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“Okay. Can I come up to help?”
“No.” He’d said it too quickly, as if he was afraid of me getting involved.
“Why not?”
“Believe me, baby, there’s nothing you can do. What I’d like is for you to be strong for me, okay? Go to your classes, take care of yourself. Do more Kickboxing or Jujitsu—”
“Aikido.”
“Yeah, and just… Please, Minty. Just be good, baby. All right?”
Be good.
What had he meant by that? I knew, of course. Don’t go get myself fucked and beaten by Kyle. That’s what he’d meant. The fact that he was still afraid of me doing that, even after everything we’d shared was…
Well, it should be insulting, but it only showed that I still hadn’t proven myself to him.
We’d talked most nights since that phone call, but it was always hurried and perfunctory, the long-distance charge forcing us to keep it short.
I walked over to the Saint Andrew’s cross, touched the wood, remembered what it’d felt like to be tied to it while he wielded a wicked flogger and whip.
Christ, I could use that right now. Ineededit. My mind kept going back to earlier in the day when I was in my dorm and pressed play on—
But no. I wouldn’t think about that.
During our last call, just the night before, I was curled up on my favorite side of his sofa, cuddling with the soft blanket he often used for aftercare. As usual, he didn’t have time to talk.
“Baby, I’m sorry, but things are intense here tonight. It’s not a good time for a conversation. So, let me repeat, as your Dom, these are your orders—eat well, go to class, take care of yourself. Don’t let me down. I’ll call tomorrow.”
My mind whirled with the brevity of it all. “Yes, Sir.”
“Thank you. I love you.”
The dial tone ran down the line when he hung up.
Smoothing my hands over the cross, I huffed. I’d responded to the dominance in his voice like a weak, spineless submissive. I hadn’t been bratty at all. Which should havetoldhim something, and on another day, maybe it would have.
If I’d been in a better place, I wouldn’t have felt hurt that he had a life that wasn’t all about coddling and caring for me. If I’d been in a worse place, maybe I would have been awful and insisted, “What about me? What about my needs?”
Because I had needs.
Big ones. Especially right now.
The basement was quiet. I could hear my own breath and the whoosh of my pulse in my ears. I stepped over to the bed and sat down, my gaze settling on the cage where it rested on the floor.
I chewed my lower lip.
On Luke’s orders, I’d been attending all my classes regularly. Being on campus wasn’t what it used to be. Before my diagnosis, I’d found being a student freeing and fun. It’d been a new adventure every day—who I’d see, what I’d wear, who I might fuck, and what I might learn.
But now, campus was a parade of grief or temptation. Everywhere I looked there was something to remind me of things I wanted to forget. There was the Health Center where I’d learned my life would be very short and utterly useless, and the UC bathroom where I’d once let Kyle fuck me like a rag doll while Peter waited anxiously outside. There was the Biology Lab where I’d dissociated instead of taking notes a week after the maybe-rape with Kyle, and there was the frat house where I’d had my arm broken the same day I sucked my father off.
All of those places brought back the shame that had become integral to me.
I shoved my hand into the pocket of my jeans, touching the edge of the folded-up piece of paper I’d printed off that morning in the University library’s microfiche department. It was an article about Tamara Elise Allen, the teenage girl my father had raped. She was blonde with a pixie cut and looked more like me than I could stomach.
In the photo, taken outside the courthouse just after his sentencing, she appeared utterly miserable. I could relate too well. Justice wasn’t ever as satisfying as you hoped it would be, and it never erased the damage done.
I knew I shouldn’t have sought out information on the trial. I hadn’t even intended to do it. But I’d been between classes, avoiding my old haunts, and looking for a fresh place to hang out,one free of demons. I’d gone into the library, thinking I’d find Peter or Barry on shift working. I could hang out with them for a bit.
