Coen stared at me in awe for a few seconds without saying anything. Just before I asked if he was okay, he asked, “Can I pull a Parker?”
“A Parker?”
“You, Duchess, are the coolest.”
I laughed loudly before turning back around in the chair to face the laptop. “Can I see more?”
He stepped up behind me and kissed the top of my head as he clicked through his files to where all his shoots were. “Knock yourself out. If you don’t want to stay through the whole shoot, I’ll call you when I’m done, all right?”
I nodded and tilted my head to the side when he brushed his lips against my neck, and shamelessly watched as he set up his studio. But by the time his client got there, I’d barely spared the guy a glance before getting caught up in the thousands upon thousands of pictures on Coen’s laptop.
There were some more like the first one I’d looked through. Some couple shots and weddings. The ones of the guy when I’d first come to the studio, and a lot of this guy I was having trouble figuring out if he was a firefighter, model, or fitness athlete. Then there were the more artistic ones, where every new set had me leaning closer to the laptop, and falling more in love with Coen’s style.
Clicking on the last file, labeled “bullshit,” my eyebrows rose and eyes darted to Coen before quickly going back to the screen. My mouth slowly fell open as I clicked through picture after picture of Coen. It was at probably the twelfth photo that my eyebrows dropped and pinched together, before I rapidly clicked back to the beginning and started over again, this time going through faster.
Sitting back in the chair, I folded my arms over my chest and angled my head to the side as I stared at the picture of him filling the screen. I don’t know how many pictures I’d finally gone through of him before stopping. Close to one hundred? Every one of them had been amazing, or funny, or artsy, or just sexy as sin. But that’s not why I couldn’t go through any more. I couldn’t go through any more because in every single picture, Coen’s face was somehow covered. Either by a shadow, glasses, mask, hat, cameras, paint . . . something. There wasn’t one that was just him.
“I didn’t think you’d sta—find the lame folder.”
Looking up at him, I pointed to the screen. “Do you have an issue with your face?”
He looked at me like I was losing it before laughing awkwardly. “Uh. What?”
“Your face”—sitting back up, I pushed down the left arrow and let it flip through the pictures—“is covered in every single one of these pictures. Why?”
“I don’t know, I like being weird? Or going for that artsy shit.”
“You sure that’s it?”
Coen shook his head slowly, like he didn’t know what other answer I could possibly be expecting. “I’m pretty sure. I mean, you’ve seen my face. If I had an issue with it, I wouldn’t let you see it.”
“Exactly,” I whispered when I looked back at the screen.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, babe.”
I took a deep breath in before looking at him. “All those pictures—and there’s a lot of them—were taken in the last couple years.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“Whatever happened for you to have your demons, when did it happen?”
Coen straightened and continued to stare at me without responding.
“Was it before—”
“There were missions throughout the last five years, it’s from all of them.”
“The main thing,” I pressed. “There has to be something crucial that happened. I don’t doubt there was bad shit every time you were sent somewhere. But I also don’t doubt there was something huge that is tormenting you.” When I realized he wasn’t going to answer, and that I’d probably asked way too much of him, I clicked out of the pictures and curled in on myself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“Two and a half years ago.”
I looked up into his haunted eyes, and ached to help him somehow.
“It was two and a half years ago. About four or five months before any of those pictures of me. I, uh, deleted all the pictures of me from before that time.”
I just nodded when his eyes focused back on me. That’s what I’d been worried about. Not that the pictures of him weren’t incredible, but somehow, I’d known. Coen was always, even subconsciously, hiding the place where his demons resided.
“Come here,” Coen said suddenly.
I shot him a look but gave him my hand to pull me up.
“Follow me.”
“Okay . . .” The word trailed off as Coen pulled his shirt over his head, and continued walking toward where all the equipment was set up.
Flipping off a few things, and switching others on, he moved his camera and played with it for a while before coming back over to me.
“You ready?”
“Um, I’m actually kind of lost right now. You took off your shirt and I started staring, and then you were playing with everything . . .”
He grinned before grabbing the bottom of my shirt, and slowly pulled it off my body.
“What are you—”
“I’m showing my girlfriend that she’s more beautiful than any of the girls she saw in those photos. I’m about to do my first shoot with someone. And if anything will be covering my face, it will be some part of you.” Unclasping my bra, he slid the straps down my arms before letting it drop to the floor.