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  “I have him do landscapes for me,” she said, seeing what must’ve been a strange look pass over my face. “Have you seen the one he did with the woman in the field holding the red fabric up, blowing in the wind? I put that piece together with some really sweet red satin as a wall hanging in a client’s home office. That sort of thing. Probably not any of these sorts of things.”

  She gestured at the one hanging next to the one I’d been looking at. Two men, both clad in leather, one in a biker cap. Chains. A ball gag. It was a lot more hardcore and explicit than any of the pictures Jack and I had taken during our shoot. It was raw and fierce, and its beauty was harsh. It told a story, yes, with the looks on the models’ faces, but it didn’t seem to be one with a happy ending.

  “But yours,” she continued then sighed with a small, bemused smile. “It’s so...soft. I really love it. I loved all the ones you guys took together.”

  “People don’t think it can be soft,” I told her, not sure why I felt compelled to suddenly explain myself to her but spilling some truth tea anyway. “They don’t think about the tenderness, the responsibility, the give and take. How it feels to take care of someone and to be taken care of. Mostly, they want to see images like those, or the ones over there.”

  “Not everyone,” Sarah said. “Some people get it.”

  There was no good reason for my throat to close, or my eyes to prick with sudden tears. No need for emotion here or now. Yet something about Sarah’s nonchalant answer moved me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Some people do.”

  I recognized the face of the man who appeared behind her, though the last time I’d seen him, he’d been wearing a lot less clothes. Jack’s grin, though, that was distinctive. He kissed Sarah on the cheek then reached for my hand.

  “Hey, you. How’s it going?”

  “Good. Have you been getting a lot of compliments?” I waved a hand in the general direction of the crowd.

  Jack laughed. “Oh, sure. Some people are even looking at my face.”

  Sarah bumped him with her hip. “Who’d want to look at that ugly thing when your dick’s so much prettier?”

  I spotted my brother from across the room and excused myself to greet him. He’d always known about my modeling, and though he preferred not to look at my more risqué pictures, he’d been to a number of shows featuring my photos and had always been supportive. Evan was looking over a triptych, three different women in lingerie, all the same pose, shot from above so that the viewer seemed to be looking down on them. None of them was me, which was why he was staring for so long. He had a glass of wine in one hand, a plate of cheese and crackers in the other, though how he expected to eat and drink at the same time, I didn’t know.

  We greeted each other, as always, not with a hug and kiss but a simple tip of the chin. My brother and I had shared a womb; hugging hadn’t seemed particularly necessary to either one of us after that. Without preamble, he nodded toward the guy with him.

  “This is Niall. He works with me. This is my sister, Elise. She’s the one in the dirty pictures.”

  Niall shook my hand and gave Evan an adorable, embarrassed look. I laughed and squeezed his hand then snagged my brother’s plate of cheese.

  “Don’t mind my brother. He thinks he’s funny because our parents believed boys should be comedians and girls ought to be princesses. But I am Elise,” I said. “And I am in some of these pictures. None of those three. Feel free to ogle without worry.”

  Niall’s hand in mine was warm, his grip stronger than I’d anticipated. He looked over his shoulder at the pictures Evan had been looking over. “Yeah...hi. When Evan invited me to an art show, I guess I wasn’t expecting this.”

  Evan, the turd, laughed. “I told you it was art, man. What’s the best kind of art? Naked people.”

  Niall and I shared a look. I didn’t know what it meant. I couldn’t read him. But it lingered, until both of us smiled at the same time. He let my hand go, but slowly, and I was intrigued to notice that I was reluctant for him to release me. We stared at each other until Evan snorted.

  “Dude. That’s my sister,” Evan said.

  Niall didn’t look away from me. “Yeah? What’re you gonna do, beat me up?”

  “No,” my dumbass brother said. “But apparently, she might, if you’re lucky.”

  “I’ve always been kind of lucky,” Niall said.

  Evan and I both looked at him. Niall smiled and shrugged. I punched my brother in the arm like we were still in the fourth grade. “Shut up.”

  Evan danced away from me, rubbing his arm. “Hey! I’m supposed to look out for you!”

  “I can look out for myself.” I looked back at Niall. “You work with this idiot?”

  “Yeah, same office,” Niall said.

  “Poor you.”

  “Hey!” Evan frowned, while Niall and I grinned at each other. My brother’s phone buzzed from his pocket in the next moment, and he pulled it free with a small grimace I hated to see. He didn’t have to tell me it was his wife. He held up a finger as he took the call, walking away from us both to find a quiet place.

  Niall looked at me. “So. Elise.”

  “Niall.” I smiled. “My brother dragged you along for a night out, huh?”

  “He said I needed some culture.”

  “Do you?”

  The question made him laugh and shake his head. “I guess...so?”

  “My brother wouldn’t know culture if it had fangs and bit him in the ass,” I told him. “But it was cool that he brought you along to support the event. Did you get some raffle tickets? It’s for a good cause.”

  Niall dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of red tickets. “Lady at the door got me, yep. I bought an arm’s worth for five bucks.”

  “That’s the way to do it. You want some cheese?” I held out my brother’s plate. “He’s going to be gone awhile.”

  Niall waved a hand to decline the cheese but glanced over his shoulder to where Evan had gone. “Yeah...she wasn’t happy about him coming out tonight, I think.”

  “Then she ought to have told him to stay home, or come along with him, instead of interrupting him while he’s out doing stuff,” I said shortly and pushed a piece of cheese into my mouth to keep myself from saying more than that.

  “Maybe she doesn’t like art,” Niall said so blandly that I knew he’d met my sister-in-law.

  I shook my head with a small laugh and swallowed the cheese. “No. She probably doesn’t.”

  I didn’t think Susan liked much of anything these days, to be honest, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Niall turned to look at the portraits, and I followed him as he made his way along the wall. I finished the cheese and dumped the plate, along with my empty wineglass. I’d seen all of the pictures before, so I watched him look at them instead of looking at them myself.

  Scott had hung them in no obvious groupings—there were full-color graphic shots of naked people next to black-and-white pictures shot off-center or slightly out of focus to take away the emphasis of what the people in them were doing and let the viewer absorb the emotional impact, instead. Niall didn’t comment on any of them, though some caught his attention longer than others. Several times he shook his head and gave me a glance, though I couldn’t quite read his expression. Turned on? Turned off? It was hard to say, but I was having a good time trying to figure it out. We got to the final picture hung on this wall, and I paused, wondering if I should warn him.

  Unlike the one I’d been looking at earlier, this picture had nothing soft or hazy about it. Black-and-white, every edge of the image was clear and crisp. Sharp enough there could be no mistaking any of the action.

  I was in this one, too. Jack was not my partner. To be honest, I didn’t remember the name of the man in the photo with me. We’d been strangers before the session, and we remained strangers still, our moment captured forever in ink and paper, imprisoned behind glass.

  “Huh,” Niall said, staring.

  I laughed,