Reconstructing Meredith (Light Switch Book 2)

by Lauren Gallagher

  Fuck. Sometimes I hate being right. “You do?”

  She nodded slowly, dropping her gaze as her cheeks colored. “It was probably one of the most frightening and degrading things he did to me. He’d bring men in I didn’t know and let them do whatever they wanted, even if it hurt me. I had to do whatever they told me and take whatever they dished out, or he’d punish me. And there was nothing I could do about any of it.”

  I flinched. “But you, you want to do it again?”

  “On my terms.” She took another deep breath. “With you and someone you know and trust. In a scenario where I can do something about it if I need to.”

  I looked at the floor for a moment, then at her. “You really want me to bring in someone you’ve never met, and have a threesome with you and him?”

  “Actually, I want you to watch me with him.”

  I shot Leslie an incredulous look, then sent the same look Meredith’s way. “You’re serious.” I blinked. “You want me to watch you have sex with a stranger?”

  “A stranger to me,” she said. “He would be someone you know and trust.”

  I said nothing.

  “Meredith, why don’t we discuss how these scenarios played out with your ex-husband?” Leslie said.

  I held my breath.

  “It always started the same,” Meredith whispered. “He’d sit off to the side and tell me to undress. Then he’d have me kneel in front of the door, and he’d call the Dom in. When the Dom came in, Rich would say, ‘she’s all yours.’ And then he’d watch.”

  I shuddered. It wasn’t unusual for me or Matt to trade off sitting to the side and watching the other with Kristen. It was hot, it was arousing beyond belief, and like a twisted version of King Midas, Rich had made it sleazy and creepy just like anything else he fucking touched.

  “Did he only watch?” Leslie asked. I had no doubt she already knew the answers, and was simply guiding Meredith into repeating them for my benefit.

  “No,” Meredith whispered. “Sometimes he joined in. Usually he waited until the other Dom was finished, then he’d take over.”

  “And from our previous discussions,” Leslie said, “how would you like Scott to proceed with such an arrangement?”

  My mouth went dry.

  Drier still when Meredith turned to me.“I want to play it out the same way.”

  I tried to moisten my lips, but it didn’t do any good. “So, if I’m understanding this correctly, you want me to have you strip, kneel in front of the door and wait for me to call in a Dom you’ve never met. Then, once he’s in the room, I’m supposed to hand you off to him, watch you, and join in if I feel like it?”

  She nodded.

  I was suddenly half-tempted to ask Leslie to turn down the air conditioning in the room. As the silence went on, the background devoid of the white noise of air coming through a vent, I realized the air conditioning wasn’t on at all. Evidently the chill I couldn’t escape came from under my clothes.

  By hitting the palm of my hand with a flogger while she’d knelt in front of me, I’d triggered a flashback that sent Meredith into what I could only describe as a panic attack. We’d overcome that, and it didn’t cause such a violent reaction anymore. But what about a scenario like this? Even if she knew this was something she directly associated with Rich, God only knew what would happen when the stimulus was applied and the synapses fired. A position and a sound could give her flashbacks. Handing her off to a total stranger while going through the same motions that had preceded countless horrific experiences? She wasn’t asking me to let her smell some too-familiar coffee. She was asking me to throw the cup in her face and hope to God it didn’t burn her.

  “Scott?” Leslie said.

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. After a moment, I looked up. “Listen, I don’t want to make this about me, but I’m just not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

  Meredith bit her lip.

  Guilt tugged at my gut, but this was necessary. Whether I ultimately agreed to this or not, Leslie and Meredith both needed to be aware of my reservations. “I’ve done this kind of thing before, don’t get me wrong. Rape fantasies, threesomes with a Dom the sub doesn’t know, things like that.” I paused, glancing back and forth between them. “But never after the kind of trauma you’ve been through.”

  “Though, bear in mind, Scott,” Leslie said, “Meredith has had time to process her trauma and deal with it to a considerable extent. She and I have discussed this scenario, and I do believe she’s reached a point where the risk-benefit ratio is in her favor.”

  “Still,” I said. “You’re asking me to put her in the hands of someone she’s never met. Not that I’m opposed to it on principle, but how do I know this won’t trigger another flashback?” I looked at Meredith and slipped my hand into hers. “I want to help you, babe, but I don’t want to make things worse.”

  She dropped her gaze. The knot of guilt twisted and turned in my gut. It was a herculean effort for her to even express her desires, and it killed me to dig my heels in, but what could I do?

  “Is there any kind of compromise that would make this more comfortable for you?” Leslie asked.

  “What if it was with someone she knew first?” I said. “I can introduce her to someone, make sure they’re both comfortable with each other, and go from there. Even if they just meet a time or two, enough to be on a first name basis.” I exhaled. “If that goes well, and Meredith still wants it, I can bring someone else in.” After a second, I added, “A…stranger.”

  “I can handle that,” Meredith said.

  “Scott, do you know any Doms you’d trust for the stranger scenario?” Leslie asked. Our eyes met briefly, and I had no doubt she knew the answer.

  “I do, yes.” If I could convince him—and myself—to go through with this, I knew just who to ask. But I’d deal with that another day.

