into a bracing hug. She looked at me with wide eyes over his shoulder, and I suppressed an awkward laugh.
“I’m happy to be here, darling. I’m so proud of you,” she said, flattening out the creases in her blouse as Carter let her go.
I’d never seen in her a shade of lipstick so bold and red, and with the spider brooch on her blazer jacket she looked every bit the Spider-Woman the tabloids had named her. Over lunch all those months ago she told me she secretly loved the name and planned to embrace it. It seemed she had.
“Have you thought of names yet?”
I had, but Carter and I hadn’t discussed it so I shook my head. “I have an idea, but nothing official yet. You’ll know as soon as we do.”
Carter gave me a curious look before turning his attention back to my mom. “Have you had a chance to walk through the exhibit?” he asked.
His hand on my waist felt protective, and I put my hand over his, sliding closer to him as my pulse began to slow and calm.
“Not yet. I wanted to say hello first, I haven’t seen you since you were barely showing. But look at you now. You’re glowing.”
My cheeks flushed. At least she hadn’t seen me in the first trimester. I’d been a wreck, all too happy to let Carter barricade us into the villa to avoid seeing a soul while I was perpetually green with nausea and he had doctors coming to take my vitals daily.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’ll take a walk around. Maybe we can do lunch this week?”
I nodded. Things would never be perfect between us, but they improved the longer we were without my father’s cage.
He turned to me when she walked away. “You’ve thought of names?”
Nervous energy raced through me, raising goosebumps along my arms. “If it’s a girl I was thinking maybe Brandy.”
Carter’s face went absolutely still with momentary shock before his eyes began to soften and I watched his Adams apple bob.
“Brandy Michelle,” I added. “It has a nice ring to it and honors two of the strongest women I know.”
His lips pulled up at one edge and he bent to plant a kiss atop my head. “It’s absolutely perfect.”
I closed my eyes, just breathing him in for a few heartbeats before I had to go back to being a nervous wreck in a room full of people who wanted my attention.
“She saw it by the way,” Carter said, distracting me. “The ring.”
“No way, I totally hid my hand,” I said, my thumb feeling for the platinum band on my finger at the mention of it. It was the first time I’d worn the obnoxious ring in public and to be totally honest, it was kind of hard not to notice it.
Carter looked pleased with himself, as if now that my mother had seen the ring it made it more real. In his mind, there were no take backs now.
I rolled my eyes. Carter had proposed at least ten times before I cracked. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry him. I think a part of me always knew I would. I just wanted to do it on my terms.
“Now that she knows, we have to get hitched,” he said, the mirth in his eyes and seriousness of his voice contradicting each other.
“Is that so?”
“We can do it however you want. Big and lavish. A quiet ceremony. I’d settle for going to the courthouse if you prefer. I just want?—”
“To be tied to me in every way possible,” I finished for him and he gave me that rare soft smile.
“Exactly.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“After the baby is born we can set a date. And I want it small, just our closest friends and family.”
He looked down at me like I’d just given him the world on a string. “I can’t wait to get you out of here. How much longer are you going to make me wait?”
“I’ll let you know when I’m finished,” I said coyly.
He groaned, reaching out to give me a squeeze before I pulled away to mingle, feeling just a smidge more confident than I had five minutes ago.
I shook a few hands and gave a few smiles, all with Carter hovering next to me like my own personal shadow monster, intimidating most people away before they could get too close.
“Carter,” a voice came from the front entrance, and we turned to see some of Carter’s friends enter with their wives.
“You bastards actually made it,” Carter said, shaking the hand of the man on the left. I’d met him once before, when he stopped by for a drink with Carter as he was passing through. His name was Ruarc Monroe, and he was probably the most terrifying human being I’d ever laid eyes on, but he was polite enough, and had a great laugh.
“Wouldn’t miss it. You remember my wife, Emily?”
She was a vision in black silk. A real life Morticia Adams but with a heart shaped face and big, soft eyes.
“Nice to finally meet you,” Emily said, making a point of shaking my hand before Carter’s.
“Okay, move along,” Carter’s other friend, Enzo Zanetti said, shoving Ruarc out of the way as if he hadn’t just affronted the devil. “He pulled Carter in for a manly hug, thumping him on the back. Even though Enzo was nearly twice my age, he didn’t really seem it. Especially when he was with his wife, Nina. Probably because she was also half his age. She was such a bright light with her long golden hair and perpetual smiles.
“And look at this,” Enzo said as Carter pulled away, reaching for my belly.
Carter stepped in his path, putting his hands on Enzo’s shoulders as he leaned in to whisper something into his ear that had Enzo straightening with an amused, if a little concerned, expression.
“Right,” Enzo said, straightening his jacket. “We’re here to see some photos. Where do we start.”
I explained how they should view the Exhibit and their wives dragged them away to start the show.
“What did you say to him?” I asked Carter when they were out of earshot and he fake coughed into his fist, looking innocent as he asked me to repeat myself.
“What did you say?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I thought about it. “Yes.”
He pursed his lips. “I told him if he touched your belly I’d break his hands.”
I felt my lips part in surprise. If that was how he reacted to a friend, how would he react to a stranger trying to cop a feel of the belly?
“Are you angry?” he asked, his jaw tight.
But…no. I wasn’t. Not really.
“I know who I agreed to marry,” I answered instead, feeling a smile pull at my lips that was mirrored on his.
He dipped his head to my cheek, whispering against my neck. “Please tell me you’ve had enough because I can’t stand not being inside of you for another second.”
His words went straight to my core, setting me on fire, but I needed to at least let the curator know we were leaving.
“Give me a minute?”
“I’ll give you forever.”
THE END