All reasonable concessions.
This, however, was taking things in a new and different direction.
A direction they had not yet discussed despite her beliefs that they had already settled it.
Maybe she had settled it, in her mind, and was convinced she’d convince him of that.
“What if I don’t want your parents and family just dropping by whenever they feel like it?”
She cocked her head at him. “I’m not telling them they can’t stop by.”
“I didn’t say they can’t stop by. I’m saying calling first is a mandatory policy around here. That’s non-negotiable. I told you that.”
In fact he was already feeling more than a little irritated at Bethany for her intrusion into Hunter’s time when she knew how important this was to him.
“Now you’re just being silly. Come on, Ned. Go get rid of them and let’s have some fun.” She offered him a sexy smile.
Well, a smile he’d thought was sexy up until now.
Unfortunately, she’d just managed to push every last one of his buttons, buttons he’d cautioned her about not pushing from day one of their dating.
Hard limits he’d warned her he wouldn’t change, were non-negotiable, and that if she couldn’t accept that, or him the way he was, they wouldn’t be a good fit.
He stared at her for a moment, weighing his options. “Wait here for me, okay?”
She flashed him a wide smile. “Now you’re talking, baby.”
A smile he now recognized as her I win smile.
A smile he’d seen more and more of over the past several weeks, but hadn’t paid much attention to. Looking back at it in context, he could see where that smile appeared when she’d forced yet another concession from him, chipping away at all the things he’d told her he wouldn’t do.
Until now.
He closed the bedroom door behind him and headed down to the other end of the house. In the garage, he grabbed two empty boxes and quickly returned, not bothering to look into the living room where he felt Todd’s questioning gaze following his journey.
In the guest bath, he quickly gathered up all her things that she’d been bringing and leaving there. From his master bathroom as well, and he emptied the drawer he’d given her to use to keep a few things there, like spare underwear, shorts, T-shirts.
A quick sweep through the closet snagged a sweater and pair of shoes. One last walk-through, and he sat both boxes just outside his front door.
When he returned to the guest room, Bethany stood and walked over to him, a triumphant smile on her face as she draped her arms around his neck.
“See? Now we can play. You’re just not used to a large family, that’s all. It’s no big deal. Not like we’ll be walking around naked all the time or something. You’ll get used to having them around, I promise.”
He gently peeled her arms off him and laced fingers with her, leading her out of the bedroom and down the hall. She resisted a little when they passed the master bedroom.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Then she realized Todd and Hunter were still in the living room. “Hey, I thought I heard them leave?”
He didn’t stop until they were in the foyer, and she stood between him and the front door. He reached over, picked up her purse, and handed it to her before reaching around her to open the door.
“Bethany, I do love you. At least, I thought I did, because I thought you understood me. It’s obvious we’re not a good fit for each other. I’m sorry I wasted your time all these months by ignoring the little signs you’ve been sending out. I could have saved us both this. I wish you nothing but the best, and hope you meet someone who will obviously be a better fit for you. Good-bye.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Good-bye? You’re breaking up with me?”
“Yep.” He pointed to the two boxes on the stoop. “There’s your stuff. If I find anything else, I’ll send it to you.” He hadn’t left anything at her house except a toothbrush, deodorant, and shaving supplies.
Not like he’d miss those. Thank god she doesn’t have a key.
“Ned, what the hell? You’re seriously choosing them over me?”
“No, I’m choosing my life and being authentic over you. You have chosen to ignore nearly every hard limit that I clearly laid out to you when we first started dating. Hard limits I’ve repeatedly told you in our discussions were non-negotiable. If I let you move in, you’d be miserable, I’d be miserable, and I’d be kicking you out in a few months. This saves us both a lot of grief.”
“Not if you’d just freaking listen to me!”
“Uh, no. See, that’s the whole point. This is my house. This is my life. I warned you from the start that there were parts of me that were non-negotiable. I am a Dominant, and this is how I am.”
“No, you’re just being stubborn. It’s called making concessions and being a freaking adult!”
“What concessions are you making then?”
“Well, letting you do that stupid stuff with them, for starters.”
Aaaand that was the last nail in the coffin. He’d tried to educate her about BDSM. Tried to tell her why he needed this. Why it was a part of him, and how miserable he’d been when he’d tried to suppress that side of himself in the past in a misguided attempt to make a relationship work.
“Good-bye, Bethany,” he said, stepping forward so she’d have to step back and out onto the front porch. “I’m really sorry things had to end like this.”
He didn’t even slam the door in her face. He gently shut it and locked it.
She pounded on it. “Goddammit, Ned! Come out here and talk to me!”
He calmly turned away and walked back to the couch, retaking his seat.
She eventually stopped pounding and yelling. Finally, he heard her car peel out of his driveway.
Hunter was sitting up on his knees, shock on his face as he stared at Coop.
“Did I say you could sit up yet, pup?” Coop sternly asked.