  After the appointment was over, Meredith and I walked down to the parking garage. Neither of us spoke, but it wasn’t the uncertain, fish-watching silence that had hung over us in the waiting room. Now it was loaded, filled with inevitable questions and answers. When we reached her car, we stopped.

  It was Meredith who finally broke the silence. “You really don’t want to do this, do you?”

  “It’s not that. I’ll do whatever it takes to help you through this, but I’m…” I shook my head, unsure how to explain it.

  “If you don’t want to do something, just say so.” She slid her arm around my waist. “Being able to put a stop to this goes both ways, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m going to hear and probably do a lot of things that make me uncomfortable before this is over, and I’ve accepted that from the beginning. It’s just…” I dropped my gaze, unsure if I could articulate my concerns.

  “Tell me, Scott.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek, searching for the words. “Look, sometimes, even with a sub who hasn’t been through what you have, there are setbacks. When you push boundaries, sometimes they push back. And with you, we’ve already hit one big speedbump, and we’ll probably hit a few more.”

  “Which we both knew would happen eventually.”

  I nodded. “I know. I’m just concerned about… conditioning.”

  She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

  “Conditioning is a powerful thing.” I spoke so softly my voice didn’t echo at all in the cavernous garage. “You said yourself even the smell of coffee or leather has given you flashbacks.”

  “At one time, yes.” She furrowed her brow. “But what does that have to do with this?”

  “I don’t want to condition you…” I bit my lip, then took a breath. “I don’t want to condition you to associate me with the fear or panic or pain he caused.”

  Meredith blinked. “That’s not possible, Scott.”

  “Isn’t it?” I rested my hand on her waist. “What if I push you too hard, too fast? If I start giving you more flashbacks, more panic? How long before you sta
rt associating those with me?”

  She put her arms around me. “I know we’ve only been doing this for a little while, but I’ve never once thought to connect you to what he’s doing. Even when I panicked on my bedroom floor after that thing with the flogger, I never connected you to it.”

  “Not consciously, maybe.” I kissed her forehead. “But if it happens enough times, under enough different circumstances, I’ll be the common thread.”

  “So what do you suggest? I don’t trust anyone else to do this.”

  “I’m not saying to have someone else do it,” I whispered. “That’s why I took this on in the first place. I’m not digging my heels in or backing out. I absolutely want to help you get past your trauma and give you a chance to experience your fantasies.” I ran my fingers through her hair. “What I’m suggesting is we take smaller steps. Move a little slower. That way, if negative things happen, there are more positive steps in between.”

  “Do you want to forget the whole threesome thing, then?”

  “No, I’m not suggesting that.” I touched her face. “I’m just suggesting we take it slow. Smaller steps, nothing more.” I swallowed hard. “Can you trust my judgment on that?”

  “Of course I trust your judgment.” She smiled and stood up on her toes to kiss me. “I trust you, Scott. I wouldn’t be your sub if I didn’t.”

  Chapter 12

  After months of paperwork and bullshit, Meredith finally obtained access to her storage unit. Rich had kept the unit in his name, and the storage company wasn’t about to hand it over to his ex-wife. She’d at least convinced them to let her keep paying for it rather than letting it default, which would have resulted in her possessions being auctioned off or discarded. It had taken an endless stream of phone calls, letters, faxes, affidavits, statements, and aspirin, but at long last, her things were hers again.

  I parked the U-Haul in front of the unit.

  Meredith stared at the metal drop door and took a breath. “Guess now I get to see how much of my stuff he destroyed.” Unbuckling her seatbelt, she turned to me. “You brought the cutters, right?”

  I pulled the bolt cutters out from under the seat. Since there was no key for the lock, we’d gotten permission to just cut it off and be done with it.

  It was a good thing, too, because the lock was rusted shut. The cheap, piece-of-shit lock was probably the absolute bare minimum Rich could get away with while complying with the storage company’s safety regulations. Fortunately, it was also easy to cut, unlike some of the more expensive types on the market, and with minimal effort on my part, the corroded padlock clattered on to the pavement at our feet.

  Meredith bent and grabbed the handle on the bottom of the door. “Here we go,” she muttered, probably more to herself than me. She pulled the handle, and with a deafening rumble, the door rolled up.

  Sunlight illuminated the haphazard stacks of boxes for the first time in years. The smell of mold and mildew immediately made me wince, both from the strong odor and the sinking feeling as I considered what kind of damage it might have done to her things. Furniture and boxes alike were shoved wherever they’d fit, most likely with no regard for how well they’d bear weight or if any finishes would be damaged. What moisture hadn’t damaged, force and physics probably had.

  Meredith stood, but otherwise didn’t move. For a moment, she just stared at everything, her hands clasped beneath her chin. It must have been overwhelming for her. Overwhelming and intimidating. Where to start?

  I rested my hand on the small of her back. “Ready to empty this thing?”

  Without taking her eyes off the boxes, she nodded slowly.

  “You okay?”

