Reconstructing Meredith (Light Switch Book 2)
Page 16
“Don’t pretend you’re not getting anything out this, Scott,” she snarled. “You wouldn’t be a Dom if you didn’t like control.”
“Yes, I like control. I won’t deny that.” I fought to stay cool. “I’m a Dom because I like power, control, whatever, but I’m not going to put that ahead of your well-being. That, and do you really think I have all the control here? You’ve had the power from the beginning to stop—”
“To stop things, yes.” She squared her shoulders and spoke through gritted teeth. “I can apply the brakes all I want, but I can’t exactly push on the gas pedal, can I?”
I couldn’t tell if she was pissed at me or the demons who’d driven her into my arms in the first place, but the last thing this conversation needed to do was escalate. I took a deep breath before I continued. “If I thought you were ready for more, I’d give you more. You asked me to be your Dom, and that’s what I’m doing. That means using my judgment about—”
“I don’t need you to decide what I can fucking handle,” she growled.
“So you don’t trust my judgment?” I snapped, letting fury get the best of me. “Then what the fuck are we doing?”
“You tell me, Scott. You seem perfectly content moving at a snail’s pace, so—”
“What am I supposed to do? Am I going too slow because I didn’t agree to bring in a goddamned stranger after a flogger on my hand freaked you out? I know you want to get through this, but it’s simply not going to happen overnight.”
She snorted. “Yeah, that’s apparent.” She glared at me. “I’ve spent enough of my life letting someone else make those decisions for me in recent years, thank you.”
My heart stopped. I stared at her in disbelief, and several seconds ticked by before I could finally speak. “Don’t you fucking dare compare me to him, Meredith.”
She set her jaw. “How is what you’re doing any different?”
“You mean besides the part where I’m doing it out of concern for your safety and well-being?”
“So it’s for my own good?” Her sarcasm set my teeth on edge.
I nearly lashed out, but bit my tongue. Easy, Scott. Defuse it, don’t make it worse. I took a deep breath. “Meredith, don’t do this. You know full well I am nothing like him, and my motivations have everything to do with keeping you safe.”
She exhaled hard and put her hands up. “Fine, fine, just wrists then. Let’s do this.”
I looked at the flogger, which was still in my tightly clenched fist. Sighing, I shook my head. “No. Not now.” I set the flogger down.
“What?”
“Not after we’ve argued.” I stepped toward her, reaching for her waist, but she jerked back from me.
“So you’re punishing me now? The submissive defies her Dom, so she gets nothing?”
I closed my eyes and released a frustrated breath. “No, I am not punishing you.” I looked at her. “I won’t flog a sub—you or anyone else—when I’m angry, and we both need to cool down.”
Closing her eyes, she pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled sharply. Then she threw her hands up. “You know what? Fine. Take all the time you want to cool off.” She started for the door.
“Meredith, wait, let’s—”
The dungeon door slammed. I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth as her footsteps faded down the hall. A moment later, the front door banged shut.
I could have gone after her, but it would have been pointless. I knew her well enough to know she was beyond reason right now. A little time, a little space, then we could talk.
Sighing, I walked out of the dungeon and down the empty hallway to the living room. I sank on to the sofa, kicked my feet up on to the coffee table, and let my head fall back. I stared up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.
As soon as my feet were up, Malia stepped on my ankle and used my legs as a bridge from the coffee table to my lap. I winced when her balance wavered and her claws dug in, but for the most part, I just didn’t care. I might have noticed if she’d tried to use my leg as a scratching post again, but even that was debatable.
She curled up on my lap, purring and rubbing on my hand. Absently I scratched her ears and petted her. The purring grew louder, and her claws poked through my jeans as she kneaded my leg.
I looked down at her. “Well, at least someone in my life isn’t pissed at me.”
And I’m crazy, because I’m having a conversation with my damned cat. Again.
I sighed and set her on the cushion beside me. Then I stood and headed into the kitchen for a drink. Malia trotted beside me, and when I reached into the refrigerator for a bottle of Coke, she squawked at me. I looked over my shoulder, and she sat beside her food dish. Sitting perfectly straight, looking as regal and dignified as Bast herself, she swept her tail back and forth in indignant arcs, informing me I was needed to remedy her lack of food.
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “Should’ve known you wanted something, you little witch.”
I picked up her dish and filled it while she meowed and wound figure-eights around my legs. Then I set it down, and while she ate, I scratched her back. Her tail snapped back and forth. Evidently my services were no longer required.
“At least I know what I’m supposed to do for you,” I muttered.
I poured my drink and went back into the living room. Lounging on the couch, I let my mind wander back to another time and place. Sitting on a different couch, alone in a cramped apartment, with the slamming door echoing in my mind just like it did now. Who knew what we’d fought about that time? I’d probably neglected to wash the dishes when it was my turn. Or she might have parked too close to my car again, making it a pain in the ass for me to get in and out.
