Cole grabs me by the shoulders, forcing me to stop. I was running away from him down the tree-lined street, and I’m still torn between the impulse to shout at him or flee.
My life is hurtling down this new path, and I don’t know if I want it. It looks like a dream, but it’s mixed up with a nightmare.
Cole’s looking at me with his beautiful face set in an expression of concern, but I know what he is, I know what he’s done. Am I insane to think he cares about me?
Arthur does. But now Arthur is pushing me away because there’s no place for my new life in my old. I can’t be the Mara I always was, poor and desperate, and this new Mara, replete with money and success.
Cole forces me to look at him. Into those dark eyes that have always been the real window inside of him.
“Why do you hate when I talk to Arthur? Why are you worried what I’ll say to him? Or him to me?”
My face crumples up. I cover it with my hands, ashamed.
“I don’t know,” I sob. “I’m not used to people saying nice things about me.”
Cole wraps his arms around me, pulling me close against his chest. He’s warm and strong, his heart a metronome that never falters.
He tilts my chin up so I’ll look at him. So I’ll know he’s telling the truth.
“Mara, I will never tear you down to other people. I will never degrade you in their eyes. I want to build you up, do you understand that?”
I never knew until this moment that I believed every conversation about me had to be negative. It had to be an airing of all my mistakes, all my flaws. What else could they talk about?
“I thought you told him to fire me,” I admit.
“Why would I do that? We made an agreement. You can work here as long as you want, if you don’t mind me camping out in the corner. I’ll admit, it’s not just to protect you. I have to be around you. I’m addicted to you. You fuel me, you light me up inside. Just knowing you’re in the house enlivens me. I can’t go back to the way I was before. I’m afraid of it.”
I’ve never heard Cole talk this way before. I’ve never seen his face so naked, so exposed. Not blank and emotionless—raw and confused. I look in his eyes and I see that he’s telling me the truth: he’s afraid of losing me.
No one has ever been afraid of losing me.
No one wanted me in the first place.
I turn my face back into Cole’s chest, letting his arms envelop me. Letting him hold me tight.
“I don’t want to go back either,” I say.
That night, Cole takes me to Betsy’s party at her Jackson Street gallery.
I squirm nervously in the passenger seat of the car. I’m worried we’re going to see Shaw tonight.
“Maybe he won’t come,” Cole says. “That cop’s still poking around. He came to the studio this morning, did I tell you that?”
I shake my head.
“Janice didn’t let him upstairs, but he made such a nuisance that Sonia had to come talk to him. He’s insisting on meeting with me later this week.”
“Meeting with you?” I frown. “What for?”
“He pretended like it was all ticking boxes. But I’m pretty sure he’s running his own investigation, separate from what the SFPD thinks they’re doing.”
I know Cole has been keeping tabs on it all through a casual acquaintance in the vice department.
I remember Officer Hawks. I remember his perfectly polished shoes, his neat haircut and black-framed glasses. This is a man who ticks boxes. But also a man who notices small details and doesn’t leave a job half-done.
“He’s perceptive,” I tell Cole. “Not like that first idiot that interviewed me. Don’t underestimate him.”
“I don’t underestimate anyone,” Cole says. “I’m not as arrogant as you think.”
“But you don’t think Shaw will be here tonight.”
Cole shrugs. “If he’s smart, he’s laying low. And besides, he killed four girls, one more than usual. He should be satiated.”
I don’t like Erin being grouped in as one of the four, like she’s just another grape on the stem shoveled into Shaw’s mouth. Erin had talent—she made watercolors so beautiful you could weep. She was funny and blunt. She loved to tease me and Frank, but never to the point of actually hurting our feelings.
She loved her life, and Shaw had no fucking right to take it from her.
I’m sure all those other girls were just as unique, just as wonderful, if only I’d had the chance to know them.
“I want that cop to catch him,” I say. “I want him to rot in a cell for a hundred years.”
Cole doesn’t bother to reply. We both know his opinion on the subject.
We’re pulling up to the gallery. The line stretches all the way down the street. People crane toward the windows, several girls trying to take pictures through the glass.
“Why is it so busy?” I ask Cole. It was supposed to be a cocktail party, nothing out of the ordinary.
Cole marches right up to the doors. He’s probably never waited in a line in his life.
Betsy Voss waves us inside. She’s bouncing with excitement, her body as buoyant as her bouffant of lacquered hair.
“Come in, come in!” she trills. “You’ve got to see this, Cole. You’re going to love it!”
Venom – Little Simz
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The reason for her excitement, and everyone else’s, immediately becomes apparent.
The entire gallery space is filled top to bottom, wall to wall, with a brilliant technicolor spiderweb. The thick strands are woven up and down, all around, with large enough gaps between that the guests can walk through, clambering in and under the installation. You’re forced to interact with it, to grip and touch the thick ropes. The puffy, loose-woven wool manages to look sticky and dripping, but also soft and enticing. The eye-searing shades of magenta, lemon, and teal are so vivid and wet that the strands might have been spray-painted via some sort of pressure-cannon.
The aggressive color envelops you, making your eyes burn and your head spin. You’re trapped inside a rainbow prism that seems to go on and on forever, disorienting and intoxicating.
Cole stares around at the installation, not touching anything.
We both know the architect of this piece. The signature colors give it away. But it’s nothing I could have imagined from him.
“Guess he’s not laying low,” I murmur to Cole.
Cole is unusually silent. I think I know the reason why.
Cole’s disdain for Shaw has been apparent to me since before I ever met either of them. He’s never spoken of Shaw’s work with any level of respect.
But for the first time, Shaw has created something truly impressive. Something even Cole can’t deny.
It’s slapping us right in the face.
Marcus York comes bustling up to Cole, his frizzy orange hair puffing out on both sides like a clown wig, an impression not helped by York’s short legs and too-tight waistcoat stretched across his large belly.
“Oh ho, Cole, someone’s putting you on notice!”
“What?” Cole snaps irritably.