by Smith, Maren
“I wondered.” Writing the name in on her application, the librarian smiled. “It says here that you held an assistant librarian’s position while you were in college. Tell me about that. What were your responsibilities?”
Sweaty palms pressed her legs, Cynthia failed herself. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard the question. She had, but when she opened her mouth what came pouring out was a completely inane, “M-my name is Cynthia Reynolds.”
The woman arched her eyebrows, and Cynthia stared back helplessly back at her. Sweating, hands frozen mid-twist, she jumped up from her chair. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.” She walked quickly out of the room.
She was a mess.
She wasn’t just a mess, she was inept and now everyone in the library knew it.
It was a shorter distance to flee to the bathroom, than it was to get outside where Carlson was waiting in the car, expecting success, a ready smile on his face and that encouragement that had done absolutely nothing to help her.
The bathroom was mercifully empty. In her haste to hide, she accidentally slammed the door and then pressed herself against it, bowing almost in half as she burst into futile tears. The storm of them was as brief as it was hopeless.
Straightening with a gasp, she caught sight of herself in the mirror by the sink. She stared at her blotchy, tear-streaked reflection, hating it with a depth of passion so extreme that for the first time in a long time—if only just for an instant—she almost wished she was dead.
What are you afraid of, whispered in the back of her mind.
She didn’t even know anymore. She had been afraid for so long the habit of it was insurmountable.
Habits can be broken, you just have to work at it.
But this one had gone on for so very long, she didn’t even know where to start. She stared at herself, hating the paleness of her face tinged with that blush of humiliation. She hated the shaking, the fluttering knots that strangled at her stomach and squeezed her chest, suffocating her until it hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to stand here.
It hurt to try.
It hurt even just to look at herself, all the while hearing that hateful voice whispering over and over in the back of her head, “…good enough for me… broken, broken, broken starts with B.”
How useless and pathetic she was, because in spite of everything, she could hear Carlson’s voice too, still trying so valiantly to make her believe: You’ve got this.
Except, she didn’t have it, and she never would. Not unless she could figure out a way to get past this. This self-sabotaging thing inside her that drove her until here she was, hiding in the library bathroom, glaring at herself.
You’ve got this.
Yanking open the bathroom door, Cynthia ran out again, this time back the way she’d come. She almost crashed into Miss Halstead just venturing out of the interview room with the young man and his briefcase in tow. They all three startled. Flashing a smile that was mostly cringe, the young man excused himself, leaving her to face down the surprised librarian on her own.
Squaring her shoulders, Cynthia recovered first. She stammered horribly, her voice shaking so badly she almost couldn’t understand it herself as she said, “I know I’ve ruined my chances. I’m sorry if I wasted your time, but… if it’s not too late, could I please start over?”
Jaw clenching, the senior librarian glanced once into the reading nook where two more applicants sat waiting. Looking next at the floor, it was several long seconds before she managed to meet Cynthia’s gaze. “When I was twenty-three, my husband of eight months broke my jaw, punctured my eardrum, and put me in the hospital for four nights. I told myself he would never touch me again, but he did. It took two more years before I plucked up the courage to run.” When Cynthia gaped, the other woman’s face softened. “I remember your picture from the news last year. I watched the trial. I don’t think I’ve ever cheered so hard to see someone go to prison. He was a lawyer too. A civil rights lawyer. He knew better.”
What was Miss Halstead trying to tell her? Cynthia stared at her, watching her mouth as she spoke, watching her eyes for signs of lying. Why was she telling her this? Was this even real? Try though she could to twist it, she couldn’t think how any of this could be warped into a weapon to hurt her. She also couldn’t think how to respond.
“I-I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she finally stammered, at a loss for words.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you too,” Miss Halstead replied. Drawing herself a little bit straighter, she walked around Cynthia to open the door to the interview room. “I understand you held a job as an assistant librarian while you were in college,” she said, motioning for her to enter. “Nothing is ever too late… Cynthia was it? I’d be happy to hear your qualifications.”
* * *
The interview took forty minutes longer than it should have, not because she kept screwing up, but because Miss Halstead just seemed to like talking to her. She’d never felt so comfortable in the presence of a woman who wasn’t one of her sub-mates. When it finally came time to leave, for the first time in a long time, Cynthia wasn’t scared.
The drive back to her mother’s house took seven minutes longer than the interview because traffic in D.C. was horrible. But Cynthia didn’t care. The whole way there, she felt as if she were flying. It was surreal. She was still shaky, but it was a weird, almost happy kind of shaking. It felt victorious and she hadn’t really done anything momentous.
“We should make a decision by the end of the week,” the senior librarian had told her. “I’ll call you either way, I promise. And thank you for coming in.”
For the first time, Cynthia didn’t hear that as sarcastic. It sounded and felt exactly as Miss Halstead had likely meant it, as sincerity.
She kept thinking about it, replaying it over and over in her head, the whole way home. Happy in the silence, the knowledge that she’d done it coursing through her like warm summer’s honey. She wasn’t so stupid as to think she actually got the job, but she’d made it through the interview and she was so proud of herself. That was something that hadn’t happened in a very long time.
