Chapter Twenty-Three
Reid
Staring at the phone in my hands, I knew I shouldn’t respond to her text, but resisting using this one last way I had to be close to her was a futile effort. I wasn’t strong enough to walk away like she wanted me to.
Seven: Talking to you is the best part of my day. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that sooner.
I was sorry I didn’t tell her a lot of things sooner. Because now I was stuck in this situation where no matter what I did, I was hurting her. But after watching that preppy dipshit flirting with her at the bar earlier, there was no way I was backing off.
Now that she wasn’t hiding behind her anxiety, she was bound to see the men who paid attention to her at the bar. And one of these days—if I continued to hide from my feelings for her—she’d fall for one of them and my heart would slowly turn to stone as I watched her blossom into the confident woman she’d shown me brief glimpses of this week.
Fourteen: I don’t need apologies, I guess I just need some reassurance that my feelings aren’t one sided. If you couldn’t tell, this is all new to me.
Seven: Feeling like this about someone is new to me, too. I’m used to people judging me based upon their preconceived notions of who I am.
And until recently, those preconceived notions weren’t far from the mark, but I was tired of letting them define me. Living up to my reputation wasn’t something I wanted anymore.
Fourteen: I might know something about that. It’s hard to break away from how other people think you should act. That’s why I was so drawn to you, you’ve never made me feel like that.
My heart warmed briefly, fluttering in my chest when I realized she’d essentially done the same for me until she’d let her fears take over. Until she decided the risk of falling for me wasn’t worth it.
Seven: Can you promise me something?
It was selfish of me to even think, much less ask her to promise, but I was going to do it anyway.
Fourteen: Depends on what I’m promising.
And there was my snarky girl.
Seven: Promise me you’ll follow your heart, even if it’s not toward me. You deserve the world, and while I want to be the one to give it to you, I don’t want you to ever doubt that.
Fourteen: Why does it feel like you’re trying to let me down easy?
Because I was terrified once I walked into that party and she discovered everything I’d been keeping from her, that she’d cut me out of her life without a second thought.
Seven: Maybe I’m a little more insecure than I’ve let on.
She wasn’t the only one who doubted herself.
Fourteen: Well, don’t be. You deserve love, too.
My heart ached at the thought she might love Seven. Because she’d made it pretty clear that love wasn’t on the table with me. And that hurt more than I thought it would.
Seven: We’ll see.
Fourteen: Yes. We will.
The next morning, I woke later than expected, rushing through my morning and barely making it downstairs before my first client showed up. Thankfully, my reflexes were still sharp, because I couldn’t afford for a lack of sleep to make me shaky.
I’d only drank three beers before I’d left the bar, unable to watch Hazel talking to that guy before the jealousy started to fester. Then I’d had trouble falling asleep after the text messages, running the entire encounter through my head an unhealthy number of times before I’d finally passed out.
All I’d wanted to do was see if the feelings that had been building for her over the last year were real, but I’d been so short sighted when I’d forced my help with her commissions that I didn’t realize I’d be putting myself in a position to lose it all.
After powering through my handful of clients, I was grateful to have blocked out my schedule for the afternoon so I could take care of paperwork. But no matter how hard I tried; I couldn’t focus on anything but what would happen tomorrow night.
And when my stomach growled, driving me toward the pizza place a mile down the road, I knew what I needed to do.
Hazel’s tablet was sitting on the bar when I let myself in the back door, but the rest of the room was deserted. I briefly wondered if she’d forgotten it here, but knew that couldn’t be the case because she rarely let it out of her sight. Especially lately with the subject matter of her commissions.
A quiet thumping sound coming from the little alcove leading toward the kitchen had me leaving the pizza box on the bar and moving toward the noise. Although I barely held in my laughter when I saw what was causing it.
“Stupid, fucking stupid…” Hazel muttered, letting her forehead drop to the wall again, the sound echoing from the wooden panel.
After the third thump, I stepped into her field of vision, tapping my shoe against the baseboard to get her attention.
“Fuck,” she breathed out, covering her chest with her hand when she realized I was standing there. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to see you literally beating yourself up with the poor, unsuspecting wall.”
“I wasn’t…” she trailed off, reaching up to rub the red spot on her forehead. Part of me was worried she’d hurt herself, but it faded quickly once she’d stopped abusing it.
“Yeah, you were,” I teased, and thankfully, she smiled. Maybe things between us weren’t completely ruined. “And now you’re going to tell me why.”
“It’s stupid,” she muttered, trying to walk around me, but I stepped in front of her, chuckling when she bumped into my chest and looked up at me with narrowed eyes.
“It’s not stupid, kitten. Clearly, something has gotten you all worked up.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re not doing this anymore.”
“Doing what? Talking? You gonna run away from me again? I thought we were past that. I thought we were friends.”
I wanted a whole lot fucking more than that, but I wasn’t confessing that right now. Right now, I needed to help her fix whatever was stressing her out.
“This isn’t a problem you can help with anymore. We decided we weren’t those kinds of friends. ”
Needing to remind her she was the one who made that decision, not me, I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “So, this is about a commission?”
“No.”
“Liar,” I teased, secretly enjoying it when her expression morphed from uncertainty to something a little more heated. “What’s wrong? I thought things were getting easier once you started using the photos as references. Maybe someone shouldn’t have pushed their photographer away so quickly.”
