Ansel spun around, his boots kicking up a cloud of dust around us. “Yeah, you get a big kick out of that, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Telling men what to do—you get off from it, right?”
“Ansel—”
“Who knew all these years you’ve been bossing me around that I should’ve been paying you for it.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? You boss men around and beat them.” He stared at me in disgust. “You’re nothing more than a whore who fucks for money.”
A volatile mixture of rage and hurt burned through my veins, and I acted before I could stop myself. My hand flew out and smacked his cheek.
Ansel’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. After all the years I’d helped with raising him, I’d never raised a hand to him.
Just when I opened my mouth to apologize, Ansel snapped, “Thank you, Mistress.”
Any remorse I felt quickly evaporated. Mustering all the strength I had within me, I shoved him hard, sending him staggering back. “You ungrateful little shit! How dare you stand there and say that to me? Have you even stopped to think for one minute why I became a Domme?”
“Because you’re a pervert who gets off from hurting men?”
“It’s never been more than a job to me. One I took out of necessity.” I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “I did it for you and for dad.”
“Bullshit.”
“Have you ever stopped to think how it’s been possible for us to keep the farm? Dad hasn’t drawn a decent paycheck in three years. His disability barely pay the bills, least of all Susie’s salary. If I hadn’t stepped in with the money for the taxes, they could have taken the farm. We would have lost everything.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I tried to stop the tears from overflowing my eyes. I shook my head. After everything Dad had been through, I would have died before I let that happen. Hell, I might’ve even become a prostitute for real.”
Ansel’s expression flipped like a switch from anger to disbelief. He swayed slightly on his feet as he processed my words. “You really paid the taxes for the farm?”
“Yes. I did.”
He jerked a hand through his sandy hair. “So you’re not some kind of hooker?”
I rolled my eyes. “BDSM and S&M relationships aren’t always about having sex. Domme’s rarely have sex with their clients, and I never did.” I had to bite my lip to keep from adding, “Until William.”
“And you just spanked men at some club?”
“Among other things.”
His eyes widened. “You always do that kinky stuff with guys?”
“Not that it’s really any of your business, the answer is no. I was only a Domme at the club.” Once again, I failed to add that was until William.
“Dr. F was into that shit?”
Of course, he would have to bring that up. “Yes. He was.”
Ansel’s brow furrowed. “Then how were you guys together?”
“It’s complicated. Let’s just leave it at that.”
I could tell Ansel wanted to ask a million more questions, but he bit his tongue and kept quiet. “Are we okay now?” I tentatively asked.
“Yeah, we’re okay. I’m just going to need some time to let all this sink in.”
“I understand. But while you’re letting it all sink in, just remember that I’m still your sister, and I always have and always will love you.”
“I know that.” He kicked a pebble on the ground. “I love you, too, Soph. None of this shit or anything else will ever change that.”
Hearing him say those words meant everything to me. “I’m sorry for hitting you.”
“Nah, I needed it. I was a real asshole to say what I did.”
“Yeah, you were, but I still shouldn’t have hit you.”
He reached out and embraced me, squeezing me tight. “You better go talk to Dad.”
“Okay. I will.” I pulled out of his arms. I planted a tender kiss on the cheek where I slapped him before heading back to the house.
Before today, it had never seemed like such a long distance, but by the time I reached the front door, it felt like I’d been walking for miles. My fear and trepidation had grown to a fevered pitch.
After glancing in the den, I saw that Dad wasn’t there. When I started down the hallway, it seemed to stretch out for miles before me like a scene out of The Shining. Passing my bedroom door, I wished for nothing more than to run inside, slam the door, and hide out under the covers like I had when I was younger. How I longed for those simple problems that at the time had seemed so monumental.
The door to my father’s bedroom opened, and Susie stepped out. At the sight of me, she quickly closed the door. Although I know she tried to hide it, her expression told of all the emotions running through her head from disbelief to disdain to denial.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry?” she questioned.
Drawing my shoulders back, I replied, “Yes, it’s true. Whatever you’ve heard on the news or through the gossip mill, it’s all true.”
“I see,” she murmured.
I glanced past her to Dad’s room. “Does he…?”
At Susie’s pained expression, my heart clenched in my chest. “It came on the television before I could change it,” she said apologetically.
My hand flew to my mouth as I fought the urge to throw up. The thought of telling him had been agonizing, but now it was even worse. He had been denied hearing it first from my lips, and now I had to try to clean it all up somehow.
“He doesn’t believe any of it.”
I stared at Susie in surprise. “He doesn’t?”
She shook her head. “You know him. He won’t until he hears it from you.”
With trembling fingers, I turned the knob, sending the door creaking open on its ancient hinges. At the sound, my dad’s head turned to follow the noise, sliding slowly across the pillow. I inhaled a deep breath before stepping over the threshold. Dad’s hollow eyes tracked me as I made my way across the floor. Before I reached his side, a voice on the television froze me mid-step.
