by Staci Hart
“How do you know her?” I asked.
“We went to high school together. Most of us did, or we met in college, and the ring rippled out from there. Other friends. Significant others. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” I said, having no idea how it was. I could count my close friends on one hand, and I’d never had a crew, or at least not like this. I didn’t call them when I needed something. Hell, I didn’t even call Billy—I just handled it. But Stella seemed to collect friends and people, and what an odd and beautiful thing that was.
“How long have you and Ash been friends?”
I glanced over at where he’d been standing to find him gone. I huffed a laugh. “Ten years.”
“High school?”
“College.” My smile tugged higher on one side. “We went to Columbia together.”
She squeezed me tighter. “Oh, you’re one of those people.”
“Now who’s the snob?” I teased.
With a laugh, she said, “Come on, smartypants. Let’s get you a drink.”
Stella took my hand and led me away, affording me a view of the back of her, which was bare all the way down to the small of her back other than the tiny strings that kept her dress on. The thread ran over her shoulders and down her back, through loops at her waist to tie in a bow, the ends swaying with the weight of little tassels.
One tug, and she’d come undone.
I made it an objective to do just that.
We wound our way through the house, greeting people along the way, and when we made it to the kitchen, she poured me a scotch. Once the glass was in my hand, she guided me into another room I hadn’t seen, one colored in navy and emerald and gold. People lingered and lounged, and we found a blue velvet loveseat and sank into it. Into each other.
Her head rested in the crook of my neck, my arm around her waist and hand high on her thigh.
“How was work?” she asked.
“Long, but I’m glad it’s over. How was your day?”
“Well, I spent most of it bitching about that fucking article Vagabond published. Did you hear about it?”
My heart tripped. “I caught a little something about it, yeah.”
“Can you believe the nerve? God, whoever did this better hope I never figure out who they are.”
I frowned. “It wasn’t a bad article.”
“No, which is why I might spare their life. But someone infiltrated us. They snuck in and wrote up a piece that went viral. And sure, they might love us now, but what about later? Are they going to turn on us? Villainize us like Warren does? Worse—if a reporter can get in, who’s to say a cop can’t?”
“You just jumped conclusions so fast, I’m dizzy.”
She huffed, sitting up and turning to face me. She brought a knee up to rest on the couch back, her hands in her lap to keep her dress down, but her leg was exposed completely. I tried not to stare. It wasn’t easy.
“I mean it. The implications are huge. It means someone in the group betrayed us. We have a mole. I don’t feel like I’m crazy to be upset about that.”
“Nobody said you were crazy. Maybe a little paranoid, but not crazy.” When she gave me a look, I chuckled. “What I read of that article was a salute, not a teardown. Nothing about it felt aggressive or predatory. Did it?”
She nearly pouted. “No, it didn’t. I actually thought it was beautiful when I finally calmed down enough to read it. But you have to understand, Levi—our walls were breached. And with Warren sniffing around, it’s not insane to think he’ll put in a mole of his own.”
“I get it. I do.”
A dramatic sigh. “Did you read all the bullshit about Warren yesterday and today? They searched everyone on their way out, even had drug dogs, for God’s sake. They collected everyone’s spare joints and coke and whatever, arrested everyone they could for whatever they could. But no one even had over an ounce on them. There weren’t any dealers there. I mean, walk into any bar in New York, and somebody has an eighth on them. It’s ridiculous.”
“What’s his problem?”
“The million-dollar question. It’s got to be political. Or personal. Or for money.”
“You’ve got it narrowed down then,” I joked.
But she sighed. “I wish somebody knew. I’d love to crack that so we could put a stop to it.”
“Maybe we can sleuth it out. Any of them know anything?” I jerked my chin at the crowd as a guy got behind the grand piano in the corner and started playing a swingy jazz riff, a cigarette hanging from his lips and his fingers dancing across the keys. Those standing started to wiggle and sway a little to the music.
She turned to them, smiling, and nestled back into my side to watch. “I don’t think so, no more than you or me. It adds to the excitement of the parties to think we could get raided by the Morality Police at any moment. Everything feels forbidden. Taboo, you know? Between the exclusivity of it, the secretive nature of the thing, and the threat of prosecution, it’s a real rush.”
“Figured that out the other night when we were running from the cops.”
Stella laughed. “I wasn’t ready for the party to end, but I can’t pretend like that wasn’t fun.” She paused. Sighed. “But I don’t know if we’re going to be safe for long. One little fuckup, and Warren is going to make a serious example out of somebody. Nobody wants that. All we want is to … I don’t know. Connect. To be a part of something, like I said before. And what a thing to belong to, isn’t it?”
“A very bright thing.”
“A very bright thing indeed.”
“So who are all these people? I recognize some of them, but others …”
“Well,” she started, “over there are the Cooke sisters, Juno and Nixie. Their father manages hedge funds and has more money than God. When Jared Leto dumped Juno, she piled up a bunch of his ugly old man sweaters in the sidewalk in front of his house and set it on fire. Barely got away before the cops came. I heard Jared wouldn’t come down, just screamed What the fuck? at her and pinged her with ice cubes from a second-story window until they heard sirens.”