Automatically, Hunter dropped back into position so Coop could prop his boots on his back.
He also sensed Todd’s gaze on him. “Um, dude, are you okay?” Todd asked.
“Yep.”
“What happened?”
“Long story, and should have happened sooner.” He nudged Hunter with his heel. “You want to stay until later tonight? All night, if you guys want to?”
Hunter nodded. “Yes, Master. If it’s all right with Todd.”
Coop looked over at Todd.
“Coop, what the hell happened?”
He let out a sigh. “I’ll tell you later. I’m serious. If you guys want to stay, I’m good with that.”
“Okay. Yeah, sure. We were going to go home, order pizza, and watch TV anyway.”
“Good.” Coop sat up again, planted his boots on the floor, and slapped Hunter hard on the ass. “Beer, pup. In the bottle. Now.”
Hunter leapt up and bolted for the kitchen while Coop sat back and stared at the TV.
Even Deadpool couldn’t make him laugh right now. Maybe he should have talked things over with her. Or asked her to leave and scheduled a sit-down for next week when he could better control his emotions.
But she’d obviously been positioning herself to worm her way into his house permanently for weeks or longer. Selling her condo? Repainting his living room? It sounded like she’d been in full-on planning mode without him. Definitely walking all over the boundaries he’d told her were non-negotiable, like people just dropping by without calling first.
No. He could see that writing on the wall. He’d divorced his first wife after ignoring lots of red flags and warning signs and trying to change himself, and he had sworn he wouldn’t repeat that misery.
Hunter hurried back with the beer, kneeling before him and presenting it to him. Coop took it from him, then reached out and ruffled his dark brown hair.
“Good boy. Thank you. Head down.”
Hunter dropped into a crouch, his forehead pressed against Coop
’s boots.
Coop realized that Todd’s gaze was focused on him, not on the movie. He finally looked over at his friend. “What?” Coop asked, although even he knew how tired he sounded.
“You really okay, man?” Todd asked.
“Yeah.” He glanced down at Hunter’s bare, rounded back. He could easily tell his friend what was going through his mind, but this wasn’t about him.
This was Hunter’s time, and Coop didn’t want to do anything to pull his friend out of that headspace. They could always go out to dinner a different night to talk.
But while he could nearly always find someone to play with, either through his friends at the Suncoast Society, or through Venture, Hunter couldn’t.
No way would he abandon his friend like that. Not when Coop knew how much Hunter needed this, and him.
“I’ll be fine,” Coop said before taking a long pull from his bottle. “Life goes on.”
Chapter Two
“Getting settled in your new place?” Mikayla asked Dani.
“Not much to get settled into. Just a small apartment.” Dani hadn’t yet had her friends over to see it since she’d only been there two weeks. She’d just finished getting it exactly the way she wanted two days earlier.
And she was still recovering from the pain that, and the rest of the move, had caused her.
“You could have stayed here with us. I told you that.”
Dani suppressed a shudder. It wasn’t a comment on Mikayla and Carson and their housekeeping skills, but a testament to Dani knowing herself.
“I know, and I appreciate it. I really do. But I’m not going to do that. You know me. You lived with me in college.”
“Which is why I offered. Because I know a lot of your triggers and I don’t have a problem accommodating you.”
True. If she could live with anyone with a minimum amount of stress, it’d be Mikayla.
Dani stared out the window to Mikayla’s private, fenced backyard that lay past the screened pool cage and lanai. “What I have is plenty big enough for me. No maintenance. Easy to take care of.” Dani smiled. “Not much bigger than our dorm room was.”
“God. That place was so freaking tiny.”
“Yeah, but we had some fun.”
“That we did.” Mikayla sat back and took a sip of her iced tea. “Are your parents dealing with it okay?”
“Yeah. They can’t understand why I didn’t just move back in with them permanently. I needed a fresh start in a lot of ways. If I’d stayed there, Clayton would have always been bugging me, or them. Or my parents would have wanted to strangle me after a few more weeks of living with them. They were getting tired of me reorganizing the kitchen and their closets and dressers all the time.”
Dani reached out and slightly adjusted the long teaspoon she’d used to stir sugar into her iced tea. It’d been slightly askance, and now lay perfectly perpendicular to the table’s edge. “Fresh start. New life.”
Mikayla’s brow furrowed. “Are you afraid of Clayton?”
“Of that dork?” Dani snorted. “No. He wasn’t abusive. Well, not physically abusive, although I’m sure some might say what he was trying to do there toward the end was mental abuse or something. I’d already decided to leave him. The accident sort of made up my mind for me and gave me a perfect buh-bye opening. If I’m going to be single, might as well do it somewhere warm.”
“I heard that.”
Dani slowly traced vertical lines in the condensation on the side of her glass, turning it as she went. “I needed a clean break, away from him. Away from everything.”
She didn’t want to admit it was also in some ways like a knife in her gut to live that close to a career she couldn’t reasonably expect to have any longer.
