I knew she would go through this struggle, and the scientist and doctor in me is fascinated by the intensity of the effect. She has been my biggest project yet, the most valuable and most strenuous client. I want to observe her, to study her. There’s so much I—society in general—could learn from the way her mind is working through this.

  But there’s another part in me, the Dominant, the lover, the man who worries about his girl’s sanity.

  She gasps, yanking at the leash when her body jerks up as if she’s been hit with something. And she probably is, but not physically.

  I step closer, careful not to bump against the leash as I close in on her, leaving about two feet of distance between us when I come to a halt.

  I know I will have to wake her at some point, and it will be my job to decide when that time has come. I can’t wait too long, but I also need to give her enough time to grasp whatever it is that’s materializing before her closed eyes right now.

  I startle when she lets out a sudden chuckle. It’s not genuine laughter, but a suppressed and somewhat artificial sounding cackle. It doesn’t speak of happiness, but more of a quick and sudden elation that tickles her senses.

  Still, it is a good thing. It’s a memory, a lively memory.

  Her breathing turns erratic before she lets out a deep and hearty sigh. If it weren’t for the leash, she’d fall over now, as her body relaxes, enjoying something that took a lot of effort to find.

  I wish I could see what she’s seeing right now. I wish I could be there with her, but I know I can’t. No one ever can. It’s hers entirely, and it will only last for a few moments, just like it did when the incident that this memory is based on happened.

  I know she’s back there, drinking gin with me, giving voice to her dreams, and about to take something she’s wanted for herself for longer than I knew at the time.

  It wasn’t until four years later that I learned about the full extent of her desires, and about the black void she suffered from by not having them fulfilled.

  I wonder if I had acted any differently back then, if I had known. I wonder if it would have made a difference.

  It probably would have.

  She croaks, her entire body tensing and her shoulders rising up to her ears when something shifts inside her head.

  The moment has passed. Even without her saying a word I know that she’s not merely seeing a single image, but following a story as it unfolds before her eyes. There’s more to it than laughter, and she learns that now as she continues to follow the trail that her darkened mind lays out for her.

  She falters, then slowly shakes her head. I can see her fingers twitching, lifting up from the sofa for a split second before she puts them back. The memory that unfolds now is sending an entirely different message, providing her with a new set of emotions that have nothing in common with the elation she felt before.

  It pains her, and that little lift of her hands shows just how much she wants to run from it.

  But she doesn’t. She forces herself to bear those images as she indulged on the positive ones.

  The shaking of her head grows stronger, more violent, and her body begins to tremble. Her fingers curl in agony, but still hold on to the leather, despite the anguish she’s experiencing.

  My protective instincts take over, and before I know it, I take a step forward, then another. She doesn’t react to my presence, ignoring the fact that I’m going down on my knees right next to her.

  I refrain from touching her, but I’m so close that she must feel my presence. She must know I’m there, but she’s not ready to let go of the things that reveal themselves before her eyes.

  I lean forward, careful not to touch her as I search to see her face. Her head is still shaking as if in trance, when the first tears roll down her cheeks. She grimaces, biting her lower lip while the urge to cry takes over.

  “Petal.”

  As deep as she may have been, lost in her own mind, guided by memories that have turned into nothing but dark haze by now—she wakes up immediately upon hearing my voice.

  Her eyes fly open and her hands leave the sofa with the same breath.

  She’s breathing heavily, wiping away the tears from her pretty face when she turns to me.

  “What happened here?” she wants to know, her green eyes wide with curiosity. “What... what was that?”

  I lift her up, moving her closer to the kitchen so she no longer chokes herself by putting so much pressure on the leash. She takes in big huffs of air, almost gasping in desperation, and it’s making me realize that lack of oxygen probably heightened the experience she just endured.

  She’s trembling when I guide her to the table, holding on to me in need of support.

  “Jayson, what happened here?” she asks again when I help her to sit down on one of the chairs.

  Her eyes are latched on to me as I busy myself with brushing the newspaper that is spread across the tabletop aside to make room for our plates.

  “Let’s eat.”

  “No!” she protests, almost jumping up from her chair as I retreat to the kitchen. “No! You tell me—”

  “I will!” I interrupt her impudent demand.

  “After. We. Eat.”

  Chapter 27

  Petal

  Contradicting emotions are tearing me apart still, as he places the food in front of me. It’s a simple dish of pasta with broccoli, but the smell makes me forget everything for a few seconds. I’d forgotten about my brutal hunger for a while there, too occupied with the difficult images that washed over me as I dared to follow the dark path all the way to the wall inside my head—and further.

  I wolf down the food, angry and grateful at the same time. He sat down next to me, quietly gesturing for me to eat as if it were the most normal thing to do. As if we’d shared thousands of meals before, when truly, this is the very first time we ever have.

  Or so I’m forced to believe.

  I throw curious glances at him, determined to display just enough obedience for him to give me even more than he’s granted me so far.

