Page 98 of Unleashed By Eden

“No promises.”

I stay standing, hips pressed against the table, camera angled so they can see the display. They crowd in, heads almost touching, their reactions dropping to whispers and little gasps as each frame blinks past.

“Oh my God,” Hailee murmurs. “This one. His face.”

Cora squints. “Why does he always look like he’s coming when he hits the high notes?”

“That’s literally the point,” Chloe says, laughing softly. “Fans lose their minds over it.”

I flick to another shot, one where smoke is spiraling around Carter’s silhouette, light catching his hair so he looks almost mystical. They all inhale at once.

I laugh. “You’re ridiculous,” I say, but I get it. I do.

“These are insane, Vi.” Hailee’s eyes are wide. “Like . . . proper magazine-cover insane.”

I know. My work has been on covers before. But they don’t know that. They don’t know I’m Vega Wolfe.

Cora leans her head on Chloe’s shoulder. “You’ve caught the stuff that people don’t usually get to see,” she says quietly. “The in-between moments.”

Pride warms the back of my neck. And then my thumb slips. The gallery hops sideways into a different folder entirely. A new image jumps onto the screen. One that was never meant for anyone else’s eyes.

The sheets are rumpled around Carter’s naked waist. Just out of frame, his hand is curved over my hip. His eyes look directly into the lens and his smile is small but real, the kind he only shows when no one is watching. The image punches straight through me because I remember exactly how that moment felt—him looking at me like I was something he’d spent years wanting and wasn’t convinced he was allowed to keep.

I suck in a breath, too loud to hide it.

Hailee leans closer, her mouth falling open. “Holy shit, Vi . . .”

Chloe’s voice is almost reverent. “That’s . . . wow. That belongs in a gallery.”

I don’t say anything. My throat’s gone dry.

I move to swipe it away, embarrassed about showing something so personal and intimate, but a shadow falls over the table before I can escape it. Heat presses along my shoulder.

“What are you all staring at?” Carter’s voice rumbles.

Of course he shows up right at this moment.

My first instinct is to yank the camera to my chest. He’s private about the soft parts of himself, and this is . . . that. On a plate.

Instead, I angle the camera so he can see.

He completely stills.

I look over my shoulder and watch as his eyes move slowly across the image, taking in the way he’s looking at me, the whole intimacy of the moment reflected back.

He leans down until his mouth brushes the shell of my ear. His breath is warm, the words hardly move the air.

“I’ve never looked at anyone the way I’m looking at you in that picture.”

My heart misfires. My throat goes tight around a lump the size of an orange.

I haven’t cried in years, not since I learned that tears don’t fix shit, they just make your face blotchy and give people ammunition. But for a second, I’m genuinely convinced my eyes will give me away.

This is everything twelve-year-old me wanted and never thought she’d get. Everything seventeen-year-old me tried to burn out of herself. It presses into all the empty spaces, and I can feel the shape of myself changing around it.

Maybe this is what emotional growth looks like, this terrifying swell of hope that refuses to be stuffed back down, a slow realization that letting someone see me might not be the death sentence I’ve always assumed.

I blink hard, hoping the girls don’t notice.