“This is lovely,” Hailey whispered, awestruck.
It was more than lovely. On the way to New York, Nathan told her how devastating it was to lose his grandmother, how she’d always been his fiercest champion. It was a heartbreaking tribute. Rachel hid the tears clouding her eyes by pretending to study his signature. “It’s brilliant.”
She opened the next one more quickly. But when she pulled the paper away, her heart bottomed into her stomach. It was a self-portrait. Nathan’s head was bowed and most of his face was hidden behind a harsh shadow, but the charcoal drawing was unmistakably him. It was black and white except for his tattoos, which he’d re-created in vivid color. The phoenix on his arm had been formed with red and yellow pressed leaves, layered to create the illusion of real feathers. He’d burned the bottom right half of the canvas, forming a jagged black void that encroached upward, threatening to consume him.
Rachel glanced at Hailey. “What do you think?”
“Me?” Her face was flushed. “That’s him, isn’t it? Nathan?”
“Yes.”
“Beautiful.” Her face reddened even more. “It’s beautiful, I mean. He’s very talented.” She opened her mouth, closed it, and then spoke in a breathless rush. “What is he doing?”
Rachel studied his figure, the clenched muscles along his neck and shoulders, the bulging biceps, the intense expression that could be pain, pleasure, frustration—the euphoric torture of being pulled to the edge of release, but not allowed to reach it. She’d made him beg for it at the lake house, a gradual destruction with his heart thundering beneath her hand.
The sound of paper being ripped brought her back to the present. Rachel started to protest, but Hailey had already torn the last of it away. “Oh my god,” Hailey whispered, shock replacing her earlier reverence.
At first, Rachel thought it was another woman. She didn’t look at her own naked body often enough to recognize it instantly. She usually saw herself in pieces. A dimpled thigh. An old scar across her stomach. Only flaws. But it was her hair that finally made it register. She knew those mixed-pattern curls from countless years of wrestling them into submission.
He’d drawn her at the lake house, during that late golden hour, when the sky was glowing and her limbs were liquid. She had reclined on a window seat surrounded by white pillows as he sketched on a notepad with a ballpoint pin. Everything had stopped. The lake was still, and the sun hung forever in that perfect spot in the sky. For Rachel, it seemed that the world had held its breath for one long, flawless moment and Nathan had re-created it all on his canvas.
It was mixed media like the others, but less precise, a chaotic mass of charcoal, ash, and oil paint, with her image pulled from the wreckage. The lines were hazy, as if her nude body were made of smoke. Except her eyes. They were drawn with such accuracy that it almost looked like a photograph cut and pasted in. They were also the darkest part of the work, midnight pools dotted with light that looked like stars. Rachel was so mesmerized by her own gaze that she didn’t hear Hailey speak at first. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Is that you?” Hailey pointed to the portrait. Rachel thought about Mia’s lioness and smiled.
“Yes. That’s me.”
“But it’s not you you, right? This is him guessing. Or maybe he found an old photograph?” Hailey’s voice lifted slightly. She sounded like Matt, begging for another lie. Or Herman, waving that envelope around. Their voices cascaded together, tempting her to take the convenient excuse Hailey was offering. Just one more. One more lie to make it easier.
But it would never be just one more. There would be another lie each time Faith wrote a check from that trust. Or in every moment Rachel pretended there was anything in her life with Matt worth saving. It was in every second she didn’t tell Nathan how she felt.
Love would be so much easier if it were perfect, if it came to you at just the right time from exactly the right person. But love was rushing to capture dawn with brushstrokes. It was an untouched photograph slightly overexposed and gorgeously flawed in all the ways that made it real. Staring at her portrait, Rachel could finally appreciate it in herself. The messy mistakes that had molded her. The chaotic passion that made her human.
“He’s my lover.” Just saying it, finally, soothed so much pain. “Or he was. He left me because I wasn’t brave enough to turn down the fifteen million dollars Herman Abbott offered so I wouldn’t leave his cheating son.”
Hailey swallowed hard. “What?”
Rachel told her about Matt’s affair and how he’d changed his mind about wanting a divorce. Each confession felt like medicine. Hailey inched farther back as she spoke. “He must be bored by his mistress,” Rachel said. “Girlfriend. Whatever the hell she was.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“No. And I don’t care. She can have him.”
Hailey’s face had paled to a sickly gray color. “Matt wouldn’t do something like that. He’s a good, honorable man.”
Hailey wasn’t a friend, but Rachel respected her enough to be sympathetic. She used to be the same, enabling Matt’s obliviousness with unquestioning loyalty and trust. “Your boss isn’t honorable, Hailey. He’s just a politician.”
Hailey’s face crumpled, and she let her clipboard fall to the floor. Rachel touched her arm. “Hey, I’m not looking to derail anyone’s career, including yours. I just want a divorce. No one has to find out about any of this.”
“I’m so sorry, Rachel.” Hailey shook her head. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry he did that to you.”
“No, I’m sorry. This whole thing is a mess, and you got dragged into it.”
Rachel’s mind went back to the gala, her panic increasing. They had only a few hours before people would start arriving. She hurriedly opened Nathan’s final piece, a landscape of Oasis Springs. He’d drawn the business district that housed Vasquez Industries in charcoal on parchment that he’d torn down the middle. Beneath the jagged rip was an oil painting of a coffee farm, rendered in vivid color, and dotted with the dark silhouettes of farm workers, the city’s original citizens.
Abuelita, his self-portrait, and the landscape could be a series honoring his family and their role in the town. The nude would twist everything into a sex scandal. “I need to put this somewhere,” Rachel said, grabbing her portrait.
Hailey ran a shaky hand over her face. “Let me take care of it.” Rachel started to protest, but Hailey insisted. “This is what I do, remember? Control the narrative.” She touched the frame with light fingers and a tight smile. “Trust me. I’ll put it somewhere Matt will never find it.”