Secrets: The Complete Collection

by H. M. Ward

  I’m not sure where he’s going, but Cole continues walking in front of me and crosses the room. My heart rate steadies, but there’s still something intimate about this. I inhale a little too deeply and notice it’s Cole’s cologne that I like after I’ve already done it. Guilt flames my cheeks and I pretend that I didn’t do it.

  Cole passes straight through the room without comment, and pulls open the closet doors. A light pops on. It’s a huge walk-in with clothing lining both walls and a chair. Oak drawers and shelves line the lower part of the walls. The room smells like Cole. I don’t cross the threshold. I stop and watch him.

  Cole crosses the wardrobe in three strides, and reaches for a knob at the back of the closet and pulls open a door. There’s a tiny darkened closet back there filled with large rectangle-shaped sheets. Those must be the paintings. I don’t understand why they are hidden in his closet if he values them.

  He looks back at me. As if reading my mind, he says, “They’re hidden for a reason. What I’m showing you is rarely seen. I’m curious what you think—and terrified.” He swallows hard, his sapphire eyes on my face. He stands there for a moment, suspended like he can’t decide if he wants to show me or not.

  My voice is small. I step toward him asking, “Why would it matter what I think? I’m nobody.” Condensation is beading on my glass. I wipe a trail through it with my thumb. I don’t look up at him. I don’t want to see his face when he answers.

  There’s a pause before he says, “That’s where you’re entirely wrong.”

  I lift my eyes and see him watching me. Cole’s blue gaze makes my stomach feel like it’s in a free fall. His lips part like he’s going to say more, but he doesn’t. I wish he would. I wish he felt comfortable saying his secrets to me, but I suppose this is a secret. The paintings are something he doesn’t show people and I’m standing here waiting to see them. A warm glow spreads through me until I remember the circumstances of my being here. It was to prove a point, and nothing more. I clutch my glass harder.

  Instead of saying more, Cole reaches into the shadows and pulls out a large painting that’s draped with a white sheet. Moving closer, I walk into his dressing room holding my breath. Goosebumps line my arms. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I’m nervous. My stomach is twisting and I don’t know why.

  Cole’s voice is too soft. He hands me the painting and says, “Here.” I take it from him.

  “Cole,” I stand there frozen. For some reason this doesn’t feel like he’s just trying to prove a point. I can’t pull the sheet off. It feels like I’m seeing something forbidden.

  After a moment, Cole glances at me, “Just look at it, Anna.”

  I swallow hard and pull the sheet. The drape falls to the floor and I don’t understand what I’m seeing. I feel Cole behind me, but he’s silent. My eyes take in the piece of art in my hands. The stretched canvas is too big to hold for long, so I set it down. It has no frame, just a black edge. My gaze follows the blue lines across the painting. It’s the curves of a woman’s body, her neck, her arms, her waist, her breasts, but I can’t see her. She’s lost in shadow. It’s a sensual showcasing of her curves in shadow and light. I’m mute, staring at it. While the piece is stunning, that isn’t what rendered me speechless. I can’t admit why I’m drawn to it.

  I swallow the lump in my throat as I stare. I move closer, trying to understand how it was created. It looks like a photograph printed on canvas that was painted, but the light is so unusual. It almost looks like watercolors, soft and pure.

  I find my voice and ask, “How was this done? Why does your light source look like that?”

  “I promise I’ll tell you,” Cole says, “But tell me what you think.”

  I swallow hard. I feel the longing in this piece. I can’t stop staring at it. “It’s beautiful,” I breathe. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The light is so pale it looks like she’s been painted, but it’s not a painting—is it? It’s a photograph, or at least it started that way.” I reach out to touch it and stop myself.

  “Go ahead,” he says, allowing me to commit a cardinal sin. My fingers slide across the smooth canvas. I can’t fathom how he made it. “What else?” I feel his gaze on the side of my face. Every time my heart beats, I feel it. I feel everything. It’s like I’m inside Cole’s body, touching his soul. It makes me shiver. I don’t have words for it.

