My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Collar

"Then we'll be ready for both," Beckett said, when I showed him the text.

He said it was simple.

I put my phone face down on the sideboard and went back to the pie.

In January I moved into my own place.

It was one room over a laundromat in Pilsen, two blocks from Daisy.

It had a radiator that clanked and a north window that leaked cold.

I paid the deposit with three months of shifts at the store.

My dad drove up with his toolbox and fixed the window in an hour.

Dorinda sent a rug that cost more than the rent and a note that said Don't argue.

I didn't argue. It was a very good rug.

My thesis had a name by then.

Blind Contours.

Twelve portraits, life size, drawn with my eyes closed and one hand on the face I was drawing.

Daisy. My dad, asleep in his chair. Dorinda, laughing, with her pearls in her fist.

The outside juror came to see them in February.

She was a small woman from a New York gallery who said nothing for twenty minutes.

Then she said, "Who's the twelfth?"

There was an empty easel at the end of the row.

"I'm still working on him," I said.

On the first Saturday in March, Beckett came to my apartment at two in the afternoon.

He wasn't my professor anymore. He wasn't anybody's.

He'd spent the winter painting in the loft, and he looked better for it, less sharp, ink on his cuffs.

I sat him on a stool in the window light.

Then I took the black lace blindfold out of my pocket.

He went very still.

"Your turn," I said.

He looked at it in my hand.

"You don't have to do this for me."

"Rule five."

His mouth twitched.

"Right. I don't decide what you can handle."

"You don't decide what you can handle either. Not today." I held up the lace. "Hold still."

He took a long breath.

"Yes, ma'am."

I stood behind him and tied it over his eyes.

I made the knot the way he'd always made mine, firm, two loops, the silk ends hanging down his back.

I felt him swallow.

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"Like I can hear the radiator in my teeth."

"Welcome to two years of my life."

He laughed, low, and then he stopped laughing, because I'd put my palm flat on his cheek.

I closed my eyes too.

I drew him by feel.

His forehead. The bridge of his nose where the glasses sat. The small dent on the left side of his mouth.

His breathing changed under my hand, and I drew that too.

When I opened my eyes, the paper had him on it.

Not the Beckett from magazine photos. Not the professor at the desk.

The man who'd sat in the dark for two years and let me hold the rule.

"Can I look?" he said.

"No."

He smiled under the lace.

"Good girl," he said, and then, "Sorry. Habit."

"Don't be sorry."

I put the charcoal down and wiped my hands on my jeans.

He was still sitting where I'd put him, hands on his knees, blind and waiting.

Waiting for me.

"I have something for you," he said. "Left jacket pocket."

I reached in.

It was a small black box.

Inside was a new collar, black leather, softer than the old one, with a small silver ring.

A round silver tag hung from the ring.

A name was engraved across it.

LAUREL.

Not pup. Not his.

Mine.

"You don't belong to me because I own you," he said quietly. "You belong to you. You just let me hold the lead."

I couldn't say anything for a minute.

So I put my hand in my own pocket and pulled out what I'd brought.

A brass key on a red string.

I pressed it into his palm and folded his fingers over it.

He felt it with his thumb, blind.

"Is this what I think it is?"

"It's my door. It sticks. You have to lift it."

His fingers closed tight around the key.

"Laurel."

"I love you," I said. "I said it to your face first, even if you can't see mine. That counts."

He reached up for the blindfold.

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