“They are—were—I don’t fucking know. I can’t get the proportions right, and now I just want to erase the whole thing. But she needs it for a PR package going out in a month and it takes two weeks to get prints…”
I’d seen her like this before—moments where she let her nerves get the best of her. Deciding I’d deal with the fallout later; I pulled her into my arms and tucked her head underneath my chin.
“Breathe, Haz. Show me. I’ll see if I can help.”
After unexpectedly squeezing me back, she broke free of my hold, reaching to grab her tablet and clutching it to her chest.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad. If you're in a tight spot, you can always take a picture of me and use it.”
“No!” she shouted, her cheeks turning pink before she lowered her voice. “I mean, no thank you. Not this one. It won’t work. I can’t ask you to…”
Before she could plot an escape, I pried the tablet out of her hands, quickly typing in the passcode and studying the image she was drawing in her illustration software.
It was just as detailed as her previous works, but instead of it being a couple in the photo, the subject was a man sitting in a chair.
A mostly nude man sitting with his hand wrapped around a blank space where I was assuming a dick would go.
“Um. Is this dude human?”
While none of the commissions she’d shared with me were otherworldly creatures, I knew that fantasy romance was popular right now .
“Yes,” she mumbled, her voice muted through the hands now covering her face.
“Does he have an invisible penis?”
She shook her head, still refusing to look at me. “Well, right now he does, but no.”
Taking her distraction as an opportunity, I swiped up, studying the other windows she had open to see if she’d been watching porn again to draw this guy.
But instead of porn, I found a Google drive folder labeled Peen Portraits. Hazel was still refusing to look at me, so I clicked on the window, scrolling through the very detailed anatomical studies of the male appendage that filled the folder. There were dozens of them.
She’d been a very busy girl over the last few months. And I was a little jealous she’d been looking at this many dicks on the Internet but hadn’t uncovered mine. I wanted to make a comment about Goldilocks finding just the right dick, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t go over well.
“Looks like you’ve been practicing. A girl doesn’t have a folder full of illustrated dicks and not know how to draw one.”
She grabbed the tablet from me, narrowing her eyes, before she turned to walk away. “Laugh it up. Cause, apparently, I am that girl. I’ve tried like ten times and none of them look right.”
“Show me.”
Pointing to the counter between us, I waited until she laid the tablet down, navigating back to her current drawing.
She turned on the first layer and I winced, taking in the massive erection protruding disproportionately from between his spread thighs.
“That thing looks like it could dislocate a hip.”
“I know,” she whispered, using her finger to scale the size down, but it still didn’t look like it belonged to the man in the chair.
Hiding the layer, she pulled up the next one, and I tilted my head to the side, trying to figure out why this one didn’t look right. “Did you draw the head of his dick backwards? ”
“Shut up,” she growled, switching to the next one.
“Why is that one so shiny? Did Midas give him a hand job?”
“I hate you,” she hissed, glaring at me as I tried to hold back a laugh. “I was trying a new brush, and it clearly didn’t go well when I was trying to paint in the highlights.”
Nudging her out of the way, I swapped the layer for the next one, snorting when it looked abnormally skinny and didn’t fill the fist of the man attempting to hold it. The head was also oddly flat on top. “This one brings a whole new meaning to pencil dick . The head looks like an eraser.”
Her little growl was back as her hand reached for the tablet, but I was faster, moving it to the side before she could take it away.
Pulling up the next layer, I tilted my head, trying to figure out what she’d done to make it look so…furry.
“Are you sure he’s human? He looks like he’s hiding a wild animal in his pants. Or maybe he’s a secret werewolf.”
“If you must know…” she trailed off, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Don’t leave me hanging now,” I coaxed, unable to hold in laughter at the next one. She’d somehow managed to make this one look limp against his hold, despite the size of it. “Not like you did to this guy.”
“I told you they were terrible. They’re either too big, or too veiny, or too shiny. And now I won’t get more work because all these authors are going to figure out I’m an inexperienced virgin and don’t even know what a penis looks like in person.”
“That’s not strictly true,” I reminded her. Technically, she had confessed to seeing mine.
“Well, I don’t know what an erect one looks like and it’s not like I can ask you to figure model pose for this one, and…”
“Why not? You’ve drawn nude models before me.” I’d seen her figure drawing sketchbook when she had taken a few courses in undergrad with nude models .
“They weren’t hard with cum running down the back of their hand.” Well, no. That they definitely were not… She’d left those details out.
“Did you draw that part, too?” I teased, an amused thrill running through me as her cheeks flushed. I shouldn’t be teasing her like this, but I also didn’t want to stop. “Where is that one hiding?”
“Reid, seriously. I’m just gonna tell her I can’t do this and give her deposit back.”
Shaking my head, a plan started formulating in my head. There was no way I was letting her give up on herself this easily. “No, you’re not. Do you work tonight?”
She took in a deep breath and uttered the only word I needed to hear. “No.”
“Then give me an hour and I’ll be back.”
Her hand darted out, grabbing my arm before I could walk around her. I should have felt bad at the fear clearly visible in her eyes, but I didn’t.
“Reid, no. This is too far. I can’t ask you to do this.”
But she wasn’t asking me…and I was doing it. Because there was no way in hell I was letting her give up on herself when I could do something about it. Even if it meant knocking down the walls she’d been trying to erect around herself.
“I’m volunteering. Send me the scene from the book and I’ll make it happen.”