Page 101 of Cross To Bear

I had no fucking idea what I was doing.

The camera? I’d watched some tutorials and worked out how to use automatic mode, which may or may not work with the current lighting, but Crash? He moved around the massive studio, seeming to instinctively know that the light streaming in through the grid of windows would bleach him pale and make him look as ethereal as an angel.

And just as remote.

He was good for a laugh or a joke, always attentive at home, but still… I felt like I didn’t know the man beneath it all, so I raised the camera and took my first shot. A close up of his profile as he stared out the window, then a rapid flurry of images as I held the shutter release down, as he turned to me and smiled. I captured that, the rakish curve of his lips, a grin that promised good times and good vibes only. But what lay beneath? I pulled the lens away as he approached me.

“So what did you have in mind?”

“I…”

I’d thought about this long and hard, not really knowing what to do with Crash until I caught sight of the journals. I’d looked at one, then another and yet more, thinking that I’d see the evolution of his art skill, but instead saw this. Me, me, me, over and over in different forms, just like the sketchbook he’d shown me in the hospital. Start with the art, I’d thought then, planning this on a hunch.

“You want to do a boudoir shoot?” Cress and Jack had asked me when I was first tossing around this as an idea.

“Not really.” I shrugged. “I can’t draw him or paint, or any other kind of art, but photography.” I nodded sharply. “I could do that. Not so much a sexy shoot, but…” My fingers moved, ready to help me explain, but the words didn’t come. “He draws me… all the time.”

“We had noticed that a lot of the bikes coming out of the garage had a Maddie flavour,” Cress said with an awkward smile.

“It was kind of cute,” Jack said. “Unhinged, but cute.”

“I feel like I need to do the same,” I said, the words rushing out. “That if I do, I’ll see…”

“Why he obsessively recorded you all this time? What’s behind the smiling mask?” Cress prompted.

“Yes, that.” My breath came out in one big exhale. “He’s the one I feel like I know the least.”

“I could definitely think of worse things to try,” Jack shrugged. “Selene’s got that studio she hires out sometimes to other artists. Maybe she’d be someone to tap about this idea?”

But now that I was here, holding a pretty expensive camera, I had to wonder, what the fuck was I doing?

“How do you want me, Maddie?” Crash asked, as if able to see the wheels spinning inside my head. “Do you want…?”

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts, and that’s when I nodded. I watched him ease them off and then lifted the camera. Did he draw me obsessively because of this? The mood felt insanely intimate and yet not at the same time. I was here and he was there, and when I lifted the camera to take some shots, it was as if everything became clearer.

“You like to watch me,” I said as the shutter whirred. I pressed the button, taking shot after shot as he stood there, twisting as he removed his shorts and shoes, then standing upright. There was no fucking shame in him, no embarrassment or insecurity as he stood before the cool eye of the camera lens, presenting his body to me. His arms hung loose at his sides, moving slightly, as if he was about to do something, but he didn’t. Instead, he just smiled.

“Like?” He shook his head, all that white hair slipping over his shoulders. “Like’s too weak a word for it. Love doesn’t even encapsulate it. I fucking need to, Maddie.”

Crash moved closer, forcing me to step backwards, clicking as I went, to preserve the distance.

“I can’t stop, not even when I know the wrong people are watching. Not even when you were someone else’s girl. I didn’t care about what Jesse wanted or what you wanted, and that pissed me off. I want to be a good guy, and creeping on someone else’s girl is not it.”

“But why?” I looked up from the camera and that was a mistake. The intimacy of the act of looking into his eyes without a camera lens between us felt too much. “I’m just a girl—”

“My girl.”

He took a step closer, but I stopped him with an outstretched hand.

“I understand the concept.” I jerked that camera back up and focussed the lens on his face. “Jesse’s family explained to me what a fated mate was when we got serious, but…”

What did I want to know? What was I trying to interrogate?

“What’s it like?” He smiled easily, moving towards the long vinyl covered chaise lounge, and then flopped down on it, like he was a patient at a psychologist’s office. “That’s what you want to know.” I nodded as I crept closer, stopping when those pale blue eyes met the lens. “It wasn’t love at first sight, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Why did I feel a pang of disappointment at that? “But… I wanted to. I wanted to get to know you, learn what you liked and disliked.”

I moved until I was standing in front of him, just at his feet. The shots I took at this angle showed the long line of his body, the lens stopping as his hand smoothed down over his thigh.

“I drew you because I was dying to get to know you. Every fear, every moment of happiness. Everything. I filled book after book of drawings of you, because they were all tiny little pieces that made up the whole.”

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