Of Being Yours[another way 2] (13 page)

“Just feel…
lost
without it,” I said.

“I’m right here,” Will said softly. “You don’t need any reminders.”

“I know. I’m being stupid.”

“You’re not. I know how much it means to you. It means a lot to me too.”

We spent the next two days in the hospital with only a few visitors able to make the journey to see us. Fortunately Will’s parents had passports and were able to visit, bringing with them clean clothes for us both and the essentials we had lost.

Cara, Will’s mom, also got in touch with the insurance companies for us, since we’d lost my car and all our boarding gear and needed to claim on our health insurance. We’d have been in a mess without her.

When we were finally ready to leave, it was Cara who drove us back to our home and helped us into the house.

Will took after his mother in his features and coloring; she, like him, had light-brown hair and strikingly dark eyes. She was also as opposite to my own mother as it was possible to be. Having four children rather than two and living in Seattle all her life had shaped Cara Anderson into a relaxed, intelligent, and free-spirited woman who not only accepted her son’s sexuality but welcomed me into her family as another son.

I couldn’t help Will with his crutches because of my ribs, and the snow and ice on the ground here was nearly as bad as it was in Vancouver. I was fairly terrified that he’d slip and fall again, but Cara managed to get us both inside and on the couch with the minimum amount of fuss.

Unfortunately Will’s dad had been called down to Portland on business, so it was just her to take care of us for the first few hours, getting the heating set in the house and making sure we were stocked up on groceries.

“Jesse, sweetheart,” Cara said, disturbing me from my nap on the sofa, “I’m going home now before it gets dark.”

Her hand curled around my cheek, and she kissed me on the head.

I grabbed her hand before she pulled it away and kissed it lightly. “Thank you,” I told her. “For everything.”

“Don’t worry. Just get better.”

Not long after she left, I got up to lock up the house and help Will upstairs. It took a while to get us both changed into pajamas with brushed teeth, but we managed it. Then neither of us could sleep.

I’d seen him, plenty of him, while we were in hospital together, so I knew about the bruises and the cuts and the scrapes that covered his body. It was somehow worse lying in our bed next to him and seeing the lasting effects of the crash.

Facing him, I ran my hand down his arm and wanted to cry.

“Don’t, Jesse, please,” he whispered.

I rolled onto my back and reached out to turn on the lamp on my nightstand, the stretch causing me to hiss with pain. Like this I could see him better and rolled back to kiss a bruise on his shoulder. In response, he kissed a cut on my arm.

I ran my fingers over a cut on his cheek, probably caused by a shard of broken glass from the window.

Will caught my hand and brushed his lips over my ripped-up knuckles.

Back and forth, we exchanged kisses and touches, reparations and apologies for the damage that had been done. The urge to cry didn’t leave me. He was too beautiful to be hurt.

T
HE
next morning I called my boss, who assured me that although I was missed and my colleagues were worried about me, there was no need to rush back to work. For Will it was different, firstly because he had much worse mobility issues than me, but also because there wasn’t anyone to work around his absence. By him not being at work, the company was losing money.

I could see that conflict painted so clearly on his face; he knew he wasn’t nearly ready to be back in the office, but he felt like he had an obligation to the company that had done so much for him in terms of his career progression.

The following day one of his colleagues turned up with a pile of papers for him to work on from home.

It infuriated me that he’d gone behind my back and agreed to work, mostly because I couldn’t do that and it made me feel that somehow my work wasn’t as important as his. It was important in a completely different way, and it was important to me.

Despite our desperate need for closeness and intimacy, the house was cold for days.

In spite and frustration, I went back to work only three days after we’d got home from the hospital and less than a week after the accident. I wasn’t ready for it, of course; I was still taking regular painkillers for the broken ribs, and climbing even a few stairs made me breathless.

But it felt good to be useful and to be doing something productive back at my desk, and despite my boss’s protestations, there was plenty in my in-box to be getting on with. I was far too stubborn to go back home to rest. I spent more of my day just chilling out in my office than I did working, and no one cared.

In the days, then weeks, that followed our return from hospital, I felt Will slipping further and further away from me. He had thrown himself back into his work, determined to catch up and be involved with everything that was happening in the company. This often meant video conferences hooked up to one laptop while another held spreadsheets of his notes, and piles of paperwork had taken over our living room to the point where I didn’t feel welcome there at all.

When I arrived home from work, I still showered and changed, checked in on him in the living room, then ordered something for dinner or cooked it from scratch. When I didn’t have the physical or emotional energy to cook, it was pizza.

The doorbell rang and I hurried down the stairs to get it so Will wouldn’t have to struggle to get up.

“Thanks,” I muttered to the delivery guy, tipping him, then took the box through to the living room. “Dinner, Will.”

“Oh,” he said, not looking up. “Don’t worry. I’ll eat in a bit.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything and left. In the kitchen I split the pizza and put his half in the empty oven for him to heat up later if he wanted.