“Thank you for letting me spend one more night,” she told Carlson, when he pulled into her cul-de-sac.
He smiled. “Not a problem. Tomorrow though, I want you home with me. In my arms and in my bed, your hot little ass tucked right up against me, and the playground of your body ready and available for some good, ol’ fashioned stress relief. Right now, I think we both could use it.”
It sounded heavenly.
“Thank you,” she said again, smiling. He probably thought she meant the stress relief, but she didn’t. It was more. It was everything from that moment at Black Light when he’d reached across the table and taken hold of her hand, shaking it for the first time, not thinking a single thing about the panicked girl just trying to make it through a simple introduction. It was buying her dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill, when he’d drawn his line in the sand and then marched her to the bathroom to prove he wouldn’t back down. It was his no nonsense and his gentleness.
It was the whole Carlson Garvey package.
He would probably never know how much that meant to her. But if it took the rest of her life, she hoped she might someday show him how much she appreciated his refusal to give up on her. How much she appreciated him.
How much she loved him.
Her breath caught as that realization dropped into the pit of her stomach and then lay there, trembling. She was in love with her Dom. When had that happened?
“What do you think about going out to dinner to celebrate?” Carlson asked as he drove up into her driveway and parked. “Not tonight, sadly. I’m at the base today right up until our shift at Black Light, but I think we could carve out time tomorrow if you’re interested. You can meet me downtown, or I could come pick you up. Bring flowers.” He thought about it. “Hell, maybe even put on a suit and make reservations somewhere.”
“Like a date?” Still reeling from her own re
velation, that took her aback even further.
“Why not?” The corner of his mouth quirked. “People who like each other are supposed to do that, right?”
When he gave her that crooked boyish grin, her stomach warmed and she melted. Yummy trickles slipped through her sex, tickling her folds, and setting that old familiar pulse on fire.
“What’s your favorite flower? Roses, daisies, lilies?”
No one had ever asked before. The urge was to say roses, but only because those were what he’d mentioned first and might mean that he preferred them. They were also the most expensive flower, or maybe it was a test to see how difficult she was to please. Or he might get upset if she liked things that cost her too much money, or maybe…
She caught herself, shutting down the spiral before it could take hold. “Carnations,” she said. “Any color, but the blue ones are especially pretty.”
His grin broadened. “Good to know. Be prepared to go shopping before dinner. I’m going to buy you a dress, something nice.” He tossed her a wink. “Don’t wear panties.”
She got out of the car, butterflies that had nothing to do with anxiety dancing in her stomach. If anything, the happy cloud she’d been walking on got that much higher as she went up the walkway. Waving him goodbye, she fished her keys out of her pocket and let herself into the house.
Her mother was standing in the living room in front of the easy chair by the window, her usual perching place whenever Cynthia went out by herself. Her purse was in her hands, which was odd because her mother never carried her purse in the house. Normally, it lived on the coat hook right next to her jacket and the front door, but that wasn’t the only oddity. Normally, her mother greeted with a thin or awkward smile, but she didn’t so much as glance at her when she stepped past the short entryway wall into the mouth of the living room. Her face was drawn and unsmiling as she stared down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Something in that stillness shook the cloud Cynthia was on, dropping her all the way back to Earth.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
Her mother startled. Nothing but her eyes moved as she locked on Cynthia. She hadn’t even realized Cynthia had come home. That was when Cynthia’s world fell apart.
“Puppy! Puppy! Puppy!” Squealing, Pony ran down the hall to meet her. Her sub-mate flung her arms around her in the tightest hug. She was grinning, but her eyes were wide and wild in a way that made Cynthia cringe. The butterflies that had been so joyous just moments before, crashed. Suddenly all she could feel were the old snakes coiling and squeezing, trying to crush the breath out of her as, coming down the hall behind Pony, resplendent in the suit he’d been wearing the night he’d been arrested, was Ethen. His eyes were cold; the thinness of his smile, at complete odds with the sicky joyousness of Pony’s.
“He’s out,” Pony cheered, hugging Cynthia tighter. “We’re going home!”
Clutching her shoulders, her too thin hands hooked into her like claws. The wildness in her eyes and the cringe of her smile turned desperate as she pulled back.
“You do want that, don’t you?” Pony begged through the shakiness of a grin that seemed more desperate the closer Ethen came. “He forgave us. He wants us to come with him. We can get out of here, and it’ll be just like it used to. You want that too, don’t you?”
Her legs began to shake. Watching Ethen come, it was all Cynthia could do not to bolt. Not that that would save her. She’d tried to run from him once before. He looked exactly now as he had back then, thumbs hooked in his belt, the epitome of relaxation. She already knew she had no chance of escaping.
“Of course she does,” he said soothingly, his tone at odds with the iciness of his stare.
Please, Pony pleaded silently. Come with me.
Cynthia didn’t move, she couldn’t. Even her breath shook.
“I’ll go pack,” Pony said, much too cheerfully, hooked fingers digging into her shoulders. “For you too, okay? Puppy? Okay?”
Pony nodded, as if acknowledging Cynthia’s granted permission and she could not make herself say no.
