Bombora (24 page)

I think Nate begs me because he’s scared I won’t let him come, or that I won’t agree to see him again after he drives away and leaves me exhausted and wrung out in bed. Much as I love to hear those words coming out of his mouth,
Please, Phel, baby—please
, his fear makes me feel heartless, makes me give Nate what he wants—an orgasm, a kiss, another opportunity to plead for forgiveness—not because he’s earned it or deserves it, but because I don’t like to think of myself as someone who might refuse. I’m not heartless: quite the contrary. Too much heart is what got me here in the first place. If Nate’s responsible for making me feel too much, well, I’m hoping to build up immunity the second time around.

“Phel, how was your evening?” Willa repeats her question, the one that got me thinking about Nate in the first place. The reminder in her voice snaps me out of my reverie long enough to flash her an apologetic smile and a slight shrug.

“It was… relaxing,” I say, folding my hands in my lap. We’re seated on one of the many private patios scattered across the Palermo compound, shielded by a white wooden gazebo just like in all the full-color brochures. “I stayed in.”

She nods and treats me to one of the thoughtful silences that normally precede her more loaded questions. “And did you see Nate?” There it is.

“I did.”

After the minor breakdown that led me to confess to Willa that Nate was in Cardiff, I’d briefly considered withholding the truth about the recent developments in our relationship out of a misdirected sense of… I don’t know, exactly. Shame, perhaps, because I (correctly) anticipated her disapproval, but also fear that outside interference would somehow ruin it. As it turns out, I’m not a wonderful liar; after the first time I took Nate back into my bed—or my couch, as the case happened to be at the time—she knew what had happened almost immediately. I’ve no doubt Willa would feel relieved if I put a stop to things here and now, but that isn’t going to happen, and we both know it. Instead she’s attempted to acknowledge my honesty by including me in the process of dissecting this latest psychological development, appealing to my sense of reason the way only a therapist can.

I have a great deal more to share, however, than the details of last night’s meeting with Nate. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m compelled to be upfront about this information before we can go any further. I want Willa to know I’m not hiding anything.

“I’ve stopped taking my meds,” I tell her evenly, meeting her eyes as if, through this act alone, I can convince her this is the best possible course of action I could have taken. I believe it is, of course, but in this day and age of pharmaceutical dependency, I’m prepared for an uphill battle in trying to talk my shrink into seeing eye to eye with me on the matter. “It’s been nearly two weeks now, but I didn’t want to say anything until the drugs had had a chance to leave my system, to see what it was like first.”

“The Paxil or the Xanax?” she asks. Naturally there could be no great outpouring of emotion over this news, but I’m impressed, yet again, by how calmly Willa is able to accept information and deal with the facts one at a time.

“Both. The Xanax I’ve not had a need for recently, not since that last big panic attack when I saw Nate.” I shrug and cross my leg over my knee so I can pick at the frayed hem of my jeans, now more the result of wear and tear than fashionable distressing. “Actually, I’m still prepared to make use of the Xanax if the situation calls for it—the Paxil is what I really wanted to cut myself off from.” Unable to decipher her silence, I ask, “Does that bother you? It was you, after all, who prescribed it in the first place. I don’t mean to second-guess your medical wisdom.” That comes out a bit more smugly than I intended, but I don’t bother to correct myself. I want to appear firm on the decision, even if it means sounding like a bit of an arrogant shit. Then again, if the shoe fits….

Willa pauses to consider the question, pushing a lock of shoulder-length dark hair back behind her ear. Her hazel eyes show no hesitation in their dead-on stare. “No, it doesn’t… bother me,” she says eventually. “You’re not an inpatient, Phel, and it’s not like I prescribed you with medication meant to correct a significant or harmful mental imbalance. The decision to cooperate with the program we outlined together is, and has always been, yours. Our sessions aren’t about making me happy—they’re about making you feel like you’re in a better place in your life.”

“Thank you,” I say with a nod.

But she isn’t done. “That being said, I do wish you’d consulted with me before choosing to discontinue the medication, since there could have been unexpected side effects. Luckily, that wasn’t the case. But that concerns me less than how this decision is a continuation of a series of worrisome behavior.” Although she pauses, perhaps in anticipation of a protest of some sort, or for me to ask for clarification, I don’t interrupt. So she continues, “We can get to that. First I’d like for you to explain why you arrived at this decision, why you felt it was the best step forward.”

