if I was honest, since I’d met them and then basically stopped trying to meet anyone else. Life in Laurelsburg had been divided between dealing with the house and playing with the Taylors, and now there was nothing left but the house.
Son a bitch.
I needed to get the hell out of here, but where could I go? This wasn’t home. Nowhere was. The house had started feeling like it could be someday, but the only place I’d really felt at home in recent memory was…
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I can’t go back there. It’s over. It’s done.
But I can’t stay here, either.
I thought I’d done enough goddamned crying this year, but apparently I still had some tears left in me tonight.
Who do I talk to when the only people I have are the men who don’t love me back?
Will
Sleep didn’t come easy on the best of nights. When Aaron was working late, I usually tossed and turned until he came home.
Tonight, I didn’t know if he was coming home. What if he did, but only to pack a suitcase? Was that the level of crisis we were in right now? Damn it, I didn’t know!
I’d lashed out as him because I’d felt him slipping through my fingers. First there’d been his newly-discovered masochism that my sadism couldn’t match. Then there was Kelly. Kelly, who could scratch that itch. Kelly, who’d become a fixture in our world.
Kelly, who’d left tonight because he’d wanted more than we were willing to give.
And then Aaron had confessed that maybe he was willing to give that much, and…
And fuck.
Where did that leave us? I could maybe compete with someone who brought some kink to the table that I couldn’t. But if Aaron had feelings for him…
Swallowing hard, I wiped my hand over my face.
Aaron had always insisted I was enough even when I couldn’t give him everything he needed. We both understood that there was no such thing as a perfect partner, and I’d always tried to be as close as I could to what he needed and wanted. He’d always been the perfect partner for me.
And now I was utterly terrified that, just like the night I’d given Aaron a taste of more pain than I could continue to give him, Kelly had given Aaron a taste of something better.
What if Aaron found a Dom who did everything I did for him and brought all the sadism he needed to the table? What if he found someone who didn’t ping pong between laser-focused and scatter-brained, and didn’t forget to fucking eat sometimes, and didn’t take three days to make a two-minute phone call? Living with me was exhausting and irritating for me sometimes, so I could only imagine how much it wore on him.
It occurred to me now that when Aaron left, he might not have gone to Tom’s or the office like he usually did if we’d had a big fight. It was entirely possible he was with Kelly now. And oh dear God, did I have a lot of feelings about that. Maybe some relief that they each had some support right now. Definitely a whole lot of envy, jealousy, and guilt. Mostly the jarring isolation of being alone in this bed that was just the right size for three men, but entirely too big for one.
Where are you, Aaron?
I swallowed hard.
And where are you, Kelly?
A lump rose in my throat as the truth sank in. Up until tonight, nothing in the world had scared me more than losing Aaron.
That was still true now, but I realized a little too late that it wasn’t just him I’d been afraid of losing.
Because fuck me, Max had been right—Aaron wasn’t the only one who’d invested more in Kelly than either of us had set out to.
But now Aaron and Kelly were both gone, and there was no telling how permanent that was.
So what the hell was I supposed to do? Reach out to Aaron? Let him cool off? Let him come back when he was ready to talk? Reach out to Kelly?
I was the Dom, for God’s sake. I was supposed to be the cool-headed one who was in control and did and said everything my submissives needed.
But that hadn’t always been our dynamic. Aaron was exactly the kind of submissive I needed—the kind who used his submission to take care of me and keep after me when my head was scattered and I forgot how to function. He never bitched at me for