Chapter 25 JADE
JADE
This is who I really am. Not the woman on magazine covers, not the carefully constructed person the world thinks they know. Just a photographer with a story to tell. With stories to share. Right now, I am Sin Jay.
Declan's night shift ended at three. With the stalker behind bars, security protocols have relaxed slightly. Enough for me to slip out unnoticed, I hope.
My phone vibrates with a notification: Uber, three minutes away.
I take one last glance around my room, eyes lingering on the bed where I've spent the last hours staring at the ceiling, sleep impossible after what happened in the butterfly house.
The memory of Declan's lips on mine, the surprising gentleness of his massive hands, the vulnerability in his eyes when I touched his scar.
It all swirls through my mind in an endless loop.
Along with the knowledge that I've now kissed all three of my bodyguards.
What am I doing? What kind of game am I playing?
No, not a game. Never that. What I feel for them, all of them, is too real, too raw to be anything but genuine. Which only makes it more terrifying.
I shake off the thoughts and slip out through the garden entrance, sticking to the shadows until I reach the service gate. The security panel beeps softly as I enter the code. A moment's hesitation. If I leave, I'm breaking their trust, putting myself at risk.
But the stalker's been caught. The danger is over. And I need this. I need to reconnect with my art, with the project that matters most to me right now.
The Uber arrives, a nondescript sedan with a sleepy-eyed driver who barely glances at me as I slide into the backseat.
"Downtown, please," I direct him. "Sixth and San Pedro."
He nods, pulling away from the curb, and I watch my house disappear behind us, feeling the weight of expectation lift with each mile we put between us.
Forty minutes later, dawn is just beginning to lighten the eastern sky as I step out of the car into a different world.
Skid Row. The epicenter of Los Angeles' homelessness crisis, where more than five thousand people live in tents, makeshift shelters, or directly on the sidewalks.
Where society's most vulnerable exist in plain sight, yet remain invisible to most.
Not to me. Not anymore.
I started this photo series six months ago, before the stalking, before the bodyguards entered my life.
"Unseen/Seen" is the working title. A collection of portraits and stories of those living on the margins, focusing primarily on homeless women.
Their resilience, their struggles, their humanity beyond the statistics and stereotypes.
I pull my hood up as I walk, camera still safely tucked in my backpack. Not out of fear, but out of respect. This isn't about me swooping in with my expensive equipment to document suffering. It's about relationships built over months, trust earned through consistency and genuine care.
The underpass ahead is already stirring with morning activity. People emerging from tents, queuing at a mobile washing station set up by a local outreach group, preparing for another day of survival in one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
"Angel!" The nickname comes from a familiar voice, and I turn to see Maria approaching, her weathered face breaking into a broad smile.
At sixty-seven, she's been on the streets for nearly a decade after escaping a domestic violence situation.
She's become something of a matriarch in this particular encampment, looking after younger women, coordinating with aid organizations.
"I thought you'd forgotten about us," she says, pulling me into a hug that smells of the industrial soap from the mobile showers.
"Never," I promise, returning her embrace. "Just had some... complications in my life. But I'm back now."
She studies my face with the keen perception that's helped her survive out here. "Troubles?"
I smile ruefully. "Nothing I can't handle. How have you been? Is your cough better?"
"Don't change the subject," she chides, but allows it. "The medicine helped. That doctor friend of yours, she's good people."
We walk together toward the community area where several residents gather around a makeshift table, sharing coffee from a large thermos.
I'm greeted with varying degrees of familiarity.
Some with hugs, others with cautious nods.
New faces study me warily. Trust here isn't given easily, nor should it be.
Over the next hour, I listen more than I photograph.
Anita's daughter finally reached out after three years of silence.
Jessie lost her spot at the shelter after a fight but found a safer tent community.
Tanya, barely eighteen, ran away from foster care and is trying to finish high school online through the library computers.
Their stories pour out, punctuated by laughter, tears, anger, hope. I take notes in a small weathered journal, writing down quotes, details, the things that statistics miss. Only when conversations naturally lull do I ask permission to take portraits.
"Remember," I tell a newcomer, a woman in her forties named Beth who's been homeless for just two months, "this isn't about making you look pitiful or creating poverty porn. This is about seeing you, really seeing you. You control how you want to be portrayed."
She nods, eyes wary but willing. When I raise my camera, something shifts in her posture. She straightens, meets the lens directly. The dignity in her gaze is exactly what I want to capture. The unwavering humanity that persists despite circumstances designed to strip it away.
As I work, thoughts of Declan, Ethan, and Mateo filter through my consciousness.
