Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103010 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
And then…then I cried.
A couple of hours later, Ian came home from his job at the grocery store. I was sitting on my futon, dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. “I’m doing it,” I told him. “People do this shit all the time without really knowing someone.”
He sighed because we’d been through this before, but this time I was different. God, I ached with need, felt detached from the world and my life. Like I wasn’t solid. Like I wasn’t real without it.
“Fin…” he said softly.
“I’m seriously gonna do it this time. I found a guy online.” He wasn’t the first guy I’d found, but he would be the first one I really went through with. How could I not? How could I keep running away from something I longed for so much?
“Where are you meeting him? The last guy wanted you to go to a club, but you’re not old enough.”
Being nineteen sucked. Lots of places were twenty-one and over. “His house.”
Another sigh from Ian, then a sad, pitying smile. “Let me get changed, and I’ll go with you. Same plan as always. I wait outside. You tell him you have to text me every few minutes to make sure you’re okay. If you don’t, I knock. If you don’t answer, I call the police.”
“What if he doesn’t let me text?” We’d made this plan a thousand times, but I never asked that question because I thought a part of me knew I would never go through with it. This time, I was.
“If he’s a real Dom…or Daddy or Master or Sir, whatever he is, he’ll let you because it’s your rule and will keep you safe.”
I nodded. He was right; of course he was.
My leg bounced up and down as Ian grabbed clothes from the dresser we shared. We were comfortable around each other, so he changed right there.
We were quiet as we took the bus toward Silver Lake. From our stop, we walked. My heart was thudding against my chest, making it hurt. My hands fisted as my need to stay warred with my desire to run. I didn’t understand it, how I could know I needed something to the marrow of my bones yet be too afraid to do what I needed to get it.
By the time we walked up to the house, everything looked fuzzy and I couldn’t breathe. Ian wrapped his arms around me, and I let him.
“God, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this?”
“Because you don’t know him. Maybe because this is yours, so real and personal that it’s like cutting your heart open, and you can’t do that with just anyone. There’s no shame in it, Fin.”
“Other people do it with strangers. They do it all the time.”
He shrugged. “They’re not you.”
For a moment, I hated myself. Wished I could be someone else. Not someone who didn’t want these things, because I would never wish that, but someone who could give himself easily. But Ian was right. That wasn’t me. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He twined his fingers with mine. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TWO
Aidan
“Why do I put up with you? You’re worthless! You can’t do anything right, and you’re raising Aidan to be weak just like you!”
My eyes jerked open at the familiar sound of my father’s voice in my head—the things he’d said to my mother over and over my whole life, things he ended up saying to me.
Despite being on call earlier this week, I couldn’t sleep. Between my scheduled patients, rounds in the ICU, and the trauma surgery after someone fell from a building, my brain had been buzzing. Some weeks were easier to come down from than others. Sleep was easier to find some days than others as well. This wasn’t one of the good ones.
Giving up, I rolled out of bed, went to the sliding glass balcony door, and stepped out. The sun was just beginning to rise, peeking over the greenery that was so foreign in some areas of Los Angeles but more abundant in Laurel Canyon.
Bare-chested, in pajama bottoms, I sat on one of the chairs and watched the oranges and yellows rise until there was nothing but the sun there. It was hard sometimes, stepping away from the pain and death and traumas and returning to my life. To think that sometimes you could see the sun wake up and not know it was your last time. But I knew all too well about that, didn’t I? I’d seen it too many times to count.
With a sigh, I rose and went back inside. I went downstairs and drank the one cup of coffee I allowed myself per morning. Afterward, I slipped into socks and running shoes and went to my home gym. My muscles ached and sweat stung my eyes as I pushed through a long workout.