Page 64 of Tempt

I feel like shit. “I’ve gone about this poorly.”

“Probably,” she says, her voice a bit sad, because of fucking course it is, I just yelled at her. “But is there a right way to remind someone they’re tromping on boundaries? Maybe not. It’s fine. I’ll go, and I’ll text next time I’m looking for dinner company.”

She grabs the takeaway bag, which smells really good, and swings past me, patting me on the arm on her way out.

Fucking hell.

As the door clicks shut behind her, I pick up my phone and call Hazel back.

“Hey,” I mutter when she answers.

“Oh, no.”

“I yelled at Grace. And she knows I have a card for The Wheelhouse.”

Hazel laughs. “I’m sorry, that sucks all around.”

“I might go after her, walk her to the studio. That’s where she said she’s going.”

“Okay. Text me when you get home.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too. Go make it right.”

I catch up to Grace as she’s getting in her car, parked halfway down the street. “Wait,” I shout out.

She stops and looks back. The way her face brightens up slays me. My brother is a fucking tool.

“I’m sorry, I reacted badly. Do you want to come back upstairs? Or do you want company at the studio?”

She presses her lips together, then tilts her head to the side. “Actually, I want to show you something. If you’re game?”

Instead of crossingunder the freeway, Grace points her car toward the fashion district. After heading east, then zipping down a narrow side street, she turns on Richmond and parks in front of an art gallery.

“I’m going to have a show here next month,” she says. “I told Luke about it today, and he said, and I quote, ‘As long as my name isn’t attached to it.’ Can you believe him?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” She sighs and turns the car off. “Come on. I have a key.”

After letting us in, and punching in the security code to re-arm the door, she leads me through the current exhibit to a door, which leads to a back room. When she flicks on the lights, blinding whiteness fills the space. It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust, and when they do, I realize I’m not just looking at Grace’s work. I immediately recognize a couple of her sculptures, lush, feminine bodies, but there are paintings, too, of angular bodies in embrace. And at the far end of the room is an overwhelming tangle of harsh metal.

It takes me another minute to figure out what I’m looking at, because all the art pieces are jammed together in this staging room. In the middle of the tangle is a birdcage almost as tall as the space.

A birdcage just like on the cover of Hazel’s book.

I turn back to Grace and her pieces. “This is…a joint show? Next month?”

She nods, clearly proud—as she should be. “Alex put me in touch with a local patron, who was already helping the other two artists get this show off the ground. When Alex mentioned that I used to work in the gallery world, and might have a few pieces I could contribute, I…well, I jumped into the deep end. I didn’t know I wanted this. I thought my online business was enough, but there’s nothing quite like a show, Sam. I’m…”

“And then Luke shit all over it.”

“Yeah.”

“And then I yelled at you for interrupting my phone date.”

She laughs weakly. “Yes. But I think you were more embarrassed that I saw the VIP night card, right?”

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