“Once again, our top story tonight is a sex scandal out of Milton High involving the newly appointed principal, William Foster, and a teacher, Sophie Jameson. It appears as though the two were affiliated with an unnamed, private BDSM club in Atlanta…”
Hearing the story spun so sordidly caused my stomach to lurch again. Then to my horror, one of the stolen pictures from the club flashed on the screen. Outfitted in my blue corset and boots, I held a flogger in my hand. Humiliation flooded me that my father was hearing and seeing the part of my life I had worked so hard to keep secret. I pinched my eyes shut and tucked my head to my chest. There was no way in hell I could bear to look at him. The daughter he had such pride in was soiled and dirty.
“Soph?” Dad questioned.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t speak. I knew there was a million things I needed to say…to explain, yet the once eloquently well-spoken girl remained silent. Hot tears of shame and remorse streaked down my cheeks, but I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“Sophie Marie Jameson. Look. At. Me.”
When I dragged my gaze to his, surprise rippled through me. Instead of the anger and disappointed I imagined, his eyes held only concern. With a shaky hand, he motioned for me to come to his side. Once again, I obeyed without hesitation. Instead of sitting in the chair beside the bed, I eased down on the mattress beside him.
“You tell me. I want to—I need to—hear it from you,” he said. He then held out his hand for me to take just like he always had when I was scared or I’d had a bad day at school. The simple gesture caused the carefully constructed dam holding back my emotions to implode. Ragged sobs tore through my body.
When I finally caught my breath, I moaned, “Oh Daddy.”
“What have I always said?”
“That’s there’s nothing I could ever do t
hat would make you not love me.”
He nodded. “Nothing, mon rayon de soleil.”
He almost broke me again using the French for “my sunshine.” It was a term my Grand-maman had called him when he was a boy, and he did the same to Ansel and me when we were little.
I drew in a deep breath. Now wasn’t the time to be a chicken shit, or as my grandmother would say, “a merde de poulet.” “Five years ago, I met a girl at college who told me about this club,” I began.
My father’s gaze never left mine, and his expression never changed. Part of me expected him to show shame or disgust as I explained how I’d taken money to beat and torture men for their pleasure. But he didn’t.
The only time he showed any emotion was when I told him how Calla had bribed the security guard to get the tapes of William and me. His jaw had clenched, and his eyes had darkened. I knew he was thinking if he was his old self he would have gone to beat the shit out of the security guard. His code of ethics wouldn’t have allowed him to hit a woman.
“Don’t worry about her. I put her in her place last night.”
His brows popped up. “Oh?”
I grinned. “Oh yeah. She won’t be working at Club 1740 ever again, and she’s probably having trouble walking today.”
Daddy chuckled, which induced one of coughing fits. They seemed more like coughing seizures the way his body would jerk and spasm as he tried to catch his breath. I bolted off the bed and went for the glass of water on the nightstand. When I tried to bring it to his lips, his shook his head. Time ticked agonizingly by as I had to watch his face redden and listen to the rattle in his throat and chest. Each time one of these fits happened, fear consumed me that it would be the last time. That his weakened lungs and diaphragm would just give out under the strain. This time I didn’t hide my tears. After all, I’d already been crying. Daddy wouldn’t assume it was about him.
“I’m…okay,” he finally wheezed. He eyed the glass in my hand. “I can take some now.”
With a nod, I brought it to his mouth. He began to take small sips. Finally, the normal color returned to his face. The coughing had exhausted him, and he let his head fall back against the pillow. “Proud of you.”
I hiccupped. “How can you possibly say that? I’ve embarrassed you and Ansel. I’ve ruined our name in this town. I’ve been fired from the job I worked so hard to get. I may never be able to teach again.”
“Do you know how my mother and father met?”
I nodded. “Grand-Maman was working in the café where Grandpapan came.”
Daddy smiled a secret smile before motioning for me to turn his oxygen up. After I turned the dial on the machine up, he inhaled a few breaths. “Your grandmother never worked in a café. She was dancing in a burlesque show.”
“But Burlesque in Paris is basically stripping.” At Dad’s nod, I gasped. “Grand-Maman was a stripper?”
“Out of necessity. Her father had been killed in the war, and they’d lost their farm. They’d been forced to move in with her aunt. As the oldest, she was expected to help feed her five brothers and sisters. Decent jobs were hard to come by, and they didn’t pay shit. One day when she was coming out of the factory she was working in, a man approached her. When she learned how much money she could make while using her love for dance, she started at the club.”
“Not that it matters, but for the record, I wasn’t stripping. None of my clients ever saw me naked.” Except William.
“Do you judge Grand-Maman for what she did?”
“Of course not.”
“Then now you can see why the only person I’m angry and disappointed with is myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I wasn’t crippled, none of this would have happened.”