  Another nod. Finally, she looked at me. “Just having a hard time getting my head around this.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

  She threw a sad look toward the boxes, then dropped her gaze. “I wonder if it might be a good idea to go through everything here. I mean, there’s no sense hauling everything home and up to my apartment, only to find out things are busted to pieces.”

  My stomach twisted into knots. I could only imagine why she was so certain he’d destroyed enough of her things to warrant going through it all here. Then again, looking at the jumbled heap of all her possessions, there was no way everything had survived unscathed. Did you bother leaving anything in her world intact, you cocksucker?

  I cleared my throat. “It’s up to you. We have the truck until tomorrow night, and I have all weekend to help.”

  She smiled. “I appreciate it.” Her smile fell and she looked at the boxes. “Guess we should get started. We can just open stuff, take a quick look, and if everything looks reasonably intact, put it in the truck.” She handed me a pair of gloves. After five years, God only knew what creatures had moved in here.

  We shoved boxes out of the way until we got to the furniture. Most of that was pretty well trashed. What wasn’t broken was badly damaged from moisture and mold. Anything with upholstery or stuffing was beyond saving. Fortunately, she wasn’t terribly attached to any of that. A trunk given to her by her grandmother and most of the antique bedroom set were fine, though, and those were important to her. They had a few scratches and such, but nothing that couldn’t be either fixed or covered up.

  A gouge out of her dining room table was almost dead center, so a well-placed centerpiece would keep it out of sight. Two of the chairs were destroyed, but the other four were intact, so she still had a decent dining set.

  “You can always find a matched pair for the head chairs,” I said. “Even if they don’t match the other four exactly.”

  She nodded. “Good idea. Not that I’ve ever needed to use six chairs.”

  “Always good to have them in case you need them, though.”

  “True.” She looked around. “I think that’s it for the big stuff.” She picked up a box cutter and looked around. None of the boxes were marked, so there was no indication of what was in them or where they should go in her apartment. A few were torn, split, or chewed, revealing hints of their contents. Some dishes peeked out of a gaping hole that had been punched into a small computer box. A rodent or something had gnawed its way into another, and continued right into the spines of the books within. What looked like a computer tower was visible in the split-apart side of a half-crushed box.

  I shook my head and picked up the other cutter. “With as carefully as he packed all of this, I’m honestly surprised he bothered paying for the storage unit all this time.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that was just one of his little games.”

  “What do you mean?” I sliced apart some dusty tape and opened a box.

  “He used it to keep me in line. He’d show me the statements so I could see that he was dutifully keeping all of my stuff here, but if I upset him somehow, he’d threaten to stop paying the bill or just close the unit.” She shoved a box aside with her foot.

  “Figures he’d find a way to use it against you.”

  “Trust me,” she said, picking up a relatively undamaged box, “he could use anything against me.”

  “I can imagine.” I riffled through the box in front of me, checking to make sure its contents were salvageable. Aside from a couple of cracked glasses and a bowl that may or may not have been chipped before it was packed, everything looked fine. I pulled out the damaged pieces, dropped them into a box we’d designated as a trash box, and took the rest out to the truck.

  When I came back, I cut open another and started sifting through it. “What was Rich like, anyway? I mean, when you first met him. Before he, you know…”

  “Before Mr. Hyde showed up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was a really nice guy, to be honest with you.” She set a box down and toed it toward the door. “And truth be told, even after we got married, he could be a sweet guy.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I never would have guessed what he was really like. Honestly. He was sweet, charming, the kind of g
uy I could talk to for hours.” She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Had everyone fooled, actually. Everyone in the community was completely horrified when they found out what happened to me, and a lot of people thought I was just trying to ruin his reputation.” She paused, cutting the tape on a box before sliding the box cutter into her back pocket. “Honestly, if the D.A. and judge hadn’t been so hellbent on making an example out of him, he probably would have gone free just like most abusers do. And he would have gone right on convincing everyone what a fucking saint he was.”

  “Amazing how well people can hide sides like that,” I said through my teeth.

  “You’re telling me.” Something ceramic clattered and clanked. Paper rustled. Then she closed the box and pushed it off to the side before reaching for another. “We put on a pretty good show for them. Both of us. Especially at all those black-tie events we’d go to. You know, the things rich people are always invited to? Oh, man, we could pull off the happily married couple image like nobody’s business.” She gave a snort of sarcastic laughter, but then paused. When I glanced at her, her expression was sad. Almost nostalgic.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked over a box of water-damaged-beyond-repair paperbacks.

  She sighed and met my eyes. “He even had me convinced every once in a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’d go through… phases.” She shook herself back to life and reached in to sort through the box while she continued speaking. “He was always absolutely domineering in the bedroom, but sometimes he almost fooled me into believing we were a real couple. We’d go out, we’d talk, we’d even sit on the couch and watch a movie once in a while.” She pulled a rat’s nest of tangled—and chewed—cables and cords out of the box and tossed them into the rapidly growing trash pile. “Of course, we’d be back to the usual shit before long, but those were the times he almost convinced me he really loved me.”

  I ground my teeth. I didn’t know what made me hate him more: treating her like shit, or pretending he was the loving husband in spite of everything he’d done to her. Either way, I loathed the ground he walked on.