Whatever it was, it was a scapegoat. Something we could yell and nitpick and bitch about, eventually resulting in her storming out and leaving us both to cool off. What we were probably really fighting about was the fact that she didn’t think I wanted to discuss feelings or I didn’t want to discuss the feelings she wanted to talk about. Money or lack thereof. Commitment or lack thereof. Nothing that had a damned thing to do with dishes or car doors.
We fought. She left. I waited. She returned. Same shit, different day.
In my memory, the apartment’s front door opened and I looked up as she closed it behind her. Neither of us spoke when she crossed the narrow distance from the door to our hand-me-down sofa. Long seconds ticked by while we avoided eye contact. Avoided any contact.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
No one moved.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
She sat beside me.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I put my arm around her. She leaned against me and I released my breath. Her skin was hot, so she must have walked around the block a few times to clear her head.
Eventually, one of us sighed and apologized. “I’m sorry.” “Me too.” We settled the dishes or car doors or whatever the fuck it wasn’t about. It was no wonder we didn’t work out. We sucked at fighting. Well, that wasn’t true. We were damned good at fighting. It was the communicating and meeting halfway afterward that didn’t quite happen the way it should have.
In the present, I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed. Obviously some things hadn’t changed. She was still the type who had to go cool off alone. I could still simultaneously be relieved that she’d ended the fight by leaving and be worried she wouldn’t come back.
Maybe I was being too cautious, moving too slowly. More than once, I’d been accused of being a frustratingly cautious Dom, and I didn’t deny it. But what was I supposed to do in this situation? It didn’t take a genius to choose between frustrating her and traumatizing her.
Her determination to get through this encouraged me, but it unnerved me a little too. She was hellbent on breaking free from her past, and her desperate need to make as many leaps and bounds as possible had some potential to backfire on her. Like an injured runner returning to the track, she had to be careful not to overdo it and set herself back even farther.
This wasn’t about us. It wasn’t about anything I did or didn’t do. Deep down, she had to know why I was doing things the way I did, and I had no doubt that was what pissed her off. The reasons I went so slow with her, not the fact that I did so.
Whatever was really on her mind, whatever had really set her off, we had to get past this. Arguing about car doors or ankle cuffs when the problem was something much bigger and deeper would get us no farther now than it did back then. If we couldn’t communicate without falling back into our old, volatile ways, we couldn’t operate as a Dom and sub any more than we could operate as a couple.
I sighed.
I could have called her. Could have texted her. Maybe gotten in the car and gone to her apartment, assuming that was where she’d gone. I didn’t, though. If I knew one thing about her, it was her need for space while she calmed down. Making contact now would just mean more fighting. As much as it went against every shred of my personality—the need for control, the desire to fix—I could do nothing now but wait.
The next move had to be hers.
Chapter 15
Around three the following afternoon, my cell phone vibrated, sending cool water through my veins and jarring me out of my mental haze. I was in my office, up to my ass in schematics, numbly processing numbers in between responding to the usual bullshit via e-mail. Fortunately, I knew my job inside and out, so running on autopilot was doable. Even after a sleepless night and trying to think with a wandering mind, I could still function at work. I’d certainly done it before.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I needed neither caller ID nor clairvoyance to know before I picked it up who was calling. When I looked at the screen, I wasn’t sure if I was more unnerved or relieved to be right.
Meredith.
My heart pounded. I flipped my phone open. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She was quiet for a moment. “Can we talk? About last night?”
I glanced at my watch, cursing under my breath. “I’m just about to go into a meeting, babe, but I’ll be home around six tonight if you want to meet me at my place. Or I can come to your place, it’s up to you.”
“Yours is fine.”
“I’ll see you then.”
We hung up, and I went back to my schematics and numbers. I couldn’t even run on autopilot now; my apprehension created the kind of distraction that scrambled figures on a page and kept my fingers from typing a coherent sentence. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. How the hell I was going to stay focused in the meeting, I had no idea, but I also didn’t have much choice.
Come on, get it together. I glared at the letters, numbers, and diagrams that refused to make sense. Somehow or another, I had to think about specs and functionality for the next couple of hours. Not Meredith, not arguing, not that cretin who’d traumatized her.
I can do this. I’ve gotten through less with more on my mind.
I did get through it. With a little luck and my God-given ability to bullshit my way through anything, I made it through the meeting without so much as raising my boss’s eyebrow. What the boss and client didn’t notice wouldn’t hurt me.
Eventually, five o’clock rolled around, and I slipped out under the radar of anyone who might have thought to suggest overtime or some other such nonsense I didn’t need tonight. I was of no use to anyone here this evening, so there was no point in getting roped into sticking around.
The knot in my stomach tightened with every milepost I passed on the freeway. Tighter still when I reached my exit and coasted down the off-ramp. By the time I turned on to my street, I didn’t think that knot could get any tighter.
