Page 68 of Brushed and Buried
A bead of sweat rolls down my temple. My thighs start to quiver from the effort of maintaining the pose, and I have to concentrate harder to keep from shifting. Every instinct screams at me to adjust, to relieve the growing discomfort, but I grit my teeth and hold still.
“Almost there,” Adrian murmurs, his voice distant, absorbed. He’s completely lost in the work now, pencil moving with swift, sure strokes. “Just a few more minutes.”
The burn in my supporting arm intensifies, spreading to muscles I didn’t even know I was using. My body isn’t used to this kind of sustained stillness, this conscious control over every micro-movement.
But this is what he needs from me. After years of waiting, of his art lying dormant, I can give him this. I can be still. I can endure.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, grateful for the semi-darkness hiding part of my vulnerability. “For all of it.”
His hand stills on the paper, but he doesn’t look up. “I’m almost done.”
The words hit like a slap. Professional and clipped, completely dismissive of everything I just tried to say. He continues sketching like I never spoke at all, his pencil moving with the same steady confidence, his expression unchanged.
I sit there, held in position by his command and my own desperate need to give him this, while frustration builds in my chest. He can capture me on paper with startling clarity, but he won’t let me reach him. He won’t acknowledge that this means anything beyond a professional exercise.
The pencil stops moving. Adrian leans back slightly, studying the paper with the critical eye of an artist evaluating his work. He makes a few final adjustments, small touches that perfect whatever he’s created, then sets the pencil aside.
“Thank you,” he says, closing the sketch pad with finality. “That was helpful.”
The words are delivered with the same polite distance he’s been maintaining all day, like I’m a client who’s just finished a session. It’s like this moment, this intimacy of being truly seen, means nothing more to him than any other professional interaction.
He nods at my clothes, indicating I should get dressed. I pull on my boxer briefs and sweats, my body still warm from the intensity of holding the pose. He stands, moving to the door with the kind of courtesy he might show a stranger. There’s no warmth or acknowledgment of what just passed between us, no recognition that he’s just spent twenty minutes studying every detail of my body with the intensity of someone memorizing a lover.
“Adrian, I—”
“Good night, Vince.”
The door closes between us with a soft click, leaving me standing in the hallway with my shirt crumpled in my fist and the uncomfortable awareness that my first real attempt at bridging this gap has accomplished exactly nothing.
Adrian can capture me on paper, hold me still in the grip of his artistic vision, strip me down to shadow and light and line. But seeing and forgiving are two different things.
I walk back to my room with the strange sensation of having been thoroughly exposed and completely dismissed all at once.
It’s a start. It’s not the breakthrough I hoped for, but a crack in the wall that might, eventually, become something more.
I just hope I have enough time to find out.
24
Adrian
The morning arrives with the kind of relentless clarity that makes hiding impossible. Saturday’s the wedding rehearsal day, and the beach venue looks almost ready for tomorrow’s late afternoon ceremony. Ayaka’s white peonies arrived this morning, their creamy petals already arranged in elegant clusters that will catch the golden hour light perfectly. The archway she and I designed stands ready at the water’s edge, draped with flowing fabric that moves like poetry in the ocean breeze.
I’m helping Olivia fine-tune the artistic elements we’ve been planning. Her team handles the logistics, but she and Becca pulled me in specifically for the creative work, the part I’m actually good at. The lighting setup Javi designed will transform the space during the ceremony, but for now, we’re just checking sight lines and color balance against the natural backdrop.
It’s easier to focus on creative details than acknowledge the way my hands still shake when I think about last night. The trust in Vince’s gaze as he sat motionless under the lamplight,offering himself as my subject with a vulnerability that nearly broke something inside me. Every line of his body burned into my memory with painful clarity. The way shadows pooled in the hollow of his throat, how the lamp’s glow caught the definition of muscle across his shoulders and chest. The dark brushstrokes of his tattoos spiraling down his right arm, creating patterns of light and shadow that my fingers itched to trace. His confession about the tattoos, how they’re connected to me, leaves something unsettled deep inside me, as if the ground beneath my feet has shifted permanently.
I nearly lost it last night.
I had to grip my pencil so hard my knuckles went white to keep from reaching for him. I had to bite the inside of my cheek until it bled to stop myself from closing the distance between us, from pressing my mouth to the curve of his collarbone. Almost twenty minutes of pure torture, watching him hold perfectly still while every instinct screamed at me to touch, taste, and claim what he was offering with such devastating openness.
The sketch I created sits in my pad like something too dangerous to examine. Even now, hours later, I can still see the way his breathing deepened when he caught me staring too long at the line of his hip, the way his body responded to being scrutinized so thoroughly. The memory sends heat straight through me, and I have to force myself to focus on Ayaka’s flower arrangements before I do something stupid like adjust myself in public.
“Adrian, Ayaka wants to confirm the final placement for the altar arrangements,” Olivia calls from near the archway. She’s efficient and warm, the kind of professional who makes everything look effortless. “She’s asking about height adjustments for the photos.”
“Tell her they’re perfect,” I call back, adjusting the angle of one of the side arrangements so it catches the morning light better. “The photographer tested angles yesterday. Javi’s lighting will hit them just right during the ceremony.”
I catch movement in my peripheral vision and know without looking that it’s Vince. He’s been handling best man duties this morning, picking up Trevor’s aunt and cousin from the airport and checking in with George and Lance about tomorrow’s timeline, their suits, and the rings. Somehow, here at the resort, he’s always positioned where I can sense his presence, where the memory of his bare skin under lamplight threatens to derail my composure entirely.