“When do you get the payout?”
“My lawyer said I should see the direct deposit in my account by tomorrow.” Dani took another sip of tea. “Even better that I’m down here when I get it. No Clayton trying to schmooze me. Not that it’s a lot, anyway. Not nearly enough.”
But the settlement she received when the cab company’s insurance threatened to drag things out for years if she took the case to trial was better than nothing. They’d picked up all her medical expenses from the accident, which happened when the cab driver fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked, and would pay all accident-related medical expenses for the next two years.
She’d been lucky to get away with “only” a broken pelvis and a back injury.
The cab driver had died.
Her lawyer had been able to show negligence, where the cab driver had been working over twenty-four hours straight, as well as how the company had falsified some of his logs in the past. Other drivers testified to the company’s shady practices.
Unfortunately, it’d also put an immediate end to her career in theatre. Hard to dance and sing on stage when even walking was tough on some days. Not to mention her carefully controlled anxiety and OCD had spiraled out of control during her physical rehab period.
Years of progress…gone in one screeching, grinding impact.
Since those were “pre-existing” conditions before the accident, she couldn’t get the insurance company to pick up the tab for that, either. She would also apparently be in pain for the rest of her life.
At least she still had her voice. A friend of hers had hooked her up with doing voiceover and audio work, so at least she could do that from home. Mostly narrating e-books, and she wasn’t exactly making a living wage doing it yet.
Mikayla cocked her head and leveled her gaze at Dani the way she used to when they were going to school. “You’re alive, at least. Something I’m extremely grateful for. You scared the shit out of me, girl.”
“Alive. Yeah, that’s something.”
“It could have been worse. And now you have a new challenge. You know you love a challenge. I’m glad you moved back here, even if the circumstances sucked.”
It felt so good having a friend who understood her. Who got her. Mikayla had roomed with Dani for four years and hadn’t killed her in her sleep. Even better, Dani knew she had personally grown and developed some healthy coping skills due in no small part to Mikayla’s love and patience and gentle pushing.
Dani shrugged. “It was a no-brainer. Cold really sucks now. Makes me hurt worse. When you joked that I should move back down here, it sort of hit home. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to live down here. The money will go a lot farther. Last longer.”
“You know I’m going to talk you into volunteering at the club, right?” Mikayla grinned. “We always need people. Jenny is always looking for new victims—eh, volunteers.” She grinned.
“I’m not looking for play right now, much less a relationship. I told you that.”
“For the front desk.” Mikayla leaned forward. “Derrick and Kel would kill to have someone like you on their staff. And it’ll get you out of the house.”
She thought about it. “It would do that. Bound and determined to take me under your wing again, huh?”
“Duh. What are besties for?”
During college, it’d always been Mikayla dragging Dani out to meet people or go to dinner, always taking into consideration her personality. Sometimes, Dani could people just fine, if she knew a majority of the people and the situation or location was familiar.
Sometimes, it had been all Dani could do to crawl out of bed and make it to class. Plenty of times had it not been for Mikayla, she wouldn’t have.
Put her on a stage, she was fine. Or working as a waitress. Or working retail.
Social settings nearly crippled her unless she knew the person or people well and didn’t feel self-conscious around them.
Like Mikayla.
“The munch is tomorrow,” Mikayla said. “Carson and I will pick you up at six. Besides, we want to see your new place.”
A ripple of fear sent shivers through Dani, and not the happy funtime kind of shivers. “Munch?”
“Suncoast Society. And it’s our treat, so no bullshit arguin
g with me, right? Most of the people there make it to the club every so often. Great bunch. I want to introduce you around.”
“You want me to not have any reasons to refuse being a volunteer at the club.”
Mikayla’s smile widened. “Duh.”
After another hour of chatting, Dani felt exhaustion setting in and had to call it a day and head home. Driving wasn’t easy for her now. Between having spent years in New York City and the surrounding boroughs, and taking public transportation, driving felt weird.
Considering the lack of adequate public transportation in the Sarasota area, and her aversion to riding it anyway since her accident, she didn’t have many options.
Her Ford Edge was easy to drive and made her feel safe. It was only two years old, and her father had insisted on buying it for her when her parents and brother had moved her down to Florida three weeks earlier. He told her she could pay him back when she got her settlement.
Which she suspected meant he wouldn’t cash the check when she sent it to them.
They’d helped her set up her apartment, spent some time catching up with aunts and uncles and cousins who still lived there in Sarasota, and then…
Left.
Alone.
She loved it.
That she didn’t miss Clayton at all was quite telling.
I should have left him a long time ago.
* * * *
Dani had just finished recording another chapter in the audiobook she was working on when her cell phone rang.
“Hi, Mom.”
“How are you doing, honey?”
“No better or worse than I was yesterday.”
“You know I’m going to keep calling.”
“I know. And I love you for it.”
Her mother’s sigh stretched through the line from New York. “Clayton stopped by again today.”