  He told me to eat, so I will. It’s not hard to comply when the hunger is so strong that it almost made me sick.

  What makes it hard, however, are the questions circling inside my head. Questions, new and old. Some have been there ever since I woke up, some rose up today, as I was confronted with a set of images that was clearer than any other before.

  And some have been answered because of it.

  I’ve always wondered about him. I always wanted to know whether I knew him before waking up in his basement, whether I had met him before or was even close to him, or if I was just a random girl who fell victim to a psychopathic kidnapper.

  At first, I thought it must be the latter, but now I know otherwise.

  I know that we knew each other before all of this. Not only that, we were close to each other. Very close.

  I saw us. Together. In this very room.

  I don’t know how long ago it happened, but we were here before, just the two of us. I was here on my own free will, visiting him, having fun with him. I felt happy and... aroused. Even that I felt, the desire I felt back then. It was strong, but not as overpowering as the craving that has overcome me in recent days with him.

  I twirl up the last remaining spaghetti and let the fork fall onto the plate where it connects with a weirdly loud noise, causing him to raise an eyebrow at me.

  “Sorry,” I hurry to say, pointing at my emptied plate. “And thank you. It was very good.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m no cook. This was nothing but fuel.”

  “It’s all I needed right now,” I insist, eager not to ruin his mood.

  I tried to calm myself. I tried to exercise patience as we ate, troubled by questions and the excitement that this first taste of answers brought with it. It took a lot of effort to restrain myself from babbling on, to prevent the questions from pouring out of me, blended with the foggy insights that made them all the more pressing.

  But I’m done with that now. I ate. I did as he told me.

  I was a good girl.

  And good girls get a treat.

  “I saw us,” I begin, waiting for him to put his fork down as he looks at me with one raised eyebrow. “Here. Together. You lied to me. Didn’t you?”

  The expression on his face turns into a frown. “When?”

  “When you said that we never... that we never did this before.”

  “Never did what before?”

  I take a deep breath, feeling the heat of embarrassment warm my cheeks as I clarify. “That we never had sex before.”

  He shakes his head in an instant, negating my assumption before I’ve finished the sentence.

  “I never lied to you,” he insists. “I never fucked you before—”

  “But I saw us!” I cut him off, causing the cutlery to jolt on the plates when I hit the tabletop with both my hands. “I saw us, kissing, making out! Right there!”

  My arm is trembling as I stretched out to the left, pointing to the sofas in the living room.

  “The images were clearer than any I ever had before,” I add. “It was a memory, the clearest I ever had, and it was of you and me—”

  “You and me doing what?” he interrupts me with a question. “I didn’t say I never touched you before, Petal. Because I did. And I never said I didn’t kiss you before. Because I did.”

  A shadow is cast over his stern expression as his voice goes lower, laced with something I’d call sadness if I didn’t know any better.

  “So we... it’s true?” I stutter. “I was here before? With you? Doing... stuff? In this room?”

  He nods along as I go through my list. It’s the first time I’m faced with confirmation at this magnitude. I’m finally allowed to see, allowed to ask—and he confirms everything without leaving me in doubt.

  “But something happened,” I go on, bracing myself as I step further, diving into more painful territory and an array of images that were not as clear visually, but all the more penetrating when it came to the emotions they brought up.

  “Something happened, and it turned ugly.”

  Again, he nods, avoiding reciprocating my probing gaze.

  “I stopped it,” he says. “And you didn’t take it well.”

  “I was hurt,” I recall. “Very, very hurt. And ashamed. Disappointed. Angry. It was... terrible. And a lot.”

  I shake my head, furrowing my eyebrows as I try to make sense of the things I saw and felt as I was touching the sofa. They are still accessible to me and no longer hidden behind that damn wall, but their impact is not quite as forceful as it was a few minutes ago.

  I can still see and feel the memories, but only if I choose to go down that path.

  “When did it happen?”

  My voice is thin and sounding robotic, as if it belonged to a stranger. “How long ago, Jayson?”

  He clears his throat. “A little more than four years ago.”

  I suck in a sharp breath of air, my back crashing with the backrest of the chair as I fall back, astonished. More than four years? That long ago? It felt so close, so immediate.

  “Why did you stop it?”

  “Because I thought I should,” he says, finally looking at me with a faint crease between his dark eyebrows.

  “Why?”

  “Because it wasn’t the right time then.”

  I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes at him, despite knowing that it’s a risky move, potentially angering him enough to refuse any further conversation in this matter. It’s been that way before.

  But it’s not anymore. A short display of disapproval kisses his expression, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.

  “Why was it not the right time then?” I probe, my heart speeding so much that I feel its beat must be visible from the outside. Of course, it’s not, despite my nakedness. But my chest heaves in more vivid motions, pulling his gaze and kindling a spark of lust in his hazel eyes.

  “You were too young, and on your way to better things,” he says, surprising me with a direct answer.