“Something tells me Puppy may not want my forgiveness,” Ethen said, a corner of his mouth turning up in an echo of the handsome smile that had first hooked her oh so long ago. Back before she knew what kind of master he was. Back when he was still interested in the chase of her, and she still thought it exciting to submit.
The beautiful shoe, came the unexpected thought. The one that hurt so badly.
“The bitch truly has turned on her master.”
“I-I-I’ll go pack,” Pony stammered, wringing her hands and nodding, still with that quiet desperation. Backing away from them both, she slipped past him, heading back down the hallway towards their bedroom.
“All that training,” Ethen tsked, reaching into his coat. “But you know what they say…”
Cynthia didn’t realize she’d backed away until she bumped into the coats, hanging on their wall hooks. He had her leash in his coat. He was going to beat her right here.
“There’s only one thing to do when a bitch—or a pony—ceases to obey.”
It was like watching a movie, seeing him pull that gun instead of her leash out of a holster under his coat. It looked like a kid’s toy. Small, shiny. Not at all real. Right up until he turned, pointing it straight at Pony’s retreating back, and pulled the trigger.
He shot Pony in the head, spattering a fine crimson spray across both walls and all the childhood photographs hanging there. Her hands flew up as she went down, hitting the carpet with a reverberating ‘whump!’
Someone screamed. Cynthia didn’t realize it was her until Ethen turned back around, fixing her in the ice of his unsmiling stare.
“Can’t call it a menagerie with only one animal.” He raised the gun even with her eyes.
Rooted to the floor, she stared into the blackness of the muzzle taking aim at her.
“Ungrateful bitch,” he said, almost fondly.
Cynthia jumped at the shot, except it didn’t come from Ethen’s gun.
Jerking, Ethen snapped a protective arm up against his side. He spun, taking aim at her mother now, still standing in front of her chair, her open purse dangling limp from one hand, while in the other a black metal revolver pointed steadily back at him.
She fired again, the bang of her 9mm drowning out the crack of his smaller pistol.
He went down, and in the three steps it took her to walk across the living room, shot after shot, she emptied her gun into him.
Hands clapped over her mouth, Cynthia cringed amidst the coats until her mother ran out of bullets and he stopped twitching. Gasping, she stared from him, to the gun he’d dropped on the entryway floor. Finally, she stared at her mother as the older woman slowly lowered her arm, letting both it and the gun dangle limp at her side.
Pony…
Shoving off the wall, she ran to where Pony lay motionless, blood seeping into the carpet like a crimson halo, turning her white-blonde hair an awful red.
“Oh God,” she gasped, her shaking hands not knowing where to touch.
Pony was dead.
Hugging herself, Cynthia rocked back against the blood-spattered wall and lost it completely.
Chapter 17
Cynthia had no idea who called 911. Later, as she sat beside Carlson in the hallway of a hospital, Pony’s blood on her shirt and stiff on her hands, all she could think was maybe it had been a neighbor. Maybe her mother. For the life of her, she couldn’t even recall when or how Carlson arrived. One minute he wasn’t there, and in the next, he simply was.
“H-how…” she started to ask, but everything was so strange. Finding words was like picking her way through a fog. All she could do was flounder, puzzled, until he fit the missing pieces in for her.
“How did we get here?”
She looked around the hallway at the busy nurse’s station in front of her, at the doctors wandering in and out of occupied rooms that stretched the length of the sterile tiled corridor as far as she could see, and
then back to Carlson when he gave her hand a squeeze.
“We followed the ambulance. It’s okay if you don’t remember. They gave you a pretty good sedative when we got here. You’d be in your own exam room right now, except you refused to stay put and they got tired of constantly chasing you down.”
She didn’t remember the sedative, or the ambulance, or anything apart from Pony lying on the floor of her mother’s hallway. “Oh God… Did I call you? D-do you kn-know wh-what…” Her voice broke and she couldn’t finish.
His hand squeezed hers again. “You didn’t call me, honey. I decided a celebration was more important than what I had planned. I was just pulling back into the driveway when I heard the shots. You don’t remember I broke down your door? Pony was bleeding hard. I pressed a towel to her head and called the ambulance.”
Blinking, she shook her head. “Pony isn’t dead?”
“If he’d had a bigger caliber gun or better aim, she might be. But no, honey.” Pulling her close, seeming not even to care as he brushed a kiss across her forehead, Carlson said, “She isn’t great, but she isn’t dead.”
For the first time in what felt like hours, Cynthia managed to breathe.
Her mother was checked into one room.
“Shock,” the doctor told them. “She’s fine. She can go home tomorrow.”
Police kept coming and going. There was one standing outside her mother’s door, making it impossible for Cynthia to work up the courage to approach.
Pony was checked into ICU on the other end of the floor. Now and then, she got up and with Carlson’s help, walked the length of the hospital far enough to check on her too. Police were in and out of her room as well.
“The bullet glanced off her skull, leaving a nice gash but doing no real harm,” another doctor told her. “We’ve stapled the wound and are keeping her for observation just to make sure there’s no concussion. The police will be talking to her for a few hours at least, but she can go home tomorrow so long as someone will be there to keep an eye on her.”