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Chapter Twenty-Four
It was late May, only a couple of weeks before Twyla would hopefully be graduating. She’d been working hard to get up to speed in her classes, but four years of rarely doing homework and often not showing up for school even on test days had taken its toll on her GPA. Gunnar thought she could do it, and she’d buckled down to make it happen, but it still wasn’t a certainty.
In some ways it was hard to see: Twyla had never had any clear expectations nor the support to achieve anything she’d wanted to. Now that she had both, her ambition was coming to the surface and she’d become driven. Perhaps too much so.
She studied and fretted and while he was so proud of her, Gunnar was also concerned. Perfectionism wasn’t healthy for anyone since they were all human and everyone made mistakes, but for Twyla especially… It was like she was playing in basketball finals but had only been given sneakers and a decent coach in the fourth quarter after a season of being denied these things—but she suddenly felt pressure to bring home the trophy.
It wasn’t fair for her to have these expectations of herself, which he told her all the time while also praising her for all the things she was doing right and well. A hard balance to strike, but he thought he’d been doing okay.
It helped that when she got too stressed or nervy he could bring her up to the nursery and put her in little headspace so she could relax. A bath, a bottle, a diaper change, coloring or playing with her toys, being swaddled and put down for a nap on the weekends all helped.
But this week when she was studying for finals, he’d been a bit lax in his attention since all of his own students were buzzing with anxiety and end-of-the-year concentration slump. It showed.
Gunnar scooped some of the pasta with its lemon-pepper shrimp sauce onto plates and brought them over to the table.
“Dinner’s ready,” he called back to the kitchen counter where Twyla had been studying for her physics final.
He waited for a minute or so to let Twyla find a good stopping place, but when she didn’t come, he walked back over to where she was hunched over her books and laid a hand between her shoulder blades.
“Sweetheart, it’s time to eat.”
“I…I’m not hungry.”
She’d said that a couple of times in the past few days and he hadn’t thought much of it. Anxiety could be an appetite killer, and he made her eat some anyhow.
“Be that as it may, you’re still going to eat dinner. You can’t expect to keep pushing yourself this hard without eating a healthy diet to keep up your energy.” He turned on his Daddy voice in hopes of getting her attention, he didn’t want their food to get cold. “Don’t make me ask you again or there will be consequences.”
She looked up at him, pretty eyes wide and green with amber flecks. He could draw those eyes from memory if he had to but he’d never do them justice. Twyla bit her lip, because she knew what consequences meant.
She got turned over his knee not frequently but regularly and she knew it wouldn’t be a fun spanking which she’d also experienced quite a bit over the last month. They made love of a sort almost every night and he fell asleep with his sweet girl being the little spoon to his big.
“Can’t I skip it just this once?”
“No, and you’ll get a spanking after dinner for questioning me after you were given a warning. Now come to the table or I’ll bring you there myself. Or we can go upstairs and I’ll put you in your highchair if that will make things easier.”
He expected her to hop to it because this was about as far as she ever pushed him. But instead of slipping off her chair and allowing him to lead her to the table or up to the nursery where he’d put her in her highchair and fasten a bib around her neck and feed her, she looked sideways at him and then back down at her work.
“No.”
While he wasn’t thrilled with her refusal, Gunnar knew it could be trying to switch back and forth between being a more grown-up version of yourself and a little and sometimes it was too much. Or maybe there was something going on at school she hadn’t told him about. There were a million things it could be, but one thing he knew for certain was that this was not how his Twyla usually behaved. Since he’d given her the opportunity and praise for being good, she wanted to please him more than almost anything else.
Gunnar gripped the back of the stool in his hands and turned Twyla away from the counter to face him. Her face screwed up into a scowl and when she tried to grab the counter to swing herself back around, he took her by the wrists and pressed them to her sides. They clearly needed to have a talk.
“Let me go. I’m trying to study. Don’t you want me to do well on my test?”
“Of course I want you to do well. And I know you will. You’ve worked very hard and Miss Williams has been so impressed with your progress. But, you’ve also been given instructions to come to dinner and you will because it’s my job to keep you healthy and Daddy knows best. This argumentative behavior isn’t like you so I’ll assume there’s something else going on. You can tell me what it is now or you can tell me after I give you a very thorough spanking for being disobedient and disrespectful. Make your choice.”
Gunnar’s heart lurched as he considered the possibility that she was over this—overhim—now. Some women grew out of being littles once they’d received the nurturing they’d lacked, some of them just changed as people are wont to do. He’d do what was best for Twyla but he hoped against hope that it wouldn’t involve letting her go.
Twyla looked at the floor for a minute but he didn’t release his hold on her wrists, didn’t say a word. He would wait her out, and his patience paid off when she blinked her gaze up to his.
“I have a tummy ache.”
He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear before running the backs of his knuckles over her soft cheek. She sighed and leaned into his touch.
“Oh, little girl, why didn’t you say so?”
“I thought it was just because I’ve been worried. And I thought it would go away.”