  It strikes me with frightening force that I don’t even know how old I am. I never thought about it before and only thought about my age in relation to him. The girl looking back to me in the mirror looks young, younger than he is for sure, but not by that much.

  “How old was I then?” I want to know, circumventing the embarrassment of asking him about my current age.

  A smile plays at the corner of his mouth.

  “You were eighteen, Petal. A recent high school graduate,” he says.

  “So that makes me...”

  I want to finish the sentence, trying to grasp the triumph of learning something so mundane, yet so meaningful about myself.

  But he beats me to it by revealing something that strikes me even more.

  “Today is your twenty-third birthday.”

  Chapter 28

  J

  “What brings you here today?”

  I revel in the spooked flicker that appears in her green eyes. She shifts on her seat, knowing that we’re done with the small talk. It has been more than four years since the last time we were alone in a room together, and that evening did not end well.

  I rejected her, thinking I was being responsible and right in my actions, and she took it harder than I ever could have expected. She was ready to storm out of the house, fighting me even when I ran after her, literally holding her back by force. It was dark and I knew she had nowhere to go in Newport. She was too drunk to drive and too irritated to be left alone.

  It was only after I promised her not to say another word or even look at her that night, that she agreed to stay. My Petal has always been a stubborn girl, so I wasn’t all too surprised when she refused to sleep in any of the guest rooms, but preferred the couch downstairs. I let her, if only reluctantly.

  She was gone by the time I came downstairs, leaving a little note with an apology and the promise that she will do her best not to disappoint me.

  I feared that she would feel obliged to refuse my generous offer to pay for her college as long as needed, but she was smarter than that. She may have hated me for it, but she understood that I only refused her to make it easier—for both of us.

  I was the only one who didn’t let his love for her stop her from doing what she needed to do back then. Despite my pride of her, it almost felt like a slap in the face when she received a scholarship and was no longer dependent on my help, just a few months after she left. I had her to thank for my success and the wealth that came with it, yet she feels like she’s the one owing me. I knew that a big burden was lifted from her shoulders the day she could tell me that my money was no longer needed. My congratulations on the scholarship and her short but friendly reply was the last time we had any contact.

  Until a few days ago.

  And now she’s sitting in my office, looking lost and nervous, fidgeting with her fingers in her lap as she tries to come up with the right words to tell me the reason for her surprise visit.

  “Your business really flourished,” she says, casting me a coy smile. “You seem to be really good at what you do.”

  I hold her gaze for a few moments, still waiting for her to come out and say what she wants from me, even though I’m beginning to have a pretty good idea of what it’ll be.

  “I’m the only who can do what I do,” I tell her. “That’s why people come here from all over the country to see me. And that’s why they pay as much as they do.”

  She nods, pressing her lips together before she continues. “You’re expensive.”

  “Very.”

  “Too expensive for me, that’s for sure,” she bursts out, followed by nervous laughter.

  My chest tightens, as does my hand around the pen I’m holding out of habit, not because I expect to have to write anything down.

  I don’t let her see how much her words get to me, how much they stir the desire to tell her everything, breaking an oath and crushing her feeble soul.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I want to know, jutting my chin forward. “Because you want to avail yourself of my service?”

  She looks caught, her eyes widening as her shoulders move up to her ears.

  “What if I were?”

  “Then I would ask you why,” I say. “I would ask you what it is that you want to forget. And why you want to forget it.”

  She sighs, nodding as she swallows hard.

  “Is it that boy?” I probe. “You want to forget about Kade? About the way he treated you when you were ready to sacrifice everything for him?”

  I’ve always had a way of giving voice to the uncomfortable truths that most people don’t even dare to think about it, and I usually do it in a way that makes it even more painful than it has to be. I’m a “no bullshit” kind of man, and as it turns out, even my Petal is not safe from my somewhat cruelly honest way of doing things.

  But she just shakes her head.

  “No, it’s not about him. Well, not only about him. It’s more than that.”

  Her eyes find mine, silently pleading, as if I could read her thoughts so she wouldn’t have to say it out loud.

  But even if I could, I wouldn’t let her get off the hook that easily. She will have to speak, no matter how hard it is for her.

  “That evening, with the gin, when we almost...”

  Her voice breaks off, her eyelashes batting like nervous butterflies as she looks up and down, trying to hold eye contact with me, but failing again and again.

  “I remember that evening,” I say, encouraging her to go on.

  “I’m sorry for the way I—”

  “Petal, please,” I interrupt her, twirling my hand impatiently. “There’s nothing to forgive. If anything, I should apologize to you.”

  She scoffs. “For what? For acting responsible when I jumped you like a horny teenager?”

  “We both know that’s not at all what happened that night.”

  She shrugs, relaxing a little. “Yes. We both wanted something, and you were smart enough to stop it, thinking it would stop me from going out into the world to pursue this dumb adventure that I’ve been talking about since I was what... fifteen?”