“Charming,” I said around a laugh.
“Over there is Tuesday Morrison. Her dad is—”
“The bronze sculptor. He just had a huge exhibit at The MoMA.”
“The very one. I swear, she got suspended every couple of weeks for something. Vandalism mostly. But she’d always get back in after her dad appealed to the dean, citing artistic expression. I don’t know how spray painting the lockers with Dean Hensley is a bag of dicks—surrounded by a dozen illustrations of phalluses with hairy balls—could be considered art, but there it is. You’ve got Poe Nelson and Scout Neil—kid actors from Nickelodeon. Atticus Abrams, behind the piano. His dad is—”
“Remy Abrams. His coverage of Desert Storm is one of the reasons I picked up photography.”
“Some of them are famous on their own merit. But mostly, we’re trust-fund kids.” She paused. “Does that offend you?”
“That everyone here has more money than I’ll make in my entire life?”
“That we’re not … I don’t know. Normal.”
I looked around the room at their version of normal, considering my original angle to this article—a puff piece about disparaging socialites and the vanity of youth, but I’d realized it was more than what it seemed, as most things were. There was a sense of family about them, the root of Stella’s betrayal. And I felt that tingling, that sense of belonging, even though I was the traitor who’d betrayed them.
I shrugged the thought away. “What the fuck is normal anyway?”
She offered a small laugh. “If you figure it out, let me know.”
“Deal.”
We listened to Atticus play for a minute, and I marveled at his skill in ashing his smoke without interrupting the song.
“What about you?” she asked. “You fit in just as well as anyone—you’re an artist, same as Atticus and half the people here.”
“I dunno—I don’t really think of
it as art. Just another medium for transferring a feeling. A moment. To share that moment with someone else.”
“How is that not art?”
“Art implies intent. It suggests some preparation or a message. A plan. But I never have a plan. I just shoot what I see and hope whoever sees it understands what I felt when I took it.”
“Will you show me?”
“You want to see?”
“I want to know if I understand what you felt. I want to feel it too,” she said simply.
“I’ll show you with one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll let me photograph you.”
She chuckled. “Me? Why would you want to photograph me?”
I leaned back so I could lay a sober look on her. “Aside from you being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen? I want to show you what I see, and I want to know if you understand that too.”
Her cheeks flushed, her eyes both bright and heavy. “How could I say no to that?” she answered quietly, tossing the phrase back at me.
“Guess you can’t,” I said. And I kissed her to sign the deal.
12
Nothing But You
STELLA
It was sometime after midnight when we said our goodbyes and hopped on Levi’s bike to speed toward Hell’s Kitchen. He was warm and solid in the circle of my arms, my body latched to his from my chin to my knees. Every move he made, I made with him. Every muscle that shifted, I felt contract and release—his abs when we turned, his thighs when he switched gears. When his hand was free, it hooked my thigh, strong and hot against the chill of the rushing air. And I wished I didn’t have on his helmet, if only to nestle my cheek in the valley between his shoulder blades.
For as much as I’d experienced in my life, for as many opportunities that I’d had, precious few new men made it so close to me. It was a little incestuous, the group I belonged to, the people I called my friends. We’d known each other forever and insulated ourselves, partly because there were so many of us, but mostly because inside our circle, we were safe. Until now, at least.
I’d combed through the guest list from the speakeasy, trying to figure out who could have brought a goddamn reporter to our party. It had to have been an outsider, I’d determined. One of those not in the original crew, one of the other assholes I’d apparently not vetted well enough. As an experiment, I’d decided to invite our core group to the next party and excluded anyone else. If the mole wrote about it, I’d know someone on the inside snuck the bastard in.
And then we’d really have a problem.
Levi took off from a stoplight, and my arms tightened to hang on. A thrill zipped through me, not just for the speed. For the man himself.
Everything about him was new and fresh, a man from a world very different from mine. His quick wit and sharp tongue kept me happily on my toes, and I lapped up every minute with him like a dog after a 5K. It felt like he’d been dropped into my lap by divinity, a gift with a catch—a gift I couldn’t keep. But I did my level best to ignore that particular part of the deal, favoring the present over the future. Moments like this one were worth far more to me than bellyaching over a future I couldn’t know. Now was good, pushing perfect. And that freedom was liberating after two years of pretending I wasn’t in love with Dex.
I stuffed the thought down, putting everything out of my head but the way Levi felt in my arms.
The turns came one after another, indicating we were nearly to his place, confirmed when he stopped in front of what looked to be an old warehouse and killed the engine.
I pulled off the helmet and shook out my hair, getting off the bike, my eyes upturned to the massive red brick building.
When Levi locked up, he grabbed my hand and towed me toward the entrance.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “How long have you lived here?”
