Tied Up

by Sionna Fox

  Then he hadn’t needed to be so careful. He’d known what she liked, what she didn’t but would tolerate as punishment, and what was absolutely off the table. And he knew the difference between when she needed to be coddled and when she needed catharsis. She’d become his third language. He was fluent in Kate Baird. Then, she’d rolled her eyes and told him she was fine when he tried to check in, so he had stopped doing it as often. Now he wondered if that wasn’t the root of the problem. How could they know if something needed to change if they never talked about it?

  “You’d have every right to be.” Accidents and mistakes happened in their line of work, as it were, but he would still feel responsible for it.

  “I know you didn’t…plan that. It just happened.”

  “Are there other marks? Let me see your wrists.”

  “A few on my hip.” She pushed up her sleeves and slid her arms across the table. “But see, all fine. Not even sore.” She pushed her sleeves back down and snuck her hands under the table.

  This wasn’t the place to be cataloging the bruises from the sex they shouldn’t have had. “You look exhausted.”

  “So do you.”

  “Why did you ask me to come over last night? We could have found somewhere else to have a conversation.”

  “Because I was tired and didn’t feel like leaving my apartment, and I wanted to get it over with. I thought I was going to talk to you and that would be it. We’d be done. The end. Good night and good luck, and if I see you around, it’s no big deal.”

  “Do you regret it?” He braced himself for her saying yes, unequivocally. As if bracing for the impact would change the crater it would leave in his chest.

  “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “What were you going to say to me last night?”

  “I don’t even know anymore.” She put her head in her hands. “I thought…I don’t know. I thought I would apologize for running away and that we had grown apart and that I was sorry I hadn’t tried to tell you before it was too late. Now, I don’t know.”

  He nudged her foot under the table. “We don’t have to do this right now.”

  She nudged his foot back. All those little gestures of affection they’d codified over the years twisted in his chest. “Okay.”

  “Can I make you dinner?”

  “Excuse me, you cook?”

  “Kate, I lived on my own for over a decade before we met. Did you think all I ate was takeout and frozen dinners?”

  “Then why did I do all the cooking the whole time?” She nudged his foot a little harder.

  “Because you’re better at it than I am? And I thought you liked doing it more than I do.”

  “See? This. This is what I was going to say to you.” She jabbed the tabletop with her finger. “We never talked about this shit; we fell into these ridiculous bullshit patriarchal codified roles without even thinking about it. I mean fine, yeah, I do like to cook, but it was never a choice I consciously made, it just… Ow.” She shook her hand out.

  “You’re right. And I’ll talk about any and all of it with you if you need to. But I think you need to get some sleep or get something to eat. Maybe both, if you’re hurting yourself on the table.” Slipping into aftercare mode—whether she admitted that’s what this was or not—eased the aching in his chest, the roiling in his stomach. Knowing the role he was supposed to play made everything easier, more bearable.

  She sighed and rubbed her finger. “Fine. Will you…walk me home?”

  * * *

  She’d asked him to walk her home, but she wasn’t ready to be trapped in a small room with her own thoughts. She packed up her laptop and papers into her overstuffed backpack and bundled back into her coat and gloves.

  “Do you want to take a walk? With me?”

  “I thought I was.”

  “But like, not straight back to my apartment. There’s a park around the corner?”

  He lit up like she’d asked him on an honest-to-god date and not an awkward walk in the park. They trudged up the hill, not saying much against the wind whistling around them through the bare trees, the path bordered by scrubby, dead grass and marked with large boulders left from the quarry it had once been.

  After the night before, she wasn’t in any real shape to have a serious conversation about the state of whatever they were doing, and she didn’t know what kind of small talk to make. He’d been put on leave from his job, and even if he didn’t blame her—and it wasn’t her fault he wasn’t coping well without her—guilt still bubbled its way to the surface. She wanted to smooth things over, make things easy for him. She’d spent five years making sure his life flowed along with all the tranquility of a goddamn mountain stream.

  But still, knowing how much it had hurt him, hurt her. The pull in her veins to reach out and touch him, to physically connect when she couldn’t make sense of what she wanted, was almost too much to suppress.

  Why did she ask him to take a walk? She could have gone anywhere. Back to her apartment. To the library. Anywhere she wasn’t alone with him, feeling guilty for fucking up his life. The last year hadn’t been easy for her, but she’d had a target for her rage in the systemic mistreatment of women of color and poor women by the healthcare system. She’d had righteous anger to keep her going when she wanted to call him, to cry and relent and come home because it was too damn hard and the problem was bigger than any of them.

  She’d missed him. But she’d gotten over it. Spending time with him now, silently ascending this stupid hill in the stupid cold was the last thing she should be doing if she wanted this thing between them where she’d put it, dead and buried in the past.

  But then she’d been the one to kiss him.

  And she kind of wanted to do it again now.

  She adjusted her bag’s strap where it dug into her shoulder, accidentally yanking her scarf tighter around her neck in the process. It was appropriate. Everything was so tangled.

