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6
Macklin McKenna
I hated boats.
They required fourteen stories and had to be called ships for me to like them these days.
But yeah, Ty’s boat was comfortable and fancy. If a sunbed had cupholders, I wasn’t gonna complain too much. Partly because I was too nauseated to dare speak a single word.
While Shay took pictures of our tropical surroundings—and Lane was making out with the man driving the boat—I sat on the sunbed in the front, clutching a handlebar and preparing myself to throw up over the railing.
I hadn’t seen the twins in a bit. They could be in the seating area on the other side.
The guilt was eating at me. More so than my dread about seeing Walker, to be honest. Because I’d been acting like a fucking dick lately. Not just today. It’d been months in some ways, where I hadn’t considered what my mental state was doing to my friends. How I’d had others bail me out when I couldn’t face Walker on my own. Now, everyone’s vacation plans had changed because of me.
I wished they would understand, though. They couldn’t know what my marriage had done to me. Walker and I… Christ, just thinking about him made me sick. Sick with want, sick with anger, sick with longing, sick with desperation.
I didn’t want to lose myself again. I couldn’t.
Only a couple months had passed since Tate and Kingsley had reunited, and it felt like people were expecting Walker and me to be the next second-chance success.
We wouldn’t be.
Unlike Tate and Kingsley, whom I fucking adored—and we were lucky to have them in our community—Walker and I hadn’t made rookie mistakes. Okay, yeah, so Tate and Kingsley had held back; they’d communicated poorly and hadn’t committed to each other, which they’d both fucking wanted. They’d walked around thinking the other wanted to be casual and open, when in reality, no. They were open to a select few people they trusted, and they were anything but casual. For chrissakes, they were engaged to be married now. And they were in the process of finding a surrogate or whatever.
I didn’t see that happily ever after for me. Not with anyone. Not with Walker—because we had wrecked each other. Nobody had looked at us and been all, aww, you’re so cute together. Not counting in the kink scene, I guessed. I knew our friends had picked up on our chemistry. Walker had been the best Master in the world for me. He’d made me want to submit so deeply that I almost forgot I was a switch.
In our everyday life, however? We hadn’t made much sense. Maybe not even to ourselves.
That was why my feelings for him pained me so damn much. The way I reacted to his voice, to his charismatic grin, to the beast within who revealed himself the second the fancy suit came off. Because that was Walker McKenna in a nutshell. He wore Hugo Boss suits, polite smiles, and Patek watches in public. But behind closed doors? He became someone else. An irresistible Master with a knack for head games and primal play. A hedonistic animal with tentacles tattooed on his arm. Tentacles and flowers and monsters and whips and chains and…my name.
One of my biggest problems with him was his knowledge of the human being. He knew what people wanted. How they functioned and how they reacted. He saw through façades and had a bullshit detector unlike anything I’d witnessed. He’d studied human behavior and psychology for fifteen years—to become the best business consultant in his field.
And to tear me to pieces.
As a couple, Walker and I had created a beautiful toxin we’d poisoned ourselves with.
Our friends didn’t know that.
One of them was comin’ this way right now…
“How you feelin’, champ?” Reese sat down next to me and clapped a hand on my thigh.
“Like I need to hurl.” I spoke just as loudly as necessary for him to hear me over the waves we made on the ocean.
“Not like you need to safeword?” He tilted his head.
I swallowed hard and took an unsteady breath.
Trust me, the thought had crossed my mind. I knew I could safeword myself out of this mess. And then what? I’d keep Lane in suspense, which he hated. I wasn’t blind. He got anxious when he didn’t know what was going on. I felt like a shit boyfriend too, when I couldn’t even speak about my past to him.
“Show me your wallet,” Reese requested.
I furrowed my brow, confused, but did as told. Always best to just go with it.
He held it between us. “Last year—you invited us all out for dinner to celebrate River and me.” Right, for their birthday. “When you paid the check—despite the threats we gave you for paying for everyone—something fell out, and you were quick to hide it.”
Fuck him. Why did he have to go there?
