“Oh my god!”
Fabian looked wild-eyed and flustered as I walked into the backstage area of the final year fashion show, and with good reason. There were design students and models everywhere, the place rowdy with shrieked and hissed orders. I saw dresses, tits, arses, accessories, and fabulousness everywhere, and I was about to become a part of it.
“I’ll be in the audience,” Beau told me, pressing a careful kiss to my cheek.
He’d done as he’d promised and booked us into a whole-day pamper session at a spa, then took me to the hair and makeup artists Fabian wanted us to use. Then he’d helped me into this dress. Fabian moved around, fussing with fall of the dress and inspecting the lacing at the back closely, until finally, he went still.
“Say goodbye to your hot alpha and came and meet the others,” Fabian said, the two of us waving to Beau as he took off.
“Am I meeting your hot alphas again?”
He slid me a sidelong look, and not an entirely confident one.
“God, I hope not, and they’re not my alphas,” he said.
“I’d like the court to note that the denial came second, Your Honour,” I said with a smirk.
“Bitch, shut up,” he hissed. “Those guys…they’re intense.”
I was willing to bet they weren’t with everyone but him, but I wasn’t able to push it further as I met the rest of the team. I smiled as I drew closer, able to see Fabian’s meticulous eye for detail in each garment, as well as the fit. He made a lightning fast round of introductions, which I didn’t remember anything from, and then started to get us ready in the order in which we would walk down the runway, and that was when shit started to get real. I’d been buzzing along in a cocoon of numbness all afternoon, and now that was about to get cracked open.
Except I wasn’t the only one. When I’d seen runway shows on TV, the models always looked like a picture of serene cool, but now I saw the truth. We were just one group among the many, as bodies, so many bodies, waited for the show to start. Much more ordinary ones like mine, or beautiful tall boys and girls that looked like they had to be professional. I could feel the tension coming off every single one of them in waves. We were like horses locked into the starting gate, dogs about to be let off the lead. We weren’t sure how we were going to make it up and down that runway, but all of us were united in a desire to get it done.
“Thanks for this,” Fabian told me, giving my hand a squeeze. “Beau told me how much you hate shit like this, and I know you’d much rather be doing anything else but—”
I squeezed his hand back, staring into his eyes, feeling his fear, because god knew my own curdled in my guts. I hadn’t been able to eat a damn thing all day, despite Beau’s prompting. For a second, we just stared at each other, me marvelling that someone as beautiful as him could be freaking out and him wondering what attack of madness had led me to agreeing, our stare going on and on until a voice broke our spell.
“All right, everyone!” The woman’s crisp voice cut through any chatter, bringing everyone to attention. “Down the catwalk and then pause. Strike a pose if you wish, but give the photographers a moment to get a shot of your outfit, then turn and walk back. It sounds simple but rarely is. Be aware of your fellow models, and…”
“This is it,” Fabian hissed to himself, and dammit, it was.
I felt like a damn lamb being led to the slaughter as I stepped closer, my anxiety spiralling so quickly, I couldn’t even form thoughts anymore. I just stood there, my whole body vibrating, my heartbeats feeling like they were thudding so fast, they blurred into each other. I watched the first person walk through the gap in the backstage area, then the next, then the next, my eyes hypnotised by their rhythmic swivel. Then it came to my turn.
“You can do this,” Fabian said, but was it to me or himself? I stared up at him, saw the hope there and the desperation, and felt its twin inside me. Right when he was shitting his damn pants, he was trying to make me feel better, so I turned to him and nodded, giving his hand a squeeze before I stepped up to the mark.
A man couldn’t fix a woman. He couldn’t make her feel good about herself when she was trained to feel bad. He couldn’t take her trauma and wave his dick over it, whisking it all away. Once the first gloss of a relationship wore off and you started acting like the person you really were, it all came back, but there was something about a man, or a woman, a loved one, turning up and being present in your life. Someone who was willing to walk beside you as you did the work, because maybe, just maybe, their persistent subliminal message of love, of acceptance, of need and desire, but most of all, of respect, could provide you with a buffer from a cruel and unusual world, creating a safe harbour in which you could decide to love yourself.
I didn’t fit in here with all of these glamorous people. I wasn’t about to push Tess Holliday off her perch as a plus size supermodel, but when Henri saw me, when Beau did, when my mate’s eyes went wide and he got to his feet, other audience members looking at him in confusion, then me, trying to work out what the big deal was, I smiled. I wasn’t a big deal, but I was to him. I nodded to him and carried the fire of the bond we carried between us, between myself and all of his brothers, and I walked.
I couldn’t tell you much about it, except I looked at my mate, not the crowd, which got a little tricky when we got to the end. I belatedly realised I was at the end, stopping pretty awkwardly, a flurry of flashes going off in my eyes, before I turned around and walked back. I couldn’t feel my face, my legs, not even when I was safely backstage and Beau was there with the hugest bunch of flowers in his arms.
“Love…”
He was going to congratulate me, to praise me, to say something sweet, but just then, his throat closed over and I got to watch the spectacular sight of Beau Lockwood being lost for words. I threw myself at him, the cellophane crumpling between us, until Fabian fussed and helped me get out of the dress and into some street clothes.
“This was a triumph,mon ami,”Henri said sometime later, when we were all standing in the hall the show had been held in, the last model having walked some time ago. His eyes shone bright as he said the words, which seemed to take some effort to get out, but not due to a language barrier. He held up his glass of wine as a salute, as a passing of the baton from his generation to Fabian’s.
“Quite,” Richard Saville said. “We’ve had quite a few enquiries from some of the industry insiders in the crowd. You are looking down the barrel of a long and illustrious career, Fabian, something we would like to play a role in.”
“Just invite me to your wedding,” I whispered, and Fabian shot me a poisonous look.
“Just let me design your wedding dress,” he said, looking pointedly at the new mark of my neck.
So I did.
67
Several months later.