  Her brain roiled with questions she didn’t have answers to. And he walked quietly beside her, letting her work things out in her own time, not pressing, a gentle presence at her side. There for her with his hands jammed in his pockets so thoroughly she suspected it had less to do with the cold and more to do with desperately wanting to take her hand. She’d gotten so used to the idea of him in her head—cold, remote, sharp-featured, and sharper-tongued—but it was the role she’d needed him to play.

  The man next to her was softer, less sure. Had he resented his role as much as she’d come to resent hers?

  She stopped at the crest of the hill and stamped her foot; her anger and convictions crumbling like an overtired toddler. They were both wrong. They were both to blame.

  “Kate?”

  “I can’t do this. I can’t figure out what to feel or how to think or what I’m supposed to say to you or how I’m supposed to act. I can’t do it.”

  “I know.” Ian steered her over to a bench tucked under a tree, out of sight of the odd passerby that were the only thing standing between her and ugly crying in public. She would cling to some semblance of dignity, dammit.

  “What am I supposed to do?” One last time, she wanted him to make the decision for her. One more time, then she could go back to doing it herself.

  “Kate, you’re tired.” He lifted his hand as though he was going to rub her back but stopped before he touched her and awkwardly rested it on the freezing cold bench.

  “I know.”

  “Have you eaten real food today?”

  “Are you implying that I’m hangry?” The fact that it was a fair question and her first reaction was to snap was answer enough. She was like a child who couldn’t be relied on to adequately feed herself. And she’d broken up with her adult. God, it was fucked up to think about it that way.

  “Come on, let’s get you home. You can get something to eat and a nap, and you’ll feel better for it.”

  A not-small part of her purred at taking direction from him, as gently given and simple as it was. “Okay
.”

  They stopped at the entrance of her building. Kate fished for her keys at the bottom of her bag. Once she had them in hand, Ian stepped closer, like he might hug her, but only gave her arm a brief squeeze. “Take care of yourself, Kate.”

  Yes, Sir.

  As tempting as her bed looked when she got upstairs, Kate’s brain wouldn’t shut up, replaying the last hour on a loop. She wanted to believe it was simple familiarity, that reaching for him for comfort was a habit she could kick. That she didn’t still want him. That she didn’t want him to take her hand while they were on a walk, or rub her back when she was upset, or do any of the things a boyfriend-lover-partner would do.

  She inspected the bruises on her neck, barely there marks that would fade by morning. Even without the scarf to cover them, it would have taken a certain kind of person to realize what they were. The bruises on her hip would take longer. Another few days of having a souvenir of time spent with Ian. The kind of souvenirs she’d never thought she’d have again.

  Flashes from the night before came back. The way he’d looked at her. The soft, well-worn leather of his belt wrapped around her wrists. The feel of teeth digging into the soft swell of her breasts. It wasn’t fair to make a comparison between fucking the man who’d owned her, who’d laid claim to every inch of her body over the course of five years, to the awkward fumbling with a guy she barely knew, that she’d done only to prove a point to herself. It didn’t stop her from doing it anyway.

  She’d proved she wasn’t into vanilla, and in the process, she’d used a perfectly nice guy who didn’t deserve to be treated like a science experiment. Then she’d turned around and slept with her ex, and it had been amazing. Because he knew her.

  Was this why couples stubbornly clung on? Because the process of figuring out a new partner was simply too daunting? It would take so much time and effort for anyone to learn her particular quirks, the things she loved, the things that would send her over the edge so quickly, it was like a party trick, and the things that would make her go cold so quickly, there wouldn’t be a prayer of making her come. And she would have to learn it all for that person too.

  The sex was good with Ian because they’d been through it all before. Hell, the learning curve had been fun and exciting because it was almost all new.

  She’d figured out in college that she liked sex on the rougher side. She’d been held down and fucked hard, and it had been a hell of a lot more fun than tenderness and candlelight. But she hadn’t known there were ways to ask for what she wanted. That there were names for the things she needed. Until suddenly, the names for it were everywhere and the novelty T-shirt store in the mall was hawking cheap floggers alongside the black-light pot posters.

  Kate had devoured every piece of information she could find. Books, movies, nonfiction how-tos, whatever she could get her hands on. She spent her first summer out of undergrad giving herself a quick and dirty education in the myriad possibilities, putting names to what she felt in the secret places of her heart that wanted to be controlled. How could she kid herself that she’d somehow learned it from Ian? She’d wanted it.

  Wanted it so badly, that even though it had taken two more years, she’d worked up the nerve to go to that conference. She’d hooked up with guys in her grad program, shyly asking for a hair pull or a spank, but never getting what she really wanted. She didn’t want to have to ask. She didn’t want to have a choice. The world was full of choices, and she wanted a break. Ian had understood.

  She paced her apartment like a caged tiger, back and forth across the few feet of open floor. She didn’t want to go through it again, the negotiations and the learning, and it might not even work out. She didn’t want to put someone else through it either.

