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I looked down at my lap, then back at his intense stare. “I haven’t talked to him since…that night.”
“Oh, yes, the night he punched me out for you, and you broke up with him in front of all his friends.”
His tone was difficult to read. Maybe angry, maybe furious. Maybe just unfriendly. If I could have gone back in time and not come here, I would’ve, but it was too late now.
“That night was difficult for both of us,” I said. “Things got crazy.”
“Yeah, I was there.”
“My relationship with Devin was always difficult. He’s so busy with his pilot’s schedule, and I’m so busy with my research—”
“We’re all busy.” Milo cut me off, merciless. “But he made time for you, more than he’d made for any submissive before.” He waved a hand. “Anyway, what can I do for you? Why are you here?”
“To ask you to help me get over him.”
His brows flew up. “Are you serious?”
“I mean, help me by taking me to The Gallery.” Now it was easy to read his mood—angry—but I swallowed and forged ahead. “I haven’t gone because I don’t have a sponsor, and I’m not really interested in going to any of the other BDSM clubs in town. I was hoping you’d take me to The Gallery, or sponsor me, or whatever, so I could…” My words spilled out, weak and pleading. “I want to be hurt. Badly.”
“Ella…”
“Otherwise I’ll keep thinking about him, or I’ll go after him, and that won’t be good for either of us, but especially him.”
“You are talking so much bullshit at me right now.”
His gruff words shut me down. I bit my lip and closed my mouth, and started to get up. “Sorry, I’m stupid,” I said under my breath.
He came from behind the desk and arrested my flight. “Sit your ass down. I know you’re not stupid, so something else is going on.” He sat in the chair beside mine, blocking the door. “So, to be clear, you came here to ask me, Devin’s best friend, to take you to The Gallery. Is that right?”
I couldn’t look at him, so I answered to my lap. “I didn’t know who else to ask.”
“The Gallery was Dev’s place before it was yours.”
“Is he still going there?” When I hatched this plan to find masochistic release, I convinced myself I wouldn’t mind if I ran into him, that it wouldn’t be awkward, since we hadn’t spoken in months. “If he’s there, it wouldn’t bother me. I don’t think it would bother him.”
“Bother him? He’s been there every week since you cut him loose, Ella. He’s been going crazy on every blonde bimbo in the place. I don’t think he’d even notice if I brought you.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard, feeling surprised. Jealous. Devastated. “Good for him.”
“I’m lying to you, you little bitch. He’s been working his tail off, staying in on the weekends, moping over you like a pathetic motherfucker. And I hate to see it, I really do, but that’s life, you know? Women cut you loose, you work through it, you move on. But here you are.”
He drew out the words—here you are—so they sounded ominous. I couldn’t hold his gaze.
“Here you are, Ella, in my office, in his best friend’s office, asking if I’ll take you to The Gallery to scratch your fucking itch.”
I looked past him at the door, wishing I could get to it. I’d somehow rationalized that this would be okay, that Milo would agree to sponsor me, that maybe I could even play with Devin again sometimes, casually, for fun. God, he was so angry, and if Devin was here, he’d probably be angry too.
“I’m just going to go,” I said meekly. Apologetically. “Just let me go.”
“Oh no, Ella. Not yet.”
“Please, I won’t ever talk to you or Devin again. I won’t try to come to The Gallery.”
“No, I have some questions for you. Some…confusions.” He made a vague crazy-cuckoo sign around his head. I wondered what would happen if I screamed for help. Would that be an overreaction?
“See,” he said, “I’m confused because when you and Devin played together, we were all amazed. You were both so in tune with each other, so deeply into it. We watched and we marveled, because Dev has a history at The Gallery. He’s always been the serial seducer, the careless playboy with a blonde supermodel on each arm. But here comes this new girl, short, skinny, brainy, with those glasses.” He ran his eyes over my body with such disdain it hurt me. “Oh, she was still blonde, but there was more to her. For Devin, obviously, there was more.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, like that might offer protection from his critical stare. “I can’t help how Devin felt about me,” I said. “I told him from the start that I didn’t want things to get too intense between us. He knew that.”
“Sure. That’s why he’s left you alone. We all left you alone, but here you are, asking me to take you to The Gallery, like that would fucking be okay.”
“I don’t want you to take me anymore.” I stood, ready to barge past him if he wouldn’t let me out.
He stood too, blinking down at me with his harsh, dark-eyed gaze. “I can’t take you, because Devin still loves you. He loves the fuck out of you, and I can’t say why, because you treated him like a shitty, self-absorbed bitch.”
“You don’t know us,” I cried, my voice breaking under his onslaught. I knew he was a sadist, but on top of that, he was so mean. “You don’t know what our thing was about.”
“No, I don’t. Explain it to me.”
I shook my head. My feelings were unraveling. Tears blinded me.
“How did you feel about him, Ella, before you ended your relationship?” He took my arms. “And don’t lie to me, because I saw the way you looked at him when you were in The Gallery, when he held you after your scenes. I saw the way you looked at each other.”
“Don’t touch me,” I said, pulling away from his grasp.
“No, I know. You don’t want me to touch you. You don’t want me to take you to The Gallery, not really. That’s not what this is about.”
I collapsed in my chair, covering my face. “I can’t go with him,” I sobbed. “He hates me now.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” Milo crouched beside me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “I think you hate what you did to him.”
“You don’t understand.” I shook my head, my voice muffled and sniffly. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand that my best friend beat me up for playing with you, my best friend who, before you came along, had elevated the sharing of submissives to an art form. He cares about you, and I think you care for him so much you want to punish yourself.”
I drew away from his tentative embrace. That wasn’t true. I’d always enjoyed
being hurt. It was part of my sex life, the way I was wired. But in this case, if I was honest, it was something more. I needed cathartic pain to drive Devin out of my heart. I needed pain so harsh and loveless that it felt like expiation.
And that, I finally admitted to myself, was the real reason I’d showed up at Milo’s door.
“I don’t know what to do.” I leaned away, toward the wall, needing to get away from Milo’s truths, and his judgmental stare. “I feel awful, but I can’t be with Devin. It’s too scary.”
“Do you love him?”
Ugh, he wouldn’t let me breathe, or think. Tears flowed down my cheeks. He handed me a tissue.
“Do you love him?” he asked again. “Do you love Devin Kincaid?”
“No. I don’t want to love him.”
“Do you know how he’s changed since he’s met you? He’s not the man we knew. He’s better now, more thoughtful, more present. He used to put himself down all the time, belittle himself, but he doesn’t do that anymore, even though you wrecked him all to pieces when you broke up with him. You made him better. Maybe…” He waited until I looked up at him. “Maybe loving Devin would make you better, too.”
“It already has,” I cried. “But it’s also made things worse.”
“In what way?”
“It’s just that love is so risky and complicated, and it can hurt people so badly. My father loved my mother so much that after she died, he couldn’t cope. He turned a little crazy.”
Milo shrugged. “That’s the best kind of love, the kind that makes you a little crazy. So that’s a bullshit reason. What else have you got?”
He handed me another tissue, since I’d soaked the first one. My father’s craziness wasn’t a good enough reason? Then what did I have?
“Love is pointless,” I said, trying a new tack. “Do you know how vast the universe is, and how infinitely small we are, with our feelings and our love and our relationships?”
“Bull. Shit.” He scoffed at me in disbelief. “If you’re going to use the ‘vastness of the universe’ argument, then I’m going to use the ‘you found each other in the midst of all this vastness’ argument, and you’ll lose. Don’t spout your astrophysicist bullshit at me. When you and Devin played together at The Gallery, you made your own universe. I can’t imagine how things were when you were alone together.”