  Finally I say something. “She’s different from your Le Femme models. This woman is unedited, imperfect.” I notice that first. The majority of my time at Le Femme has been spent editing away cellulite and smoothing skin. I stare at the unedited piece. “But that imperfection makes her real. It makes me wonder who she is and why she feels so lost. The way the light falls across her naked body, the way she was moving, reminds me of—” I bite my tongue. It was a silly thought, a memory from an old story.

  “Reminds you of what?” his voice is too sweet, too fragile, to not answer. I look over my shoulder at him and then lower my lashes, not able to look him in the eye when I say it.

  “It reminds me of Bathsheba bathing on the roof in the moonlight, unaware of her effect on the king. She has no idea how beautiful she is, what she does to him, how she makes him feel… It’s beautiful and tragic. Like this…” I turn and look up at him. Stubble lines his cheeks making his eyes appear bluer than this morning. I repress a shiver and turn back to the piece. “When did you make this?”

  “A lifetime ago.”

  I press my lips together when I realize this piece fits my description of art. I don’t want to admit it, but he’s right. It is evocative. I close my eyes, realizing what I said, that I just proved his point for him. When I open my eyes I whisper, “I’m not a hypocrite. They can’t all be like this. Every image can’t portray emotions like that, Cole. It’s not possible.”

  As I start speaking, he turns away and takes the next painting from the closet. He pulls the drape off and I gasp and turn away from it when I realize what I’m looking at. He sets the painting down and says, “You promised you’d look. Anna, this isn’t something you’ve never seen before. Look at it and tell me what you see… why you looked away.”

  “Cole, she’s! That’s!” I’m sputtering like an idiot. The image was beautiful, but I feel my face growing hotter and hotter. I can’t look at it.

  “It’s what? I don’t understand you,” he says, baffled. Cole steps in front of me and looks at the piece and back at my face. “How can you look at the first one and not this one?”

  Suddenly, I don’t know. They should be the same. But they’re not. This one shows a woman with her back arched, her breasts thrust upward, her hand just below her navel. It’s sexy, all lines, and curves, and shadows. A pale light source defines her curves in a creamy violet. The rest of her body is lost in inky shadows.

  Nervously, I look at it again, “Because they’re not the same.”

  “They are. I made them the same way. How are they different? I don’t understand you. Is it evocative? Can you feel a strong emotion when you look at it?” His voice is soft. I remember that he doesn’t show these to anyone, but I still can’t hide my shock.

  “That’s not the point,” my face is flushed and his eyes on me make it worse. Suddenly I feel like the room is too small and Cole is too close. I want to back out, but I can’t.

  “Anna?” he asks, almost pleading with me.

  Looking at him, my voice catches in my throat. He looks so vulnerable, like a single word could crush him. The expression in his eyes makes me answer, “The first one was beautiful and sensual. This one is too graphic, too bold. You can’t do that. You can’t take pictures of women doing that. It’s not right.”

  He glances at the painting and back at me, “Doing what?” He’s serious. I look past him at the painting and blush. “Anna,” he says, “Is it possible that your mind is much dirtier than the images you’re seeing? Is there any chance that you think things happened there that didn’t?”

  Maybe. I hesitate. “She’s not… touch
ing herself?” I ask timidly. That’s what I thought when I looked at it. The arch of her back, the way her breasts are thrust upward, and I can’t see her other hand.

  He laughs, “No. She was laying on a cold floor. It made her arch her back like that.” He’s watching me, his eyes study my face. He’s not arrogant now. Uncertainty sits well on him, if anything it makes him sexier. Seeing this confident man care about what I think makes me wonder why.

  He interrupts my thoughts, “Anna, I wish you could see what I see.” The tone of Cole’s voice is soft, wistful.

  I can’t be quiet. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. “What do you see in that piece?” Now I want to know. If it’s not what I thought, then I want to know what he thinks it is. I force myself to look at the piece of art again. It makes my stomach twist. The way her body is laying, the arch of her back, the tension in her arms—she looks like she’s in ecstasy. I can’t ignore it. The evocative nature of the image is too powerful.

