by HELEN HARDT
She nods, not looking surprised at all. Has she heard this kind of stuff before? She’s a counselor, yes, but she’s a young counselor from Liberty, Kansas. How much could she have come across in her brief professional life?
“How do you feel about the BDSM in the bedroom?” she asks.
My cheeks are full-on blazing now. They must be fire engine red. “I resisted a little at first. But just a little. I actually”—damn, my cheeks are on fire!—“really like it.”
“All right. That’s good. He’s not coercing you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“No, he isn’t. He’s been very respectful. I was surprised how much I like it, though.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve always been pretty type A, and submitting in the bedroom takes all my control away.”
“Not necessarily,” she says.
I widen my eyes. “What?”
“Some say it’s the submissive who has the control in that kind of relationship.”
“How can that possibly be true?”
“Because the submissive—at least in a healthy Dominant/sub relationship—gets to choose how far they want to go. The sub is the one with the safe word. The sub can stop what’s going on at any time. Therefore, the sub has more control than the Dom.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Hmm. I never looked at it that way.”
“Most people don’t, but it has merit.”
“It does. But here’s the weird part. I wanted to do something, and Braden said no.”
“What did you want that he wouldn’t give you?”
I bite my lower lip. Here goes. Rosa is a professional, and she may have an answer. “I wanted him to choke me.”
If she’s shocked, her face doesn’t show it. “Why did you want that?”
“That’s what I need to find out. I don’t know.”
“When did the idea come to you?”
“We were in a BDSM club, and I saw another Dominant do it to his submissive. It… I want to say it turned me on, but that almost seems too tame. It lit a fire in my belly, if that makes sense. The idea of being completely at Braden’s mercy, with my life literally in his hands… It sparked something inside me.”
“Why do you think you wanted it so much?”
“I wish I knew. Braden refused to do it, said it was his only hard limit, but he won’t tell me why. Yet he wants me to tell him why I want it.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want his reason to affect yours.”
“Yeah. He said as much.”
Rosa jots down a few notes. “He sounds like a smart man. Of course, he wouldn’t be where he is today if he weren’t smart.”
“He’s brilliant, yeah,” I say. “But he’s also really private, you know? He’s opened up to me a little bit, but I don’t have any idea why he enjoys the darker side of sex so much.”
“There may not be a reason for that, Skye. Some people like kink, and they’re perfectly normal people psychologically. I’ve seen a few studies that show them to be psychologically healthier than people who practice solely vanilla sex. Though another study could show the exact opposite. That’s the problem with studies. You can find one to pretty much say whatever you want.” She smiles.
I return her smile and nod. “Yeah. You’re right about that. How do you know so much about all this?”
She laughs then, but not in a rude way. “I wouldn’t be a very good therapist if I didn’t know about various sexual lifestyles.”
I laugh as well. “I suppose you’re right. How long have you been practicing?”
“Just under a year. But I did a three-month internship with a sex therapist while I was getting my masters, so I’ve heard it all.”
“Can you help me, then? Can you figure out why I wanted the choking so much?”
“Only you can figure that out, but I can help point you in the right direction.” She checks her watch. “ I’m sure I have some time tomorrow. Check with Mary, and she’ll set you up.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Rosa.”
“My pleasure. See you tomorrow.”
I leave Rosa’s office, and after setting everything up with Mary, I walk back out onto Main Street.
And I feel pretty darned good.
Chapter Nineteen
Mom is out in her flower garden when I get home. “Hi, honey,” she says.
I crouch down next to her and smile. “Can I help?”
She shakes her head. “Dinner’s in the Crock-Pot, and I’m about done here.”
“Where’s Dad?”
“Where do you think? Out working.”
I nod. Of course I already knew that. I want to broach the uncomfortable subject that we talked about this morning, and I’m resorting to small talk.
She sighs and meets my gaze. Her eyes are brown like mine. I look a lot like her. I always have. My dad’s eyes are blue—dark blue, though, not like Braden’s bright, fiery blue. My mother is pretty and looks great for her age. Hardly a line on her face, but her gaze tells a different story this afternoon. It reeks of resignation. Of something she doesn’t want to face but must.
“You’re not going to let this go,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question. She already knows.
“I can’t, Mom.”
“Why?”
“I told you. I’m trying to figure some things out about myself. About my relationship with Braden. About my relationship with everyone, honestly. And it all seems to come back to those few months when Dad left.”
“Would it surprise you to know that him leaving wasn’t his idea?”
My mouth drops open.
She blows out a breath. “I guess the answer is yes. You’re surprised.” She stands and removes her gardening gloves. “We didn’t have a lot of money in those days, but that year we had a bumper crop and we needed extra help. We hired a hand. His name was Mario.”
