Vain - Part One (Vain, #1)(14)

"When I was a kid…" his voice trails into the distance, as I close my eyes, drifting into a place of utter silence and solitude.

Chapter 14

The now too familiar sound of a picture being taken rouses me from a dream. My eyes flutter open and I'm instantly assaulted with the lens of a camera, mere inches from my face. I push at it without thinking.
"Hey. Don't." His voice is soft and calm. There's a playful edge to it that is unfamiliar to me.
"Noah?" I push the camera aside now and he's there, right there. He's kneeling next to the side of the bed. "You can't take pictures of my face."
"These are only for me." He pushes a button on the camera and stares at it. I know he's checking the images he just took. I recognize the focused intent on his face.
"I fell asleep." I clear my throat to chase away the rumbling purr that's there. "I'm sorry."
He places the camera down next to me before resting his chin on the side of the bed. "Your body is so perfect. I got all the shots I need."
A wave of disappointment rushes through me even though those were the words I've longed to hear. It meant that I didn't need to come here anymore. It meant we had no reason to see one another. "So we're done?"
"No." His index finger pushes a stray hair back from my forehead. "We're not done. We're done for today."
I don't say anything. I'm not sure why I reacted so strongly to the idea of being done with him. I'm days away from that now. I want this to be done, don't I?
"Are you going to the show when it opens?" He taps his index finger on my arm. "I think you should be there."
"Will you be there?" I counter back. I hadn't even entertained the idea of going to his show. Seeing my own naked body on full display wasn't on my bucket list.
He pulls his full lips into a straight line. "I haven't decided yet."
"You don't go out at all, do you?" The fact that his coffee table is always littered with take-out boxes, and the call girl who arrived almost at the same time as me that first night, were both glaring signs of his preference for being at home. Everything he needed to be satiated was delivered right to his doorstep.
He rests his chin on the bed as his eyes scan my face. "Would you go out if your face looked like mine?"
"You know that it looks different to you than anyone else." I don’t meet his eye. I can't. I don't want him to see any of the lingering desire that I still feel for him. I can't temper that. I've tried to since I came into his apartment, but it's futile.
"How so?" His brow softens.
"When I look at you it's just part of your face." I pull my hand into a tight fist to ward off the temptation to reach out and graze my fingers along the scar. "It doesn't take anything away from how you look, it adds to it."
He stills as if he's absorbing the words. I expect a dismissive retort. I assume he's going to tell me that I can't measure how it feels. He doesn't flinch as his eyes dart from my face to my lips and back again. "Tell me about your friend. You said she has a scar."
"On her chest," I offer. "She had a transplant."
"That's easier to accept."
I know the intention of his words. "Because she can hide it under her clothing?"
"That and…" he begins before he stalls to take a heavy swallow. "The circumstances."
"The circumstances?" I push myself up so my head is resting against my hand.
"I fell in love with a woman once," he whispers the words softly. "She loved someone else."
I sigh heavily. He's going to confess something to me now. He's going to pull down the wall that surrounds him and let me beyond it. If that happens, the entire dynamic of this is going to shift to a place where I'll want him as desperately as I did the other night when he had me bound to his bed.
"He found out about me and this happened." His hand touches his cheek over the scar. "And this…" His other hand rests just above the large tattoo that adorns his shoulder. "And this…" His hand slides to his chest and yet another intricate tattoo that I've become familiar with when I've stared at him.
I lean closer to him on the bed, not caring that my breasts have popped out from beneath the sheet that he draped over me. "You were stabbed?" My voice is barely audible as I study his body, noticing the thin raised scars that transverse his shoulder, his arm and his chest.
He only nods in response. "It was easy to cover these." His chin tilts down. "Not so easy to cover this." The hand that is still resting on his cheek quivers slightly.
"You hide because of that?" I want desperately to reach out to cover his hand with my own but I can't do that. I won't allow myself to get that close to him. I know that he can't be vulnerable. I know that he doesn't want to be.
"It's not hiding." There's no anger in his tone, only quiet clarification. "It's a reminder of something I'll never have again."
"What?"
He pulls his lips into a thin line. "I chase perfection. It's why I'm the way I am."
Before this conversation I'd absorb that statement as swollen arrogance but not now. "You want perfection because you don't think you'll ever be perfect?"
"I used to be." He sounds distant. "I'm not now."
"No one is." It's not only the right thing to say, it's the truth. In his convoluted, world famous photographer mind he may think he was once perfect, but that's simply not true. Hasn't anyone ever told him that before?