I furiously shook my head. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. You didn’t ask for this to happen, and you sure as hell didn’t deserve it. You have always been a good man—fair, decent, and honest. More than that, you’ve been a good father who sacrificed so much and worked overtime to be both mother and father. The person and father you are is the reason why I did what I did. If you’d been some asshole who cared only for himself, I wouldn’t have wanted to go to the extreme to see that we kept the farm and you had what you needed.”
Tears welled in Daddy’s eyes. “Thank you, Sophie. Thank you for your sweet, kind words, but most of all, thank you for sacrificing these last seven years for me and for Ansel.”
“Thank you for being such a wonderful father and person.”
“It’s me who should be thanking you for being such a wonderful daughter. “What do you think my mom would have thought about what I did?”
Dad’s expression momentarily became pained. It was something that happened whenever my mother was mentioned. “I think she would’ve been disappointed, but she would’ve tried to understand why you did what you did.” At what must’ve been my visible pain, Daddy shook his head. “She didn’t come from a family like mine. Her parents didn’t know how to love like mine did. She used to say she never felt loved until she married me and then when she had you.”
“Really?”
A sad smile pulled across Dad’s lips. “She loved you so much, Sophie. She used to say that every time she looked at you, it felt like she was winning a competition.”
Daddy’s image became blurry before me as tears once again filled my eyes. “I’m glad that she felt love, even if it was for a short time.”
“She did. I know she did.” Daddy sighed. “What happens now with your job?”
“I’m on paid leave until tomorrow night when they’ve called an emergency school board meeting to discuss what is to happen to William and me.”
“And what happens between you and William?”
I stared down at the quilt, my fingertip tracing over one of the diamond patterns. “We go our separate ways.”
“But why?”
I gave a mirthless laugh as I glanced up. “You really have to ask that?”
“I do. I’ve seen the two of you together—the way you looked at each other. When you two were together, you were so happy.”
“Well, that was before all this mess. It just seems like there are too many things against us. I mean, we both had baggage before, but how do you even begin to move on from something like this?”
“You work at it. Any relationship having is hard work.”
I sighed. “I don’t know if I have the strength it would take to make it work.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say anything like that. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you give up on anything in your life.”
With a rueful smile, I countered, “There’s a first time for everything.”
Dad shook his head. “This is worth fighting for, Sophie. William is worth fighting for. You have strength enough within you for the both of you. Just dig deep. The faith will come to you.”
Although I wanted to believe my father, I’d been through too much in my life to believe there could really be a happy ever after for William and me. But I didn’t have the heart to disappoint him anymore by telling him that. Instead, I merely nodded in agreement and tried to ignore the ache spreading through my chest at the loss of William.
Standing back from the mirror, I eyed my appearance. I’d chosen the most demure dress I owned. It was solid black with long sleeves, a high neck, and it hung past my knees. Nothing sexy or showy. I looked like death, which was appropriate on so many levels. The last time I’d worn it was six years ago to my grandmother’s funeral. Today I felt like I was attending another funeral—the one for my career as a teacher.
My hand went to my neck where my grandmother’s pearls sat. As I fingered the beads, I murmured, “Donne moi de la force, Grand-Maman.” More than anything in the world, I needed strength tonight, and it only made sense to ask for it from one of the strongest women I knew. A woman who had also done something morally questionable for the good of her family.
When my phone dinged on the dresser, I
didn’t even bother checking to see who it was. William had been blowing up my phone with calls and texts since I’d run out of school. Just like I hadn’t known what to say to my dad or brother, I didn’t know what to say to him either. I was still too shell-shocked, and my emotions to jangled.
At the knock on my door, I turned around. I almost did a double take at the sight of Ansel in dress pants and a tie. I hadn’t imagined he would want to come with me to the meeting, but at breakfast this morning, he had passed me the milk and said, “I’m driving you tonight.”
That had been the extent of our discussion. I had neither agreed nor disagreed with him. Now he stood before me looking just like my father had when he was eighteen. In that moment, I realized my baby brother had become a man. It had snuck up on me in the years I was away and only home on weekends and holidays.
“We better get on the road,” he said.
I nodded. “Look at you dressed to the nines,” I mused as I crossed the room to him.
He grinned. “I have my moments.”
I reached out to straighten his tie. “You’re always handsome, but even more so when you’re dressed up.” Once the tie was straight, I cupped his cheek. “You look just like dad.”
“Speaking of, he’s going with us.”
My hand dropped from Ansel’s face. “What? But he’s not able to do that.”
Ansel stepped back into the hallway. My vision became blurry when I followed his gaze to where Dad sat in wheelchair. His best suit was considerably looser than the last time he’d worn it. Ansel had managed to conceal the buckle holding him upright in the wheelchair by running it underneath Dad’s jacket.
I quickly pulled myself together and forced a smile to my face. “Aren’t I lucky to have two handsome men to escort me to the meeting tonight?”
“That’s right,” Daddy said.
After grabbing my coat off the end of the bed, I joined them in the hall. “Well, let’s get this show on the road.”
Daddy gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be fine, Sophie. Have faith.”
I exhaled noisily. “I’ll try.”