I cock my head. “I don’t remember anyone by that name.”
“Think, Skye. That day you ran off, chasing a praying mantis. It was Mario who found you.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “I don’t remember anyone finding me. I just remember waking up later in my bed.”
“Mario found you.” She pauses a moment. “Mario is the reason you ran off.”
I squint, as if I’m trying to see something more clearly. “No, that’s not true. I was chasing a praying mantis, and I—”
I stop abruptly. An image appears in my mind. An unwanted image.
Oh. My. God.
“You hit your head really hard, Skye. You had a concussion.”
“Mario. He was young,” I say. “Dark hair. Really good-looking.”
“Yes, he was.”
The images become clearer, and Mario’s isn’t the only face.
I also see…
My mother. My mother as a young and beautiful woman.
My mouth opens, but words don’t come. For there are no words. No words to describe the image that is now so perfectly clear in my mind I could have photographed it myself.
Mario.
My mother.
In bed.
In my parents’ bed.
She nods, tears welling in her eyes. “You remember.”
I nod slowly.
“You were so upset you ran off. You broke one of the china plates, and then you ran.”
I shake my head. “No. I remember the plate, but…I was chasing a praying mantis.”
“You probably did chase a praying mantis. You loved all animals, even bugs.” She laughs. “You were a little tomboy for a while, at home in dirty jeans and a T-shirt. The few times I tried to put you in pink frilly things, you ran outside as soon as you could and got them all covered in mud.”
“The power of pink,” I murmur.
“What?”
“Nothing.
Just that…I don’t hate pink anymore. I mean, I don’t think I ever did. I just…”
“You just fought. You fought me on everything. You’re so much like your father.”
“I am?”
She opens her mouth to reply, but I stop her with a gesture.
“Don’t get off topic. What the hell were you and Mario doing in bed?”
She shakes her head. “Exactly what you think we were doing.”
Anger rises from my gut—the kind of anger that takes over your whole body. “All this time, I thought Dad had an affair.”
“No. I did.”
I stand, my hands curling into fists. “How could you?”
My mother drops back down onto the soft grass. “Skye, sit down. Please.”
Reluctantly, I sit back down on the ground, but only because I’m not leaving until she tells me every detail of why she thought it was okay to do this to my father.
“Dad is a good man,” I say.
“He is.”
I work hard not to yell at her. “So why? Why the fuck did you do it?”
She doesn’t scold me for my language. Good. I’m twenty-fucking-four years old, and I can speak how I want.
“There are things you don’t know. Relationships aren’t always what they seem.”
“Of course there are things I don’t know. I was seven fucking years old, for God’s sake!”
She winces at the profanity this time. “Your father and I… We didn’t always see eye to eye on how to raise you.”
“So what? Do you think you’re the only two people who ever disagreed about a kid?”
“It was more than that. He wanted more children,” she says. Then, after a pause, “I didn’t.”
“And that’s a good reason to fuck another guy? I’m not buying it, Mom.”
“That wasn’t the reason. I’m just giving you examples of what we disagreed on.”
I turn my head, unable to look at her for a moment. Her daisies are blooming. My mother’s favorite flower. And right now all I want to do is pluck every petal off every flower and grind them into the soil. “Fast forward to the part where you end up in bed with Mario. And why the hell I didn’t remember it until now.”
“After you caught us, I asked Mario to leave. It wasn’t worth losing the respect of my child.”
“But it was worth losing the respect of your husband?”
She buries her head in her hands, then, and a sob escapes her throat.
Does she seriously think I’m going to offer her comfort? So it was seventeen years ago. So what? To me, it’s brand-new information, as if it happened yesterday.
She finally looks up, one tear streaking down her cheek. “Why are you pushing this? Why couldn’t you leave it in the past? Why do you bring this up and let it affect what we all have now?”
I stiffen.
Déjà fucking vu.
Braden said almost the identical words to me after Betsy told me about him and Addie and I went storming into his office.
What the hell?
No. I reject the thought. This isn’t my problem. This is my mother’s.
“What happened? When did Dad come back?”
“He came back that day. I called him.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes, but he didn’t move back in then. After Mario left, Dad needed a little more time to deal with things. I understood, of course.”
“The crying,” I say. “You cried a lot.”
She nods. “I screwed up, and I knew it. I felt sorry for myself, and I missed your father.”
“Did you apologize to him?”
“More times than I can count,” she says.
“And…is he…?”
“It took some time, but he forgave me. We became close again, and in a way, I think I love him more because of it.”
I can’t help a scoff. “What? In what world does that make sense?”
“I can’t make you understand everything when I still don’t understand myself. Suffice it to say I grew up.”
“Wait, were you and Mario…? Before Dad left?”