  Shaking my head, I breathe, “No one has ever touched me so that my body moved like that.” Once the words are out, I wish they weren’t.

  Cole steps closer to me. His eyes are on the side of my face, drinking it in like he can’t get enough. I can tell that he wants to say something—that he wants to answer me—but he doesn’t. My heart races as he watches me. I can’t breathe. He’s too close. This is too intimate. It feels like I’m coming unglued and I don’t know what to do, what to say. The effect he has on me is powerful, and I’m having trouble hiding it. If my heart pounds any harder, I swear to God, he’ll hear it.

  Cole tucks his chin. He puts his glass of wine down somewhere. His arms fold over his chest. That beautiful dark shiny hair falls over his eyes, making it impossible to see them in the dim glow. I wish I could read his face, his eyes, the same way he reads mine. I wish I was inside his head when he made this painting. Did he really see something else? Was it really not a depiction of ecstasy? And if it was, was it wrong? Was it pornographic? At this very moment, I don’t feel like it is. It feels like sublime beauty, like the last canvas he showed me.

  Finally, he answers my previous question and turns from me. His voice is deep, seductive, “I see shadows and light, curves and lines. Beauty mingled with power. Femininity and softness. I see desire. I see someone who doesn’t know if her body is good enough. The position of her hand makes me think that. It sits on her stomach as if she’s hiding something. As if she has secrets I’ll never know…”

  Silence engulfs us and we both stare at his work, neither of us brave enough to speak. My body is covered in goose-bumps. I don’t know what to think. I’m caught in the middle. My mind registers things like this as trash, or they are supposed to be, but after seeing it—after hearing Cole speak about it—how can I think that? It was my mouth that said the requirement for something to be art was the ability to evoke emotion, and here I am stunned into silence by something I wouldn’t have considered art yesterday.

  Damn. I’m a hypocrite. I don’t like it. It feels like I’ve been blindsided, but Cole doesn’t stop. He doesn’t let me catch my breath.

  Instead, he takes another canvas from its resting place and pulls the sheet off. When the drape hits the floor my toes curl inside my shoes. I can’t breathe. It’s another nude, another woman bathed in golden light. Long dark hair falls to her hips in curls. Her arms are stretched over her head, thrusting her chest out. The light catches the curve of the bottom of her breast, the softness of her jaw, the fullness of her hips—and there are glittering jewels hanging from her nipples.

  Staring at it, I’m hyperaware of every inch of my body. My eyes fixate on her breasts, on those dangling jewels. It feels like someone sucked all the air out of the room. Heat engulfs me. I shouldn’t be looking, but I can’t stop. This kind of thing is too sensual, and it’s too beautiful. I can’t look away. I can’t understand why I don’t feel offended, and realize that it’s because this is art that reflects Cole’s heart. I’m seeing part of him when I look at these pieces. This woman meant something to him. She had to.

  Glancing at him, I wonder who she is—this faceless woman who is concealed in shadows and hidden at the back of his closet—locked away from the world. It’s part of a life he hides, a part of Cole Stevens that remains a secret.

  “Who is she?” I ask finally.

  Cole shakes his head once. Dark hair sways over downcast eyes. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t answer. I don’t know if he won’t or he can’t. This isn’t a random model. The images feel too intense for that.

  Trying to be less personal, I ask, “How did you make these? The light is so soft. So stunning. I can’t figure out how you did it—”

  Cole unfolds his arms, resuming the role of teacher. The softness in his eyes seeps back to the place he hides it in his heart. “It’s painting with light. It uses the camera, but the exposure is much longer. The model sits in a pitch black room. I set the camera on the tripod and release the shutter. Then I literally paint the model with a colored light. I move the light over her and it’s kind of like a paintbrush, highlighting the areas I want and leaving the rest in darkness. It makes a soft color-wash over her skin.”

