Chapter Twenty-Six
Chloe
I pulled into my parents’ drive, parked next to my sister’s sparkling BMW, and curled my hands around the steering wheel. I hadn’t talked to Cassie in months, not since she came home over the summer for my mom’s fifty-fifth birthday. She was doing her thing, lawyering it up in Ann Arbor. Over the last year, I’d begun getting the vibe from her that she considered everything from her hometown, myself included, were now beneath her.
I still didn’t know when she turned into someone who was so uptight and proper. Perhaps we’d both simply grown and changed. Regardless, the distance it put between us only made a relationship with Simon more difficult.
If we even still had a relationship.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and blew out a heavy breath. As my hands moved, the sleeves of my lacy, wine colored sleeves fell down, revealing the marks I still bore from Tuesday.
Three days later, and my wrists were still bruised. I wiped across one of them, trying to push away the memories, but it was futile. I’d been trying all week.
Simon had been distant, bold and demanding and skirted the edge of cold and detached. Yet I’d still loved everything we’d done, even if it didn’t make him talk to me like Haley had hoped it would.
True to our deal, I’d called her when I got home and she was so surprised to hear from me, so certain she wouldn’t hear from me, she’d shown up less than an hour later with two bottles of wine on hand. I hadn’t had the energy to drink them.
For the rest of the week, I’d thrown myself in work to forget about the night we spent together. The way he’d spanked me, first with his hands, and then his belt, and given me orgasms more powerful than anything I could ever imagine. He hadn’t once called or texted. The looming deadline of our time together settled over me like a heavy, weighted blanket. I’d gone into this, approached him and asked him to train and teach me because more than being a sub, I’d wanted to be withhim. Now, it seemed like I was only going to get partially what I wanted. After Friday, I most likely wouldn’t see him again unless I ran into him at Luminous.
A weight sank into my stomach and I wanted to crawl into a ball and weep.
It twisted me up at the same time it unraveled me. How did I become someone who not only enjoyed some kink play, but had begun to crave it? I wasn’t even certain anymore if it was the kink or Simon, or if I’d skirted into some kind of darkness I should be trying to crawl myself out of.
Sitting next to Cassie’s car, knowing I was going to have to spend the entire day with her, everything inside me pulled tight.
I expelled another harsh, deep breath that did nothing to calm the rioting inside me, reached for my purse, and exited my car.
It snowed that morning, a light dusting on my parents’ driveway that hadn’t been enough to shovel. I took small, careful steps so I didn’t slip in my boots and walked up to my parents’ door.
I opened it and entered, immediately inhaling the aroma of Thanksgiving dinner already cooking in the oven and the sounds of the early football game already on the television.
“Hello!” I called out. “Happy Thanksgiving!”
“Happy Thanksgiving!” Mom returned, her voice echoing through the entryway from the kitchen.
I set my purse on a small entryway table, hung my coat in the hall closet, and was just kicking off my ankle boots when my mom walked through the small dining room to greet me.
“Hi, Mom.”
She pulled me into a quick hug and pressed her soft lips to my cheek. “How are you sweetie?” She ran her hands down the lace sleeves of my dress and stepped back, still holding on to my hands. “Your dress is beautiful. New?”
Thankfully, my sleeves were long and flared at the wrists, making it easy to hide the marks from Simon’s ties. “Of course.” I followed her to the kitchen. “Smells delicious in here. What can I do to help?”
Before she could reply, I grabbed one of her aprons from a hook inside the pantry door and slid it over my head.
“You can come say hi to your old man, young lady.”
“He could also get off his butt and come say hello to his daughter,” Mom said playfully.
I rolled my eyes at her and grabbed a beer from the fridge. Knowing Dad, he either needed one or would soon. “Like that’d happen when there’s a game on.”
“Too right.”
I walked through the open kitchen to the family room at the back of my house where my dad was seated exactly where I’d expected him. When I was ten, my mom had given him a chocolate brown leather recliner chair for Christmas. Now it was faded and worn and the leather well wrinkled. If he were to stand, there’d be a permanent impression in the leather from the weight of his body.
A captain of a fire department in Grand Rapids, he was aging gracefully despite his salt and pepper hair and wrinkles lining his eyes.
“Hey, Dad,” I said and stopped him as he moved to put down the foot rest on his recliner. “Don’t get up for me.” I leaned into his outstretched arms and fell into his bear hug. “How are you, Dad?”
