I knew, and I didn’t at the same time. On a theoretical level, I knew that they wouldn’t have stuck around if they didn’t love me. I’d always been a difficult child. When I wasn’t surprising them with makeup or my clothes now, I was the shy kid who didn’t thrive at the social functions they forced me into. Not to mention, it was hard to feel like they wanted me anywhere near when they’d kept me in boarding schools since it was legal for them to do so, and as soon as I was out, they couldn’t have run fast enough to come up with a million travels and plans that meant they never were up north.
It might be selfish—parents were adults, too; they deserved to have a life—but when I was questioning everything? The sting of rejection didn’t quite leave me.
“You can talk with them, you know?”
“Right.” Talking with them had never fixed anything. Sometimes I wondered if that had to do with why I still had issues communicating. Saying I never had a good example at home was an understatement. I supposed they tried every now and then. It was just useless. “Don’t mind me, I’m just not in the mood today.”
“That’s fine,” he promised. “And it will be fine when they come here next week, too.”
“Sure.” I reclined against the couch. Santos had been here listening to one of his audiobooks while he worked on a notebook he’d brought with him about three weeks ago now?Time was soup. “Mónica wants me to help run a workshop at the club.”
Santos stopped his massage to raise an eyebrow in my direction. “She does?”
“I know, right?”
It was a terrible idea, but she’d texted me after that day at the café, because I guessed she’d been obsessing about it in her not-Mommy way, and now I kept thinking about it myself. It really was a terrible idea, but she’d used words like getting more involved in the community, and engaging, and all the effort and pride, and…I might be warming up to it.
“On what?”
“It’s up to me. Chastity or feminization, I think.” They were the topics I was more familiar with, unless anyone would be interested in a workshop on how to fuck up with every Dom you scened with. “Uh, would you be there?”
I held my breath. Santos hadn’t stepped into the club yet. I’d vowed to leave it alone. It was fine. He didn’t have to join the club or be into any of it. Plumas could be my space like it had always been. But I was the same greedy person I’d proved I was ever since I met him at the airport, the one that was apparently going to push for everything until he gave in because that was who he was, and then eat myself from the inside with worry that he was going to leave the second he opened his eyes to it.
“Do you want me to?”
“I mean…” I froze, throat dry. “If you want?”
I was a coward on top of a greedy and selfish asshole.
Perfect.
“I’ll be there.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.” He returned to his foot massage. As if I wasn’t on the verge of imploding from the inside. “Can’t say no to my pretty girl.”
Definitely imploding.
In more ways than one now.
THIRTY-FOUR
santos
Looking into Ever’s relationship with his parents—with his mother, specifically—was one hell of a mindfuck. I’d actually spent the entire hour yesterday discussing that with my therapist. (It turned out that, yes, we needed to address my upbringing and childhood, and all that pesky stuff, and yesterday just proved how deep it went).
And, today, I sat at the big table of the main dining room, while Ever’s mother got us up to date with all the happenings of her friends, Ever’s cousins, and every piece of national news she had read in the past two weeks.
My head was exploding, and it wasn’t because of the amount of information, or because I didn’t know half of the people she was talking about, or because some of the political takes she was spouting were abysmal and I didn’t know how to reconcile them with the woman who hadn’t stood up for me but had given me a home when my own wouldn’t.
No, it was about the adoration she had in her gaze whenever Ever said more than four words in response to her, when she thought he wasn’t looking. It was about the way she snuck furtive glances at Ever’s clothes, but there was no disdain there. Some curiosity she didn’t dare to look too closely into, maybe.
It was how, if I let my mind wander, she was replaced with my own mother. Her looks of timid appreciation were replaced by judgment, and the faces she thought she hid well but didn’t. Her darker hair was replaced with honey blonde hair without a strand out of place, her subtle makeup gone in place of the sort of blue eyeshadow she didn’t let die in the 2000s.
I was aware of every furtive glance Ever sent my way. I knew I had to stay here, that he needed me, that there was too much history—too much untold context—between the two of them. I understood.
It was just taking everything in me not to scream, not to stand up and make them butt their heads against each other, and then run the fuck away.