  She couldn’t go back because it was easy or she’d only end up exactly where she was before—bored and full of resentment. The last couple of days had felt like they knew each other better than anyone, but also like she hadn’t known him at all. Like maybe it was possible to change. But it might all be moot, anyway. She had no idea what the next six months of her life were going to bring. Once her dissertation was finished and defended, she might not stay in Boston. Everyone could see the writing on the wall that funding and options for people in her particular field were slim pickings, no matter what occasional high-profile publicity maternal mortality rates got. And where would that leave them? Ian might be a bit more of a softie than she’d ever imagined, but he wasn’t going to pick up his life and move with her. He’d take his Jeff-mandated break and go right back to work as soon as they would let him. He wouldn’t change that much, and she wouldn’t ask him to.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. The floor thumped. Her downstairs neighbor was banging on the ceiling, and she realized her pacing had turned to stomping.

  She flopped on the bed. She needed to talk to Ian. Really talk to him, without getting distracted by sex. No calling him at night and asking him to come over, then fucking him the second he told her he’d missed her.

  She picked up her phone. She wanted to talk to someone. But all her friends were his friends too. She wasn’t lying when she’d told Owen she needed some new people in her life. She needed someone who wasn’t openly or secretly rooting for them to get back together to talk to. She didn’t want to tell any of them they’d slept together. Not with Evie pulling strings and doling out information. She’d been fine with it when Evie had done it to Matt and Jolene, so she could add being a total hypocrite to her list of failings.

  She got up and riffled through the medicine cabinet, looking for something that would help her brain wind down, but she couldn’t find so much as a stray Benadryl. No calming herbal teas in the kitchen either. She was usually trying to wake herself up, not put herself to sleep.

  She picked up her phone and typed the message without conscious thought.

  Kate: I can’t sleep.

  When what she had done registered, she dropped her phone like a hot potato. What the hell was she doing?

  It rang. She rushed to pick it up with her heart pounding and her stomach churning. This was exactly the kind of thing she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

  “What are you doing, Kate?” He sounded amused and only slightly annoyed. She could see his face, the lift of his eyebrows, the tilt of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Are you sure you still want to take a nap right now?”

  “If I don’t, the next five pages of my dissertation will be nothing but drivel. I can’t think.” I can’t think about anything but you.

  “All right. Get into bed.”

  “Yes, Sir,” she replied automatically as she got under the covers.

  They used to do this when he was out of town doing on-site installation support or at conferences. Kate had hated being in his house alone. He would tell her stories about his day, his voice deep and soothing. Sometimes they were innocent and sweet, the times he’d thought of her, or a funny thing that had happened. Sometimes he whispered low in her ear about all the things he would do to her when he got home, his breath heavy, the sound of his hand stroking his cock coming through the receiver. Her belly tightened, waiting for him to speak.

  He sighed, soft and long. “Good girl. Shall I read you a story?” He’d never read to her before. But then, it would probably hurt both of them more than it would help if he told her things he wanted to do, or the things he had missed. All the stories he would have been saving from the last year.

  “Yes, please.”

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs on the other end of the line, then the creak of the upstairs hallway leading to the office. He was literally getting a book to read to her. Her heart broke a little, a lump rising in her throat as she curled deeper under the covers to block out the light.

  Finally, he made a decision. “I think this will do. This was one of my favorites.”

  He read her the story of a boy and his bear and their woodland friends. He did the voices. She clutched her pill
ow and cried silently, muffling her shaky breaths as best she could. She’d chosen not to know these parts of him. She hadn’t known the man who would read her his favorite bedtime story, who would sing the funny little bear songs and make the buzzing bee noises and make sure it was clear they were Suspicious with a capital S. By the time he finished the chapter, she could barely breathe.

  “Sleep well, Kate.” His voice was so gentle, she could almost feel the way he’d brush her hair from her eyes and tuck it behind her ear.

  “I’m sorry.” She choked out the words, holding back a sob.

  “I know. Sleep now.”

  He hung up, and she curled into a ball and cried herself to sleep.

  Seven

  Ian sat back in his chair, reeling. The last twenty-four hours had been a blur of startling intimacy and confusion and now this. He hadn’t meant to make her cry. But it seemed like she needed it.

  He remembered those phone calls when he’d been away. The ones where he’d put her to bed with mundane details about his day, or put them both to bed by telling her every wicked thing he was going to do to her when he got home, listening to the slick sound of her masturbating on the other end of the line, her breathy little whimpers when she was close but hanging on until he let her come.

  His cock started to fill with the memory. You made her cry, you unbearable asshole.

  She’d always been looking for something. Support, stability, someone to take away the hard decisions and make her feel safe. He’d held her hand through her master’s thesis, keeping her on deadline with threats that were never empty. They’d celebrated her successful thesis defense by putting her in four-point restraints and making her come until she begged him to stop.

  He knew she hadn’t had much stability growing up, that she’d landed in Boston with a scholarship for undergrad and an iron will to never end up in her hometown again. But that determination had taken so much out of her. He’d seen it in the way she’d looked at him the night they’d met. Like he was an oasis of responsibility in a sea of being twenty-three and not knowing what the fuck to do with her life.