The tense muscle in his jaw relaxes. He exhales a small, tight sigh, his rage dispersing with it. When he speaks again, his voice is calmer. More controlled. “I was going through my own mid-life crisis, I suppose. I had the bookstore. I was into the kink community. And I was open about it.
“Meanwhile, my brother—Mark. He had the whole package. Beautiful house, beautiful wife, beautiful life. It was hard to look at him and all his accomplishments and not feel like Iwas a step behind. Like life had run away without me and now I was just wasting my best years.
“And then…Quinn gave me a proposal. Things were…falling apart with her and Mark. They’d just had their first baby and they weren’t connecting. She wanted to re-kindle things with him. Learn something new. And she wanted me to teach her how to do it. She knew I was part of the BDSM community. On paper, it made sense. I was safe. I was family. She was trying to reconnect with my brother. We established our hard limits: no sex. It was also supposed to be…platonic. But.” He folds his arms over his chest protectively. “I lost control.”
“You fell in love.”
He grimaces like the word has teeth. “Yeah. I did.”
A silence. A breath for that. I feel a deep, outpouring of empathy. I know what it’s like to fall in love with the wrong person.Been there, done that.
“What happened next?”
He inhales. There’s a shake to his breath, like rusty wheels trying to get moving again. “My brother found out. The whole thing unraveled very quickly. She went back to him—as she should.” His eyes met mine again. Pleading for understanding. “I got a black eye and a threat to never come near their family again. But the books came out. She wrote about it. Everything we’d done. Every time I’d played with her and fucked her behind my brother’s back. For the world to see. I lost friends. My family—my parents, my extended family—all of them cut me off. I was the villain in her story, after all.” Quieter, he adds: “Rightfully so.”
“Did you ever try to explain it? Tell them your side?”
“And say what? I was in charge. The entire time. It was my responsibility to stay in control and I fucked up.”
“You can’t…punish yourself forever.”
A small, bitter smile curves his lips. “Why not, when it feels so good?”
I examine him. “So…just to be clear. You took her to the Seeker’s Club…?”
He nods. “I knew Phantom. Princess. But I haven’t been there in years. I’ve worked very, very hard to separate myself from that phase in my life. I stopped playing. I stopped dominating. It all just…reminded me too much of every terrible thing I’d done.”
In my brain, I’m trying to fit the timelines together. Dorian stopped going to the club around about when I started. We must have been ships in the night.
What would’ve happened if we’d run into each other then…?
“When was the last time you saw her?”
He shifts from one foot to the other. His arms tighten around his chest. “A year ago. We…rebounded. For a night. I don’t recommend it.”
“A year ago. So right before…”
“Right before I started messaging you. Yes.”
A sting of jealously, unbidden, whips up through my chest. The question—therealquestion I want to ask—comes pouring out before I can stop it: “Do you still love her?”
His phone chimes. The timer goes off. Five minutes is up.
I’m crushed.
His finger taps a button, silencing the chimer. But then he answers my question anyway. “I did once. Very much. But now I see it for what it was. Obsession. Not love. Every time I think about her now, I cringe. I hate the person I was with her. I was so desperate to be loved by her, I abandoned my own firmly held beliefs. I lost my brother. My family. Everything that was important to me. I lost myself. That…the fact that I gave up so much of myself for her…that’s what makes me angry at the end of the day. I’m furious with myself.”
I settle into my skin. “I get it.”
The blue eyes meet mine. Something like hope in them. Shocked that someone would listen to his side of the story, maybe. “You do?”
“Yeah…when I think about who I was with Shawn, I just feel…embarrassed. I let him walk all over me. I let him take so much. I don’t recognize that woman anymore. I’m just so fucking?—”
“—Angry,” he says, finishing our thoughts.
Our eyes connect. There’s a strange energy here now.
A new understanding between us.
