“Untie me,” I demanded, aware that I was shaking. “I need to see. I need to see.”

  He pulled the blindfold from my eyes, and only then did I get to see the full concern written across his face. The words to take me down seemed to be stuck on my tongue, but he was doing it anyway, his fingers working loose the knots that held my body up.

  He left the main support in place so I didn’t fall when he unclipped the spreader bar from my ankles. Then, with one last pull, I was free.

  Without meaning to, I fell forward into his arms.

  “Why didn’t you let me go?” I said, sobbing now but clinging to him anyway. I needed his comfort more than anything else. “Why didn’t you come and get me down?”

  “I only turned away for a moment,” he said. With my head on his chest, I could hear his heart racing too. “It was just a moment, Jesse. I didn’t even notice that you had dropped the flag until you had the gag off.”

  “You shouldn’t leave me like that!” I said. “You shouldn’t turn away. Not even for a moment.”

  “I have before,” he said, then shook his head. “I’ve left you for much longer than that. You never panic.”

  I struggled away from him, shaking my head. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ve got you,” he said.

  I wanted to run for the door, but my knees were still too shaky. To my utter disgust, I needed his help to stay upright. The last thing I wanted (or needed) was to feel like I needed him on any level.

  Will went to lead me through to the bathroom, but I shrugged him off and headed straight for bed, threw back the duvet, and crawled in between the sheets naked. I watched dispassionately as he stripped off his pants and carefully climbed in beside me.

  “Is it okay if I stay here?” he said.

  With my hands pillowing my cheek, I shrugged. “If you like.”

  “Can I hold you?”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head.

  “Okay. Will you talk to me?”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to find out where things went wrong tonight so I can make sure they never happen again,” he said.

  The look on his face told me that he had been hurt too by what had happened upstairs, maybe as much as I had. Maybe more.

  “I panicked,” I whispered.

  “I know you did, but I don’t know why.”

  My memories were already going hazy, and I didn’t quite understand either. As I went through the session moment by moment, it was difficult to put my finger on the exact moment when I’d lost control of my own body. It was a disconcerting thought.

  “Too much.” I waved my hand erratically around my head, hoping that would sufficiently demonstrate the sensation overload.

  “Too many elements?” he asked.

  “Yeah. And I felt lost. Abandoned. I need….” It hit me with the full force of the pain I craved. “I need the flogger. It grounds me. The pain keeps me in contact with you. It keeps me safe.”

  The path of his fingers from where they were gripping the edge of the comforter to where they finished deep in his hair, was fascinating to me. His elbows fell forward to his knees, and the curve of his back was as elegant as a woman’s.

  I’m not sure either of us slept that night.

  Who could sleep in the face of something so hopeless?

  Chapter 10

  When I arrived home from work the following night, Will was waiting for me. After I dumped my stuff in the kitchen, the first thing I noticed was how he sat on the edge of the sofa, tense, hands clenched, and the duffel bag at his feet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  His eyes held an apology I refused to accept. “I’m going away for a couple of days.”

  “With work?” I knew it wasn’t with work. But there was no way I was going to make this easy for him.

  “No, not with work.” His fingers clenched and unclenched rhythmically, revealing his anxiety even if it wasn’t written all over his face. “I think we need some time apart from each other to think things through. I’m not running away. I just need some space.”

  “Some space.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be back in a few days.”

  “You’re not going to tell me where you’re going, are you?” I refused to move from the spot where I was standing, hovering between the kitchen and family room.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “No. You wouldn’t.”

  Although his words registered in my brain and mentally I was screaming at him, I forced my body into nonchalance. It was a rather effective form of self-preservation.

  “I know I’m a useless piece of shit, you don’t need to spell that out for me. I’m doing this for us, Jesse. We can’t just keep going the way we are at the moment.”

  That I could agree with.

  “Okay,” I said with strained lightness. “If you need to go, then go.”

  “You could go and stay with Laura for a few days?” he suggested as he stood, hiked the bag up onto his shoulder.

  “I’m a grown man, Will. I don’t need a keeper.”

  He made to step toward me, to cover the distance between us, but I took a step back reflexively. No way was I going to make this easy for him. Will nodded, as if he expected this, whispered “I’m sorry,” and left.

  I heard the door click shut behind him and wished he’d slammed it. Anger I could understand. Even violence would be better than this cold detachment.

  I contemplated the fact that I probably hadn’t got my head fully around the situation as I moved through the house, checking little things. The fridge was full—it looked like Will had stocked it up during the day. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that. My emotions ranged from angry that he’d planned this in advance to distraught that he would leave me that much food—how long was he planning on being away for?—to disgusted with the both of us.

  I ended up in our bedroom.

  Checked the closet.

  Nothing stood out as being obviously missing. All his work suits were still hanging in their dry cleaning bags, so he clearly hadn’t taken any of them with him. I absently flicked through his shirts, jeans, checked his underwear drawer.