She nods. “Yes. I’m not proud of it.”
I shake my head. “How could you? He must have felt replaced.”
“Not replaced. Rejected.”
“Semantics.”
She says nothing. How can she? I’m right.
So many more questions flood my mind. Why was she in bed with another man when her small daughter was home? How did it begin in the first place? Why did it begin in the first place? What did my father do to make her want another man?
Why? Why? Why?
And why did they keep this from me for all these years?
Most important of all—why did I repress the memory of my mother in bed with Mario?
That’s got to be some kind of key.
Maybe Rosa will shed some light when I meet with her tomorrow. God, I hope she has the rest of the week available.
Except I no longer want to stay here all week. I want to go home to Boston.
Braden won’t be there. He’ll be in New York. Tessa’s not speaking to me, and Betsy’s trying hard to avoid me.
A violent urge to tear fistfuls of my hair out of my scalp rips through me. Better yet, I want to tear out my mother’s hair. To hell with her daisy petals. I’ll take her own petals, strand by strand.
My mother, who, in her way, has been the most influential person in my life so far.
And then something dawns on me. Another question that needs to be answered.
I look at my mother, her eyes still tear-filled. I look long and hard at her full lips, her high cheekbones, and her eyes so like my own.
“Mom, why didn’t you want any more children?”
Chapter Twenty
Why didn’t you want any more children?
My words seem to hover in the air around us, blurring the colors of the daisies and other blooms in my mother’s garden.
Why didn’t you want any more children?
Is she going to answer?
Or will this question be another that no one will answer? Just like Braden about his relationship with Addie. Just like my mother never responding about their separation…until now.
Now.
Everything comes to a head now.
I already know the answer.
Me. I’m the answer.
My mother didn’t want any more children because of me.
“You were so smart, Skye,” she’s saying. “You still are, of course, and you were so stubborn and resistant.”
“I fought you on everything,” I murmur, echoing the words she said just minutes ago.
She nods. “On everything. The most mundane things, like Frosted Flakes instead of Cornflakes with sugar for breakfast. They’re the same thing, for God’s sake, and regular Cornflakes were cheaper.”
“They’re not the same thing,” I say. “Frosted Flakes have the sugar coating on them. They taste better.”
My mother throws her hands in the air.
I get it. I’m still doing it. I’m fighting her on something that is truly meaningless. I don’t even eat Cornflakes anymore, and I never eat sugary cereal anymore.
The image of Benji, the little boy from the food pantry, squeezing the loaf of bread whirls into my mind. My mother hated it when I squeezed the bread, but still, I did it. Fought her every time…
“I was a problem, so you didn’t want to risk having another kid like me. Yeah, I get it.”
She takes my hands in hers. “No, Skye. Don’t ever think that. I loved you more than my own life. I still do. That will never, never change.”
“But it’s my fault I don’t have a brother or sister.”
“Of course not. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m the one who couldn’t handle y
ou. Your father could. He found your rebellion charming.”
“But he wasn’t the one who had to take care of me twenty-four-seven,” I say.
“No, he wasn’t. He even offered to, but I wasn’t cut out to take over what he did on the farm. Farming is hard work, and obviously I’m not as strong as he is, plus, I just don’t have the interest.”
I smile slightly. My father would have become a house husband for me? For more children? That’s amazing, and as much as I adore him, he just earned several more daddy points. Mom is right. Farming is hard work. I know, because I worked right alongside my dad sometimes. As I got older, I took my camera along and took some amazing photos of him in the fields. Some of my best work even to this day.
You are a challenge, Skye Manning, and I never back down from a challenge.
Braden’s words.
Apparently he’s not the only one who finds me a challenge. The first person I challenged in my life was my mother.
I am who I am. Braden says I’m not a true master of control. Perhaps he’s right, given my eagerness to submit completely to him, to the point that I wanted to give him control over my access to oxygen.
Not a control freak, no. Just a challenge. Just someone who fights at every step.
Basically, a big pain in the ass.
That’s what I am.
That’s why I don’t have siblings. But is that why…?
“Mom, please tell me you didn’t start sleeping with Mario because of me.”
“Of course not! That’s between your father and me.”
“But I was one of the things you disagreed on.”
“Trust me, there were others.”
“What was the catalyst, then? Why did you do it?”
She sighs. “I’m not sure I even remember anymore.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
She shakes her head, chuckling softly. “You continue to fight me. Always.”
I dig in my heels. Literally, as I sit in the garden, my heels sink into the soft dirt. “This is important to me. I’ve already told you I’m trying to figure some stuff out about myself, and this seems to be part of the key.”
“It had nothing to do with you,” she says, “and everything to do with me. Mario made me feel…beautiful, I guess.”
“You were always beautiful, Mom.”