Page 35 of None Of Your Business

“Then tell me how it works.” I step closer. “I don’t need to be studied. I need to sit in the room.”

He ignores the olive branch, his focus remaining locked onto me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.

“I’m not doing this with you.” He turns around, reaches for the doorknob, and pulls the door open. “I’m glad you’re working again, but no. These are real people. They consented to participate in a research program, not become material for your art.”

“I’m not using them like that. I don’t paint them literally.”

“The point is that their pain isn’t yours to take just because it makes you productive.”

My fingers tighten into fists. I look at the rigid line of his shoulders and realize the lies are over. He sees right through the theater. If I want to stay in this room, I need to give him something real.

“Okay, wait. Please. Just give me a minute.”

“To think up more lies?”

“Please,” I whisper, my eyes stinging. “I can’t fail again.”

I take a breath, keeping my gaze fixed on the floor. “Two years ago, I was part of a group show. It changed everything for me. A prominent gallery director saw my work, and a few months later, the gallery offered me a solo show.”

My throat tightens as my mind goes somewhere I don’t want it to. Mornings when my hands wouldn’t cooperate. Days when getting from my bed to the bathroom felt like work. Appointments, tests, more appointments. The gallery deadline getting closer while my body became less reliable by the day.

I shove it back down. “It was my big break, and I backed out. I called them two weeks before the opening and canceled the whole thing.”

“Why?” Hudson asks quietly.

“I told everyone I had a creative block,” I say, shifting my weight to relieve the throb in my left hip. “I told them the work wasn’t ready.”

“There’s more.”

I slip my hands into my coat pockets so he can’t see them shake. “Yes. There’s more. But is it okay if I don’t tell you every detail right now?”

He stands by the open door for what feels like an eternity.

“You’re not staying in my study.”

“Hudson—”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t stay in the room. You sign a confidentiality agreement. We pull your data. Everything from the last three weeks is excluded. You are not a participant in my cohort.”

“But I can come to the group?”

“If Dr. Webb agrees, and the group consents to you being there, you can attend as an observer.”

Hope sparks so fast I almost hate him for it. “Really?”

“I haven’t finished.”

I take a breath.

“You sit in the same chair. You don’t participate in exercises designed for couples. You don’t misrepresent yourself as being married, separated, widowed, or otherwise romantically involved with any more dead men.”

“That’s very restrictive.”

“Rowan,” he groans, frustrated.

“Fine.”

“You do not reproduce identifiable participants in anything you exhibit or sell.”