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The cryptic hint came before I’d had enough coffee. “Excuse me?”
“The mayor,” Joel yelled, and Eli laughed, trying to hush him.
“He called Noah and asked him if he knew you, being he’d heard you were staying with close friends of Noah’s and mine.”
I felt my legs go numb and my hands tightened on the thick mug. “He…asked about me?”
“Yes,” Eli affirmed. “He called Noah, asking who you were, how you came here. When Noah asked why, you know Noah…”
“Not really but go on.”
“Oh, right, well, Noah doesn’t beat around the bush about things, so someone calling him to ask about someone else, well, he’s not thrilled about those kinds of conversations. He’s a direct guy and thinks others should be too.”
“He tol’ the mayor ta call ya and ask fer hisself,” Joel finished for Eli.
“The mayor…Kendrick, is going to call me?”
“Ever’body calls ‘im Rick. Well, I don’t…I call ‘im Mayor.”
I took Joel’s hand across the table and squeezed it. “You’re very respectful, Joel. That’s a good way to be.”
“Thanks!”
Eli smiled at his friend, then told me, “Joel is the best.”
“I’m happy Brian and Lonnie sent me here. Denver was…not an option.”
That was an understatement. I’d tried to stay at a shelter of sorts that everyone called the sub house. That was a great place the Doms and subs of Chaps and another club farther south called Manacle had built for subs that had nowhere else to go. Sometimes, a submissive would give up their jobs and homes to give everything to a Dom and it didn’t always work between them. They needed a place to be to get back on their feet.
I was such a sub, and when it happened to me, I knew I could go there, live for long enough to find a job and my own place. Chaps, however, was a second home for me. I missed it terribly, so the second week after Jeffery asked me to move out, I went. When I got there, however, I saw them. Jeffery and his new guy. It broke me. Before that, I’d been holding up pretty well. I maybe thought it was a mistake, and he’d beg me to come back, or I’d move on and find someone else better. I’d bide my time and get back into the swing of things, but that broke me. Another man on the leash that had been attached to my collar for years.
I wasn’t good enough, or handsome enough. I may never feel enough again, and that hurt. Even if I could move on, what would that accomplish if I never trusted that I could be enough for a man again? What if…no man would ever truly love me enough to keep me for longer than a couple years before moving onto the next conquest?
Born to two people so in love, to see what a real relationship could be, it had tainted me. That didn’t seem like it should be something that could taint anyone, but it had. It gave me a false sense of confidence in love.
But I’d been beaten down, hurt plenty of times that I no longer thought real love could exist for most. Only those few lucky souls.
After I was in my room at the sub house for two entire days without even coming out to get food, the house father, as the title was called, called in the troops, meaning the men that financed the place and the shrink that cared for the ones that needed and wanted therapy.
Lonnie Lane-Walton was married to a millionaire, and together, they’d bought the houses that kept the subs with roofs over their heads while they tried to heal. Brian Lauder was the psychologist that treated them. They sat with me in my room over an hour before I said a word, and then it all rushed out of me in one long vent, sobs choking off most of it.
Brian realized I couldn’t stay in Denver and resume any sort of normal life, so he asked if I’d be okay with moving, at least for the healing period. He said he knew some people with extra space and good hearts. He’d been right.
Burke, Damon, and Joel had given me more than a place to stay and food in my stomach. I saw the love I thought never really happened. The three of them were totally devoted to each other. Then, their friends…more of the same. Love was everywhere in that quiet valley surrounded by mountains.
I…didn’t trust it, not at first, but after a few days, then performing at the bachelor party, it sealed it for me. Love was real, I just hadn’t found it for myself.
Swaying back and forth on that theory a few times, it cemented each time I saw the men together. Eli was in love and not only that, confident in that love. Joel was crazy in love, and he knew without question his men loved him too. Without question. The more I thought of that, the more I saw that had never been Jeffery and me.
We were never in an open relationship. He didn’t want that, he said, and I knew I didn’t. I’d fucked around enough and been in two open relationships in the past that hadn’t worked. Men didn’t like following the rules of those, I’d found. At least not the men I was with. What I didn’t know is that Jeffery still had other relationships, and one became someone that he didn’t let go.
“We’re glad you’re here, too,” Eli assured me, then rose from the table. “I need to get home. We’re having a foal, or getting a foal, or whatever it’s called.”
After Joel gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes and then a chuckle, he said, “Yer mare’s foalin’.”
“Yeah, whatever. Joel’s helping…us foal the horse or whatever the hell.”
“I done tol’ ya!”