I’d barely put my car in park in the driveway when movement in the rearview caught my eye. I glanced up as Meredith pulled in beside me. That knot that couldn’t have possibly gotten any tighter tightened anyway.
Taking a deep breath, I killed the engine and got out. Her car door closed, sending my blood pressure a few notches higher.
“Hey,” I said over the roof of my car.
“Hey.”
We looked at each other in silence for a moment. I had no idea what to say, but whatever one of us finally said, it didn’t need to be said out here.
I nodded toward the house. We both locked our cars. The sharp click of my dress shoes and the dull tap of her rubber soles emphasized the silence on the way from car doors to front door. My keys jingled. Crunched in the lock. Grind-click.
In the house, I shrugged my jacket off and draped it haphazardly over the back of a chair. Then we moved to the couch, and still neither of us spoke. We stayed a comfortably uncomfortable distance apart; far enough away to keep from accidentally touching, far enough to preclude putting an arm around her shoulders, but still too close while the air between us was this tense.
Just to give my hands something to do besides wring, I loosened my tie. I was about to start drumming my fingers on the armrest when Malia bounded up on to the couch between us. I thought about shooing her away, but as Meredith scratched the cat’s ears, she smiled a little. I decided Malia could stay.
My cat rolled on to her back, and Meredith and I both went to scratch her belly. Our fingers brushed. Neither of us recoiled. That was something, I supposed. Testing the water, I slid my hand over hers. She stopped scratching the cat and just let her hand be still beneath mine. Our eyes met briefly. Cautiously. Then we both shifted our attention back to our hands, which still rested gently on the cat. I ran my thumb along the side of Meredith’s hand. She did the same to mine.
Malia, however, was not so impressed by this, and kicked at our hands with her back feet.
Meredith laughed and jerked her hand away to avoid the claws. “Someone has to be the center of attention, I see?”
“God, yes. You know how they are.” I grabbed one of Malia’s paws, let it go, grabbed it again. She flattened her ears and swatted at my hand.
Meredith laughed again. “You’re just asking to get scratched, you know that?”
“Nah, she’s not quite quick enough— ow, damn it.” I pulled my hand back and shook it, grimacing at the sting along the back of my index finger.
“Not quick enough, eh?”
Malia glared at me, daring me to either try it again or make another claim that she was too slow. Since neither Meredith nor I were terribly forthcoming with belly rubs at that point while the claws were out, Malia got tired of being ignored and stormed off.
Alone again, Meredith and I looked at each other, but quickly dropped our gazes.
Meredith took a deep breath. “Scott, I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have flipped out at you like that.”
I chewed my lip. “Why did you?” I instantly regretted the choice of words, especially when her glare confirmed they came out more snidely than I’d intended. I put a hand up. “I’m not asking to be a dick, babe. What I mean is, what was really bothering you?”
The well-deserved hostility in her expression faded. She sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m just, I’m frustrated.”
“With me?”
“No, it’s not you. I mean, in a way it is, but it’s not.”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m frustrated that you’re having me move so slowly, but I…” She paused, and after a moment, met my eyes.
“Do you really think I’m holding you back to control you?”
“No.” She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, Scott. I know why you’re doing what you’re doing.”
“Then why…?” I raised my eyebrows.
She swallowed. “Because I’m tired of the h
old Rich has on me. Every step of the way, I trip over him and what he did, and I just…” She ran a shaking hand through her hair. “I get angry whenever I run into a wall that he put up.”
I put my hand on her knee. “I know it’s frustrating, babe.”
She dropped her gaze. “I get why you’re doing it. I do, but the whole process, this whole thing, it’s… it’s hell for me, Scott.”
I forced myself not to cringe visibly. Squeezing her hand, I whispered, “I know it is.”
“Every flashback and every nightmare just reminds me of how much of an impact Rich had on my life. So whenever we take a step back, or a tiny step forward, all I can think of is how much I hate him for what he did to me.” She blinked a few times before she went on. “It wasn’t you I was angry with yesterday, it was him. The thing is, every time we let my past keep us from moving forward, I feel like he’s won. Again.”
I slid my other hand under hers. “And the way I see it, every time we get through a scene without you panicking, we win. Baby, this is a slow process. I wish it wasn’t, but it has to be. It’s going to take some time to undo two and a half years’ worth of damage.”
She said nothing.
“I know you’re frustrated, babe,” I said. “I know you want to be at the end of this overnight, but I promise, I’m not holding back because I want to control you or dictate—”
“I know.” She avoided my eyes. “I just hate the fact that he still has this much control over me.”
“Every time we do this, though, every little step we take, the less control he has over you.” I reached up and ran my fingers through her hair. “Look how far you’ve come already.
She wiped away a tear I didn’t see. “Maybe I’m just being a pessimist, but all I see is how much farther we still have to go.”