I resist the urge to shrug—why does this seem to be the primary response in the patient’s vocabulary?—and stop fidgeting with the hem of my jeans when I realize this does not add an air of confidence to my demeanor. Instead, I sigh. “The Paxil felt both unnecessary and counterproductive to achieving a feeling of control over my emotions,” I explain. “In the last couple weeks I’ve been feeling remarkably more assertive over my feelings—not panicked or overwhelmed or afraid, but… empowered.”

“You mean since you started re-engaging in sexual relations with Nate,” she supplies.

Hardball. Fine, I get it. “Yes. Since then.” Feeling, for a moment, undeniably petty, I add, “Plus it wasn’t doing me any favors in the libido department. So it seemed prudent to stop on both counts.”

“How have you been sleeping without it?” Willa asks, changing tack unexpectedly. “Any nightmares or insomnia?”

“When I’ve been sleeping, you mean?” I allow myself a quick smirk and a lift of eyebrows before I shake my head. “No, none. I’ve been sleeping like a baby.”

“And your mood? Any abrupt changes, any periods of extreme highs or lows?”

“No.” I choose—for Willa’s own benefit, I tell myself—to refrain from adding that my emotional extremes tend to occur precisely when I’m having sex with Nate. Not that I’m bipolar or anything, not even with him, but I’m definitely in a pretty good mood most of the day after I’ve worked off some of my aggression with him between the sheets.

Willa nods again and jots something down in her notebook. “I’d like to go back, if we can, to the association you seem to be making between a feeling of empowerment and your sexual relationship with Nate. We’ve touched on it before, briefly, but this is the first time you’ve come out and worded it in this way. What about your involvement compels you to describe it as a matter of control, rather than love or desire?”

Unable to help myself, I snort. “I’m compelled to describe it that way because I don’t
love
Nate. I desire him, yeah, same as he still desires me… but after what he did? Love is a nonissue. It isn’t even on the table.”

“No?”

I glare at Willa. “No.” It’s hard to explain to another person what I’ve had a hard time explaining to myself, but I know she won’t let this go until I’ve at least tried to articulate why I feel things are different this time. “Look, what have I been saying the whole time I’ve been here? That if I could go back and do the whole relationship over again, I’d take charge of how things unrolled instead of just going along for the ride. I’d make myself feel like less of a victim. I’m sure if I’d been a little more assertive with Nate the first time around….” I trail off, recognizing the fault in my reasoning before it’s even out of my mouth.

Willa, of course, catches it. “What, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten hurt?” She shakes her head. “That you got your heart broken has nothing to do, ultimately, with anything you did or didn’t do,” she reminds me. “Yes, we’ve discussed the idea that you let go of your reservations more quickly than was healthy, or that you were too accommodating—but you were an autonomous part of the partnership, same as Nate. You’ve said yourself that he wasn’t pushing you around.” She pauses to let this sink in, though she’s probably aware this is one of those topics I’m still resistant to. I start to shake my head in refusal of what she’s saying, but Willa presses on. “What makes you think control is an issue that has any bearing now?”

“Because he’s fucking learning what it feels like to be totally powerless!” I don’t mean to shout. Not because it startles Willa—it doesn’t—but because these little displays of emotion never quite sit well with me. Especially when I know I’m on the defensive.

“And what’s more important to you?” asks Willa. “That he feels powerless, or that you feel powerful?” Mulishly silent, I fold my arms. “Describe the power dynamic in your current relationship,” she suggests instead. “As far as you see it, who calls the shots?”

“I’m the one who sets the terms, if that’s what you mean,” I answer reluctantly.

“Which means what?”

I shrug. “I decide when we meet and where, and I decide what we do. It’s not like Nate can’t refuse, he just… doesn’t.”

Willa meets my eyes. “Why not? From what you’ve told me about him, Nate doesn’t seem like a particularly meek individual. Open to suggestion, perhaps, but you’ve never described him as someone incapable of asserting himself.”

This is harder. “Because he knows I’d end it otherwise. He was the one who said he was willing to do this my way—I’m not the one who initiated it. He said he’d do whatever I wanted, to make it up to me. To get me to stop turning him away.”