  I blink twice and turn my head back toward the print. “But I don’t see you in these.” For that to happen, the exposure had to be pretty long—like minutes, not seconds. I’m astounded that he thought to do this. I’ve never seen it before. At least, I’ve never seen this concept with boudoir portraits. Cole is watching me as my mind races with questions. He knows I’ll latch onto the technical aspect and appears eager to discuss it with me.

  “How long is the exposure?”

  “Several minutes,” the toe of his shoe picks a spot on the floor. Arms folded over his chest, he says, “You won’t see me unless I stand still for a moment, but I’m there—moving through the shadows, spilling light across her body like rain pouring from the sky.”

  Something occurs to me while he speaks. Turning to Cole, I say, “This is the kind of work you want me shooting, isn’t it? The Le Femme studio you’re putting out East isn’t like the one in the city. You want it to be something else—something like this.” I already know the answer, but it doesn’t stop the shock from spreading across my face. When he asked me to run the Long Island studio and said it was boudoir photography, I totally freaked out thinking he wanted something else.

  But this. This intimidates the crap out of me. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to make powerful images like these.

  “Yes,” he nods. “Or something similar. I want you shooting art. I want your images to be evocative and powerful; seductive and feminine.”

  I look at the canvas and don’t turn my face back toward him. For a moment, I say nothing. A crazy thought is bouncing around in my mind and it won’t shut up. Seeing these, seeing this part of Cole, is shocking. I don’t know why, but I assumed he wasn’t capable of this. I just stand there, mute until he asks again and this time I nod. At this moment, I recognize that my perception has changed. I can feel it shattering, cracking apart like shards of ice, and falling away.

  His art has changed me—Cole changed me.

  My mind resists accepting it. My body feels like I’m being strangled. I can’t do this. I don’t know how. Cole’s passion spills across the canvas more powerfully than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s feminine and beautiful and powerful. It’s everything I want to do, everything I want to be. Wedding photography is something that most women will need at some point. It is a single chance to show them that they are beautiful, but this—what Cole is offering gives me the chance to do that but even more so. I see it. It’s crystal clear. And I realize that I want to learn how. My mind is at war with itself. The prudent side is assaulting my rationale trying to poke holes in it. I can’t tell who’s winning, but my mouth shocks the hell out of both of them when I speak and say the crazy idea that’s forming in my head.

  Glancing at Cole, I say with complete certainty, “I want one.”

  “What?�
�� Cole turns toward me. He blinks and opens his eyes wider like that might disprove what he heard me say.

  That was the thought that was trapped inside my mind. As soon as I felt my previous conceptualizations crack, I knew that I’d want to learn everything about this. I’m intrigued and terrified.

  My heart thumps when I say it and my palms grow hotter. “I need to know what it feels like on the other end of the lens. I can learn the practical part with models, but this—” I shake my head, “it’s not about knowledge, it’s about feeling. It captures the client’s beauty in a powerful way. The only way for me to know how the client feels is to actually be the woman in the portrait.” My gaze locks on his. His sapphire eyes search mine, his brow pinched with shock. “Shoot me, Cole.”

  He seems shy, like the idea hadn’t crossed his mind. He doesn’t look away when he says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” His lips part like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t.

  “Cole,” I don’t know what I’m going to say. I just know that this is important. I can’t understand this wholly if I don’t. “Please. It’s a shoot. We’re both grown-ups here. We can manage this.” Well, I was hoping we could. I shrug like it’s no big deal, “Besides, you said you only do one-nighters and I’m not that kind of girl.”

  He works his jaw and looks up at me from under his brow. “I never said I only do one-nighters. I offered you a one-nighter.”

  “And I said no,” I reply absently, no longer looking at him. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”

  I’m staring at the paintings. The thought of a shoot like this has butterflies swirling in my stomach. I walk past Cole and pull out more canvases, looking at more of Cole’s work. He watches me, silently. The paintings aren’t what I thought they’d be. If light could be liquefied and poured into a paint can, that is what Cole made—something sensual, beautiful, and completely sexy.