  The photo we kept of the two of us on the dresser was missing. It was one Jennifer had taken at Fourth of July weekend. That seemed like eons ago now. I hated him for taking it—he had no right to take it.

  With any choice I had in the matter now driving away from the house, I was forced to accept that I was alone. Failure in this lonely endeavor was not an option.

  So I did the only thing I could think of that would piss him off more than me caving and calling him and begging him to come home.

  I got the fuck on with my life.

  It wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated. Too much of my routine, my life, really, revolved around being with Will. Getting up in the morning without him having to throw me out of bed was hard. Having to fix my own breakfast was hard. (I usually ended up buying it on my way in to work. It cost me a small fortune.) Coming home to an empty house was hard. Going to bed without him was the worst.

  For two days I wandered around and waited for something in my life to drag me back to reality. In a moment I would pick up a newspaper and think that maybe it was going to provoke a normal reaction: sorrow at the war, a small sense of victory at a good sports result. Sometimes I’d be halfway through reading it when I realized it was a week old. People had died. Others had been born. The world had ticked over and over and I was still trying to figure out what day it was.

  I couldn’t train myself out of checking my phone a couple of times a day to see if he’d sent me a message. Work, for the most part, was an excellent distraction. I could throw myself into research and planning and determinedly not think about him for hours at a time.

  When I did allow my mind to wander, he got caught in the tangled web of my thoughts and was stuck there for hours. I desperately wanted to know where he was,. if only to assure myself that he was safe. I wanted to call Laura to see if she’d heard from him, but the thought of her pitying voice stopped me.

  His suggestion that I move in with her had pissed me off, so I ignored her texts and voice mail messages. I knew that she, above all others, would be able to tell even from the other end of the phone what a wreck of a man I had turned into.

  A week passed and I started to adapt to living by myself. I hadn’t been forced to be completely self-sufficient since my first few years at college. After that I had moved in with Adele, then with Will. It was almost ridiculous that a twenty-eight-year-old man had such difficulty making a meal for one person. Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Routine. Routine. It didn’t help.

  On top of everything else, I was hopelessly lonely. The TV was no company. The radio sounded empty. Even the Internet seemed distant, friendless.

  I knew it was said that there were stages to grief, and wondered if they could be applied to the same sense of aching, hollow loss I felt while he wasn’t around. Was fury one of the stages? Deep, bone-aching, headache-inducing fury that made me want to scream my throat raw?

  Tears that came only when darkness fell and I felt the silence close in around me?

  Fear? Absolute, bone-chilling fear that I might never see him again?

  There was no one there to answer my questions.

  In a drawer in the dresser in our hallway, there was still a piece of paper with a young twink’s name and number written on it. I knew I could have fucked him. There was always a chance that the slick slide of my cock in a sweet ass would be a distraction. I hoped so. But it was unlikely.

  And if it turned out that trying to soothe my soul with my dick constituted cheating, I’d only feel worse.

  I went out to a gay bar midweek. There were a few ways I could have played it: drink myself stupid and eventually do something I would later regret, just dance, drink, and pour out my sorrows to the bartender, or sit in a corner and mope. I chose a combination of drinking and dancing.

  It was a hard drum and bass night, the music mechanical, electro, repetitive, and mind-numbing. I wore jeans that were old and frayed, removed my shirt almost the moment I was through the door. I guessed I was probably giving off some kind of vibe, an angry, fuck you all vibe – unfortunately it seemed to attract a certain type of man, one who wanted to see how far he could push me and how I’d react.

  I didn’t mind their hands on my body. It reminded me that I was still desirable, still wanted, still alive. My non-reaction to their advances soon drove away the admirers, and I was left to dance in peace.

  A part of me wondered what I looked like to those who watched me. I was sure vulnerability clung to my skin and surrounded me with an aura—it would take so little to overpower me. I was fragile without Will.

  When I tired of the music and the booze and I still felt it, still felt it all, despite my attempts of drowning my feelings with alcohol, I went home.

  Alone.

  The worst part was not knowing if he would ever come back.

  In the evenings, as part of one of my contingency plans, I catalogued the house. It was a depressing task that made me realize how few possessions I had, other than clothes, that meant anything to me. Will had owned his house for several years before I moved in with him, and it was fully decorated and furnished even before I added my few possessions to the mix.

  Still. That made it easier to mentally separate my own things from things that I considered his, or ours.

  I hadn’t quite set a time frame in my head, but if the burning pain in my chest didn’t start to ease, I was seriously considering disappearing myself. I could rent a car and drive down to my parents’ place. It would maybe take a week, allowing for stops to sleep, but I’d always found the monotony of driving to be a great way to think. And the trip across the country would be almost therapeutic—to spend some time in my own head with no interruptions.

  If he didn’t come back to me, I had an escape plan. It was a good escape plan. I would leave, and he wouldn’t be able to find me. Then, maybe, I’d have the chance to find myself.

  A week to the day after he left, Laura called. This time, I decided to answer.

  “What the fuck is going on, Jesse?”