When I first moved into Will’s house, he’d turned the spare bedroom into “my” room. I hadn’t used it as that for the past few years; instead we had changed it into our game room, where the PlayStation was hooked up to a big TV for when friends came over.

My big leather sofa was there (it didn’t really fit anywhere else), and I slumped onto it, firing up the machine to get lost in another world for a few hours.

The pizza slowly went cold. I didn’t notice time passing, and then I heard Will struggling up the stairs. I knew if I offered him help he wouldn’t take it, so I let him do it himself while I finished off the level of my game. If I waited for about twenty minutes, he’d be in bed, pretending to be asleep when I followed him in there. 

We hadn’t discussed the fact that he was ignoring me and completely avoiding any kind of interaction as a couple. He didn’t hold me when we slept, and in the morning when I woke up, he was already up and out of our room.

I was incredibly lonely, and it felt like all my attempts at intimacy resulted in Will pushing me further away. Even the thought of suggesting a session seemed ludicrous, though I was starting to crave the lightness and freedom that came with a couple of hours in the playroom.

I missed him.

All of the things that I had started to take for granted had disappeared, forcing me to accept that I could only see them in their absence. Things like a casual arm around my shoulders when we watched TV, or cooking together, or laughing.

Christmas was spent with his family, like we did every year, although it was fairly subdued. Both Will and I were still taking a lot of painkillers, enough to mean we didn’t drink at all. If his parents and sisters noticed we were so distant from each other, they didn’t mention it, and our poor behavior was discarded as being due to the pain. I let them think whatever they wanted.

I hadn’t laughed in weeks. Not with Will. When I forced myself to think back, I had barely seen him smile.

And then I reached my breaking point.

On a Saturday afternoon, he was working again. I had gone grocery shopping with Cara while he worked. The restrictions that had been forced on me by my physical injuries had allowed me to get closer to Will’s mother, who often insisted on being around to help.

She helped carry the bags back into the house and slipped into the living room to give her son a quick kiss before stealing back out into the afternoon.

“Please talk to me,” I said, sitting on the coffee table next to a pile of Will’s paperwork.

“Not now, Jesse, please,” he sighed. “I’m busy.”

“You’re always busy,” I snapped.

He looked at me for a long moment, then pushed his laptop away. “Okay,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“This is bullshit, Will,” I said and tried to keep the accusation from my voice. “I need you. You know the type of things that I need, and I’m trying to cope and I can’t….”

Will sighed again and reached for my hand. “I’m sorry, I know I need to fix this.”

“Take me upstairs,” I said desperately. “All the way upstairs.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, Jesse, I can’t, I just can’t….”

“What?” I said, taking his other hand in mine.

“I can’t hurt you.”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“I can’t cause you any more pain.”

“It’s different pain. It’s good pain.”

His eyes held so much anguish I couldn’t argue any more. “Please, Jesse.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Being your boyfriend and being your Dom are two things that are too closely tied to each other,” Will said. “I don’t know how to separate them. I don’t want to… no, I don’t think I
can
be that for you at the moment, and I know you need it. So it shouldn’t be a problem if you need to go to someone else for what I can’t give you, but fuck, Jesse, if the thought of you kneeling for someone else doesn’t make me sick.”

“I don’t want to kneel for anyone else,” I said dully. “I didn’t even think that was an option.”

“Good,” he said, and the desperation in his voice was crystal clear. “But you need to submit to someone, to something.”

I couldn’t deny that. I couldn’t deny that part of me. It was as ingrained as blond hair and a body that welcomed a wide palm applied to the curve of my ass. Looking at him, I shrugged helplessly. “I can try and do without it.”

“We don’t know what’ll happen if you do that.”

“Will you be there if I fail?” I asked him in a small voice.

“I don’t know how you can fail,” he said and opened his arms to me for what felt like the first time in weeks. I fell into them before he spoke again. “Leaving you to work it out for yourself is stupid and irresponsible of me. You should go back to Laura, baby.”

“Laura doesn’t want me.” I laughed but the sound was hollow. “She has Maddie now. And I don’t want to be with a woman.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

“Not in that context,” I argued.

Will’s fingers tangled through my hair. “Try it,” he begged. “Let her do what I can’t. For me. For us.”

Chapter 9

L
AURA
’
S
playroom was small but well stocked, located in the space above her garage. There was a small entrance hall and a heavy wooden door that concealed most of the sound from the outside world.

My routine here was rusty, but following it gave me a sense of purpose, so I did, stripping out of my clothes and leaving them, and my inhibitions, in the hallway. The playroom had changed since I had been in there last, and I wanted to go and poke around, see what new toys she’d acquired in the time that Maddie had been her sub.

But that was highly disrespectful, so I found a spot on the floor that felt right to me and knelt.

Even though I’d not seen her at all on my way in, Laura joined me in the room within moments. With a crop in her hand, she looked imposing in long shiny PVC pants, a red lace tank, and blood-red shoes. Her hair was tied back from her face in a simple knot, and I wondered why I didn’t find her more attractive.