“Since right after college. It’s lucky, really. I’d never be able to afford this place if I had to lease it on my own, but my buddy Cooper owns a bunch of properties—including this building—and rents it to me for nothing. Even let me convert part of the space to a studio and dark room.”
“Cooper Moore?” I guessed.
He smiled down at me. “Should have figured you knew him.”
“He used to run with us until he went and got himself all domesticated.”
“Well,” Levi said as he unlocked the door and held it open for me, “I guess Coop’s dad bought the building in the ’90s when Hell’s Kitchen started gentrifying, gave it to him as a birthday present or something bananas like that. I don’t even know that I could afford to live in the neighborhood without the hook up.”
“Why Hell’s Kitchen?”
He shrugged as we climbed the stairs. “My dad lives around the corner. I help him out around the house, groceries and stuff. Keep him company.”
My heart warmed up and turned to goop. “What happened to your mom?”
He paused. Drew a breath. “My biological mom and dad took off when I was a kid. Junkies. Billy was one of the cops who found me. Took me in to foster, ended up adopting me.”
For a beat, we climbed the stairs with nothing but our footfalls to fill the silence.
“I’m sorry, Levi,” was all I could think to say, too overwhelmed by feelings and questions for anything else.
But he smiled again as if it were no big deal. “Don’t be. Billy gave me the home I never woulda gotten otherwise.” We turned the corner of a landing and took the next flight. “I mean, not that it was the Upper East or anything, but it was a step up.”
“God forbid someone be from the Upper East,” I teased, and he gave me a little smirk.
“It’s alien sometimes, your world. Even in college, when I was running with Cooper and Ash, I couldn’t get used to it. There’s something so …” He sighed. “There’s no way to say it without being shitty.”
“Then be shitty. I won’t get mad.”
He assessed me for a second before deciding I was telling the truth. “It feels wasteful. You’ve gotta understand—I’ve had to scrape and save for everything I’ve ever had, even Billy. When I think about how he gave his life to the city and barely has enough to live on, then go with Ash to a club where he spends Billy’s monthly income on booze? It’s hard to be objective.”
It stung, I couldn’t lie about that. Mostly because he wasn’t wrong. “It is wasteful. There’s no real excuse for it.”
“I get it—you don’t know any different. You’ve all lived your entire lives like this, and I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about it. I’ve been working on it.”
“Oh, have you?” I said on a chuckle.
“I have. Billy’s always telling me not to be a snob.”
“Sounds wise.”
“That’s one word for it,” he joked. “Anyway, he has an old injury that makes it hard for him to get around, so I need to be close by.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“I say the same thing about him. I’m right down here,” he said, leading me to the end of the hall. The massive metal sliding door groaned when he rolled it open.
The room itself was dark, the furniture silhouetted against twenty-foot paned windows that framed a view of Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea, downtown rising up beyond. We weren’t very high up—just the fourth floor—but with the low-profile buildings around us, it was just high enough to afford a bit of view and ample charm.
Levi flipped on the lights and headed for the kitchen as I milled around, admiring the space. “Drink?”
“Please. Whatever you’ve got.”
The kitchen was a good size and modern, built under the open loft space that housed his bedroom. Polished concrete made up the bottom floor, and opposite the wall of windows was an equally epic wall of red brick that wrapped around both sides to meet the windows.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, stopping by the window to look down at the street.
“Like I said, I’m a lucky guy.” He jerked his chin and extended wh
at looked to be a glass of whiskey. “Come on. I’ll show you the studio.”
I followed him up the stairs, curious as to where we were going, seeing as how the entire apartment was visible from the door. But once in his bedroom—a simple and utterly masculine affair—I noted two doors and the slider for his closet. One had to be the bathroom. The other, as anticipated, opened into pitch-dark.
He closed the door behind me and walked away. “This space was used for storage and custodial services—it was too small to make an apartment, plus there were no windows. So Coop split it off for me, keeping the bottom floor for storage like before but giving me the space for this.”
A click, and the far wall illuminated, the light soft and diffused. He was a void against it, his features indefinable, a black shape against white light. Broad shoulders, the curves of his arms, his narrow waist. The cut of his profile when he turned his head and reached for a stool, placing it in front of the wall.
“Come here.”
Two words, a command that had everything and nothing to do with the stool he’d just set down.
I did as he’d bidden, taking a sip of my drink before setting it at my feet. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”
A chuckle from the near dark, and I caught movement, just ghostly golden highlights of an arm or his hand or his cheekbones and jaw. And then he came into full view, camera on a tripod pointed at me.
I crossed my legs and straightened my back out of instinct.
His eyes flicked from his camera to me, then back again. “You’re not posing for a portrait, you know,” he teased. “Take a drink. I’m just checking the lighting.”
With a chuckle, I hinged to pick up the glass and take a sip. The click of the camera startled me.
“I thought you weren’t shooting yet.”
He shrugged, but I couldn’t see his face. “Whoops.”
At that, I laughed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just be.”
“Just be what?”
“Be nothing but you.”
I exhaled, wondering how exactly to do that while on display.