In some strange way, this project and my feelings for them are connected.
Both about seeing beyond surfaces, about the courage it takes to be truly vulnerable, about the arbitrary ways society decides who deserves what kind of life, what kind of love.
What would happen if I pursued what I feel for all three of them? The world would judge, certainly. Call me greedy, immoral, confused. Slut. The tabloids would have a field day.
But here, among people who've been forced to create their own definitions of family, of community, of what matters, the arbitrary rules of conventional society seem less important.
"You're somewhere else today, Angel," Maria observes as I lower my camera after capturing an elderly man named Walter with his beloved dog. "Your body's here but your mind's off playing hide-and-seek."
I offer her a half-smile, fidgeting with my camera settings to avoid her perceptive gaze. "Guilty," I say with a sigh.
She squints at me over the rim of her chipped coffee mug. "Ah... I recognize that sigh. Love and its complications, am I right?"
"Something like that. Saying it's complicated is an understatement."
"Love is complicated. Messy. Unsettling. And more times than not... It hurts. It ends, leaving you bruised and battered, trying to pick up the pieces of your heart and your life."
I look at her, startled. Maria rarely talks about her past.
"Then, why put yourself through it?" I ask.
"Because 'we're creatures of contact regardless of whether we kiss or we wound.' And to this I add, regardless if we suffer."
I recognize the quote from David Rakoff. The one that uses the metaphor of the Scorpion and the Tortoise to advocate that it's better to drown than to stay dry, but alone on the shore.
And there’s the irony, Ethan, Declan and Mateo are in my life because I almost drowned. Rakoff was right. Better to drown in something real than stand dry and untouched, alone on the shore.
"It's not... conventional," I say tentatively. "I don't even know if that's the correct term. I think it's the type of thing that would be, at the least, frowned upon."
Maria's weathered hand covers mine, stilling my nervous movements. "Look around you, Angel. What do you see?"
I glance at the encampment. The makeshift community built from necessity and shared struggle. People who've lost everything but still found ways to care for each other.
"People who've been abandoned by everyone who was supposed to protect them," I say quietly. "People surviving anyway."
"Yes," she agrees. "But also people who've created new kinds of families, new kinds of love. Out here, we can't afford to turn away connections just because it doesn't look like what we were taught it should."
She squeezes my hand. "Love is love. It may take many shapes and forms, but in the end it is just that. Love. The world will judge, but the world judges us all anyway. Might as well be judged for loving too much rather than too little."
Her words settle in me. A permission I didn't know I needed. Before I can respond, something yanks hard at my shoulder.
My balance tips forward and I gasp. My backpack is gone.
"Hey!" I shout, spinning to see a figure sprinting away, my camera bag bouncing against his back.
I'm on my feet, about to chase, when a blur of motion slams into the thief from the side. A body. A man.
They both crash to the ground in a tangle of limbs and gravel.
The thief scrambles to his feet and sprints off empty-handed. My bag is left behind.
But I'm not looking at the bag.
I'm looking at the man who holds it now, rising to his full height in a slow, furious unfurling.
Ethan.
His jaw is clenched, eyes blazing with fury, not just at the thief, but at me.
I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.
"Say your goodbyes," he cuts me off, scanning the area with the hypervigilant gaze I've come to know so well.
His eyes linger on Maria, on the others watching curiously from a distance.
The coldness in his voice stings, but I understand the tight control he's maintaining.
I turn to Maria, who's watching with unabashed interest.
"I have to go," I tell her, embracing her quickly. "I'll be back soon, I promise."
"Mmm-hmm." She eyes Ethan appraisingly. "Take your time, girl..."
I feel heat rush to my cheeks.
"Good-looking but wound too tight," she observes. "Needs someone to help him loosen up." She winks, patting my arm. "Go on now. Don't keep your man waiting."
I say my farewells to the others, promising to return with prints of today's photos. All the while, I feel Ethan's presence behind me, silent and radiating disapproval.
When I finally turn back to him, his expression is carefully neutral, but his eyes blaze with contained fury. He gestures toward the street where his car is parked, illegally, in a loading zone.
"Let me explain," I begin as we walk.
"Save it," he says tersely. "We'll talk when we're somewhere secure."
We reach the car in silence. He opens the passenger door, waiting for me to get in. When I hesitate, still trying to formulate an explanation that doesn't sound juvenile or selfish, his patience snaps.
"Get in the car, Jade!" The command cracks between us, his voice raised for the first time since I've known him.
I freeze.
His tone has dropped to something dangerous. Something final. The world shrinks to the space between us.
We stare at each other. A battle of wills waiting to explode.