We repeat this twice more—each time more painful, and therefore more satisfying—before I order her into the bath. I never help her bathe. I wait outside the door, reading the Wall Street Journal on my cell phone and shooting off an email to my assistant, Raymond.
When she turns the water off, I join her in the bathroom, bend her over the sink, and gently remove her buttplug. I rub cooling gel over her and carry her to bed, instructing her to sleep only on her side.
No mention is made that tomorrow when the sun comes up, she’s leaving. The only goodbye I give her is a stroke of my fingers over her wrists. Unlike mine, they’re smooth and unmarred. Tonight, for the first time since she’s been my sub, they won’t be bound by rope.
She’s free, and I can’t seem to care about the loss.
I dream of snowfall in a dark alley. I watch it through the tiny, cut-out square in front of me, and when it’s falling fast and I can feel the cardboard over my head dip in, touching my hair with its cold wetness, I draw my knees up to my chest. The slashes on my back pull with the motion, rousing me a little. In my sleep, I think of her—the first, nameless her who made me what I am—and start to breathe too fast.
I wake up and swipe twice at the space beside me on the mattress. Finally I hear a crumpling sound, feel the cool paper bag in my fingers. I snatch it to my face and roll over on my side. As I shut my eyes again, I wish that I could knock for Leah.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leah
The wedding is bad.
Okay, well that’s not really true.
I’m bad at the wedding.
Superficially, I think I play it off okay…at first. I spend the morning with my sisters, who both treat me like porcelain after my weirdness at the show last night.
After I found out for sure it was him, I re-joined them on our couch, and did nothing out of character for the rest of the night as I let the feels rock through me. I slept in the room with Laura, because Todd wasn’t able to fly in until a few hours before the wedding. I knew I couldn’t hide my exhausted, over-emotional self completely, so I told Laura that being at the show, where the décor reminded me of The House, had triggered some anxiety. She gave me a hug and that was that.
I went to sleep hoping I would dream of him and didn’t. So I awoke feeling wrenched and disappointed—and so many other things I didn’t have the words for.
Manis, pedis, fruit-topped waffles in bed in Lana’s hotel room. Then her other bridesmaids joined us in the bridal suite downstairs, and I managed to keep myself normal while everyone rushed around getting ready.
Lana told me about two hours before the wedding that Laura had told her what I said about my anxiety. She hugged me, and we talked about how weird it is, the way life unfolds and sometimes you have choices and other times you don’t.
“That was a time that you didn’t, Leah. You couldn’t help it that she took you. You can’t help it that you have leftover anxiety. I think you handle it so well. You should be proud of how far you’ve come.”
I nodded, and almost cried but didn’t, and I told Lana I was proud of her, too.
After that, everything got crazy. Mom and dad, aunts and uncles, everyone oohing and aahing over Lana in her gorgeous dress. I kept tearing up, but couldn’t tell if it was gladness for my sis or lasdjlkdfjl for him.
Maybe alksjdfd for him.
What do I even call it?
There’s no name.
I held myself together until the wedding started, and Laura and I stood beside Leah at the front of the room. That’s when the snapshot memories started flying through my head.
His arm, tucked over mine.
His hand, stroking my cheek.
Our fingers, clasped so tightly together, all ten of our knuckles had turned white.
Hansel on top of me, his eyes squeezed shut, my hands pressed on his chest as he pounds into me.
I want to hold the memory close, but I’m worried if I do, I’ll cry in front of Lana’s crowd.
She and Roberto say their vows, and Leah’s friend Xander stands up to read a quote.
Here’s the thing: I don’t like Xander. He’s a snobby antique Star Wars memorabilia dealer who uses words like “pontificate” in his every day vocabulary, so typically when he opens his mouth, I turn off my brain.
But I have Hansel right there at the back of my throat, in the pit of my stomach, in my trembling fingers, and so anything anybody says about love is bound to impact me.
Xander says something ridiculously simple—a quote from a book. Something so obviously cheesy-showy, in this context, that shouldn’t affect me at all. Only it does. So much so, as the ceremony ends and we file down the little makeshift aisle and toward the parlor’s exit, I bolt under a partition gate, collide with a waiter, dart around him, and run all the way out of the hotel, toward the road, where I have to talk myself out of asking for directions to The Enchanted Forest.