  “Not a lot,” I said, my words dry. “My boyfriend has left me. How are you?”

  “Fucking peachy. Will is going out of his mind.”

  “Will is?” I screeched, suddenly losing the cool that I had barely been keeping hold of. “Will is going out of his mind? Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure he’s lying on a beach somewhere, sunning himself and drinking mai tais out of a coconut shell.”

  “Both of us know that isn’t true.”

  “Where is he?” I demanded, giving in to my urges, damn them.

  “He’s asked me not to tell you.”

  “Then damn him to fucking hell,” I said and hung up on her. I’d pay for that later, and it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as slamming a phone down used to be, but it did the job.

  I childishly turned the phone off and grabbed my keys and jacket, locked the house behind me, and headed downtown.

  My little Chinese restaurant in the international district was still being run by Yan, who greeted me warmly when I wandered in to the smell of rich pork and five spice. I’d found a book in the car and then a table at the back of the restaurant where I wouldn’t be disturbed, and spent a few hours reading, going on a journey in my own head that distracted me from the drama in my real life.

  When a shadow fell over my table, I expected Yan to be back with more tea.

  I did not expect Maddie.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “Can I sit down?”

  I nodded, shut my book, and set it down on the table. “Would you like tea?” I asked and when she agreed, flagged Yan for another pot.

  “Laura said I could probably find you here,” she said, fiddling with a spoon.

  “I guess my hiding place has been figured out. I’ll need to find a new one.”

  I wanted to be vile to her but couldn’t. Maddie and I had history—Will had been the one to assess her potential as a sub before passing her on to Laura, and it had sent me into a fit of jealousy at the time. Even now there was some friction between us. It was probably natural for me to be protective of Laura, and I couldn’t help but see her sub as a potential danger to her happiness.

  “I’m pregnant,” Maddie blurted suddenly.

  I gaped at her.

  “Who—” I started, then stopped. That wasn’t my place to ask.

  “Steven,” she answered anyway.

  “Laura’s husband Steven?” I asked incredulously.

  It took that moment for me to realize how separated I had been from Laura’s life in the past few months. Even before the crash, we had grown more distant, and considering the state she’d been in when she came to us for advice, that was unforgivable. Clearly there had been decisions made in their relationship and I was only now learning the extent of it.

  “Yeah,” Maddie said. “It wasn’t planned.”

  “Does Laura know?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  Maddie shrugged. “She’s quite confused. I think we all are. No one wanted this.”

  It was probably the longest conversation we’d ever had. It was certainly the most intimate. In public, Laura mostly kept her subs silent, and Maddie rarely joined Laura and Steven when they came to dinner with Will and I.

  “Are you going to keep it?” That wasn’t my place to ask either, but I figured it was a valid question.

  She gave me a wry smile, stood, and pressed her loose dress flat against the curve of her belly. The swell of her pregnancy, like this, was evident.

  “It’s not really an option,” she said. “I’m too far along.”

  “So you can’t have an abortion,” I said, “but you could still put the baby up for adoption when it’s born.”

  Maddie fiddled with a napkin, looking uncomfortable as she settled back into her seat. “It’s not my place to decide,” she said eventually.

  “Bullshit!” I exclaimed. “It’s your body, your child, for fuck’s sake.”

  When her eyes fixed on mine, she looked on the brink of tears. I’d never been great with very female displays of emotion, so I backed off.

  “I thought,” she said slowly, then met my eyes and folded her hands in her lap. “I mean to say, I’d thought of offering the child up for adoption. To a couple who couldn’t have a child themselves.”

  It dawned on me very slowly what she was referring to.

  “Maddie, do you know the situation between Will and I at the moment?” I asked. “Because I don’t know right now if we’ll still be together next week, let alone in a position to raise a child together.”

  “I thought maybe if you had something worth staying together for?”

  “The last thing our relationship needs is a Band-Aid baby,” I said gently. “I’m flattered that you thought of us. But I don’t think that will work.”

  She nodded. “Okay. You don’t have to make a decision yet. I just wanted to give you the option.”

  We both sipped at the tea that had been set in front of us while she’d been talking.

  “Is this why Laura sent you down here?” I asked.

  “No,” Maddie said with a smile. “She wanted me to talk to you, sub to sub. And human to human, I suppose. You know that you shouldn’t speak to a Mistress the way you did. But you also really shouldn’t speak to a friend like that, either.”

  A hot ball of guilt lodged itself in my belly.

  “She’s been talking to Will nearly every day,” Maddie continued. “But you haven’t spoken to her at all. She knows how much he’s hurting and how desperate he is to fix things. But she doesn’t know what you’re thinking. Don’t shut her out, Jesse. She loves you more than you know.”

  I walked Maddie back to her car, then drove home in silence, thinking about all the bombshells she’d dropped on me in such a short space of time. Her situation was so different to ours—her whole relationship with Laura was so different to mine with Will. But still, she was the passive one. Waiting for her Dominant to make the decision for her.