“He’s afraid of losing you again,” Willa concludes. “He’s forfeited his power in your arrangement out of fear. Is that correct?” At my eventual shrug, which she correctly reads as agreement, Willa folds her hands across the pad of paper in her lap. “Do you want him to feel powerless?”

“Of course I do.” No point hiding it. “It’s how I felt for months. He gave up his power so I could have it for once. It was an… an exchange.”

Willa shakes her head. “Phelan, that isn’t how it works. It seems like it should be a straightforward transfer of power from one person to another in a relationship, but the dynamic is rarely, if ever, that simple. In a relationship of true Dominance and submission, the sub still possesses power in the arrangement because he possesses the ability to say no at any time. The Dom knows this, and those are the terms under which he has to abide, what keeps the power balance in check.”

“I don’t want a Dom/sub relationship with Nate,” I point out. Not even with the experimenting we’ve been doing lately, with the tying up and the rough sex and even the occasional bout of orgasm refusal—his, of course. I’m not stupid enough to consider the things Willa is describing. “That’s not what we’re playing at. Sure, maybe there’s a bit more power play than we had before, but Nate isn’t the one who decides yes or no. I am. He said—he said giving me that choice, that power, is his way of trying to prove how sorry he is.”

Still staring at me, Willa twirls her pen once before setting it down. “And what will you do if Nate no longer wants part of this game? If he wakes up tomorrow morning and decides he’s through with being punished and no longer cares if you forgive him?”

I meet her eyes steadily, refusing to allow myself to swallow nervously. Willa doesn’t know Nate from Adam—doesn’t know that’s not how he works. “He wouldn’t. And even so, I wouldn’t care.”

Smiling without malice, Willa sighs. “I find that difficult to believe, Phel. If you truly didn’t care, you would have turned him away the first time he came to you. But you didn’t, because even after weeks of our sessions together, you still don’t identify a difference between taking the control others give you and taking control for yourself. The whole point of you coming to Palermo was to learn that a healthy partnership can’t take root until you have a healthy relationship with yourself—you have to learn how to assert yourself without feeling dependent upon the permission or approval of others, be it Nate or your father or anyone else.”

Anger floods my system and makes my face heat up, blood rushing to my cheeks. Even against the tan I’ve developed here in California, I know it must be stark against my skin. “Just because I’m not turning him away doesn’t mean I
can’t
,” I grit out. “I choose not to. Why would I? Obviously there are benefits to this arrangement, the least of which is the sex.”

“You aren’t doing it for the sex, Phel,” Willa tells me gently. “In fact, I think your reasons for going back to him—or letting him come back to you; that distinction matters little—are no different from Nate’s.” Her tone holds such calm assurance that I want to storm right out of there and prove just how much I’m doing it for the sex—to bend Nate over the nearest flat surface and have my way with him. Remind him—
everyone
—that he’s nothing more to me than an easy fuck with a pretty face and the willingness to do whatever I should desire, no matter how depraved it is.

“Our motivations are
nothing
alike,” I spit. “Nate and I are nothing alike.”

“How so? Surely you wouldn’t have lasted more than a year together if you had nothing in common with the man.”

“Nate hurt people,” I point out, exasperation loud in my voice. God, how many times do I have to explain this? “He did what he did knowing people would be hurt by his actions, his wife and his son and—me.”

Willa’s pen taps. “And you’re hurting no one?”

“No one who didn’t hurt me first.”

Tap, tap.
“And what about Hugh? Would he agree with that assessment if he were to learn the truth of your history with his brother?”

My growl should more than suffice as a response, but in the interest of playing along, I say, “Hugh has nothing to do with this. He wasn’t involved before, and it’s none of his business now.”

Wisely, Willa recognizes when she’s hit upon a point I’m not willing to concede, and the woman isn’t one for arguing lost causes. No, she’s all about changing tactics, finding a new route into what she perceives to be the heart of the argument. “You’re right about one thing,” she tells me, seemingly through with the topic of Hugh for the time being. “This isn’t a Dom/sub relationship you’ve got going, because those relationships, at the end of the day, are still about love. They might involve pain and an element of punishment and reward, but they aren’t, fundamentally, about a desire for one person to hurt the other. Nate hurt you while you were together, yes, but even his motives were free of the kind of vengefulness—maliciousness, even—you’re describing to me now.”