He didn’t follow me out, as far as I could see, though he was probably tracking my phone the same way I’d tracked his. I could remove myself from the list of devices on the account, but that would change the rules.

Once I got into the cab to downtown, I shut off my phone. That should make him fucking crazy. I felt pretty satisfied with myself, then sad we’d come to this impasse. I wasn’t sure this was any better than a long, ugly divorce. We were playing a difficult and intense game with unwritten rules. One we could both lose.

I missed Manhattan Adam. The man who loved me beyond all sense. The guy I didn’t love but whose company I enjoyed. His good sense, his easy humor, his daily, unintentional beauty gracing the loft and the office. The daily catching up, the quick exchange of advice about important and mundane things. I’d never felt so utterly alone as I did on that cab ride.

Manhattan Adam was my best friend, and I missed him.

The cab dropped me at Metropolis. Stefan sat at a two-seat table by the window, drawing in a black pad. He closed it when he saw me and pulled out my chair like a perfect gentleman. I didn’t know if the sadism belied the courtesy or the courtesy cleansed the sadism.

“I ordered for you,” he said with his Scandinavian accent. “I hope this is all right?”

“I understand it’s standard Dominant behavior.” I said it with a smile, so he seemed to take no offense.

“Thank you for meeting me. I wasn’t sure you got the note I left.”

I’d gotten the note. We need to talk. It had tipped Adam into his fear that I was inside a world that had broken him, even as he never admitted to being broken.

“Adam found it.”

“Was it a problem? I meant nothing by it.”

“Was that the first thing you meant nothing by?”

“Regarding you?” He shrugged. “Could be. I didn’t know he was so possessive with you.”

“I’m his wife.”

Soon to be ex-wife.

“All right, Mrs. Steinbeck.” He smirked, undaunted, unflappable. “I understand. But I come from a place where we talk about fucking very candidly. Frankly, I would have loved to fuck you. If I had permission, of course. I find you beautiful and interesting.” He put his napkin in his lap. “I’m not trying to seduce you.”

“You’re speaking frankly.”

“Exactly.” He leaned back to let the waiter put plates in front of us. He’d ordered me a pancetta tartine with goat cheese that looked wonderful.

“And how does Serena feel about you thinking another woman is beautiful and interesting?”

“Usually she would want to know the woman and watch me fuck her.” He pulled the toothpick out of his turkey sandwich and laid it on the side of his plate. “It’s worked very well for us, this arrangement. You and yours don’t have the same. I understand, of course. But it wasn’t clear in the beginning.”

I focused on my tartine, trying to wrangle crumbs and pancetta that didn’t break apart easily. I had so much to learn about Adam’s world and my own, where they intersected and what I was comfortable with. I wished he was there to help me with it.

My food went down in a lump. Wishes weren’t an alternate reality of a life not lived. They were tricks of the mind, fooling us into believing we had control.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? In the note you left?”

“Yes and no.” He sipped his water, considered it, then me. I should have been uncomfortable, but I wasn’t. “I wanted to continue our conversation, but Serena and I hit a wall on the way home. Figuratively, of course.”

“No seat belts required?”

“My heart needed crash gear.”

I let out a short, surprised huh that I didn’t mean. He raised an eyebrow. No beating around the bush now.

“I thought you didn’t have a heart at all,” I said.

“Ouch.”

“I’m sorry. It doesn’t look like love. Not…”

Not when you do it that way. Not when it’s violent and demanding. Not when you’re playing with her like she’s an object.

Of course. That was what Adam was reacting to on some level. He should have known better, but the fact was, he didn’t. He couldn’t separate the violence of his dominance from the love it took to create it.

“Diana?”

“I remember what we were talking about. On the beach. You wanted insight into Serena. She was drifting away the way I drifted away, right? You wanted to ask me things you’d ask her.”

“Close enough.”

“I’ll tell you what I think. But I want you to do something for me.” My thoughts were still unformed. I had disconnected words for my feelings.

Risk.

Commit.

Me.

Separate.

Whole.

“Let’s hear it,” Stefan said.

“Sponsor me for the club.”

“Your Dominant is supposed to ask.”

“I know, and he will. Or he might. I don’t know. He’s not even…” mine. “Whatever. I need three members, and if you help with the application, I’ll get a head start.”

“What are you playing at, Mrs. Steinbeck?”

I couldn’t answer that because I was sure the game didn’t have a name. “Serena. Commit to her. Commit to her alone. No sharing. No group… whatever it is. Just her. See if that changes anything.”

“It won’t.”

“How are you so sure?”

“She demands more every time. She is limitless.”

He was in awe of her, that much was clear. What had scared Adam away made Stefan worship her. The ability to engage in sex so rough it looked and felt like rape had broken Adam’s confidence in his judgment. What she’d asked him to do had driven him to not only marry a vanilla woman, but keep his relationship so kink-free, he could convince himself he was a changed man.

“Have you reached your limit?”

He didn’t answer. He just pushed his food around until he gathered a forkful. “I do like you.” He put the food in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “You are, as they say, a real pistol.”

“She wants my husband. She told me as much. I’m invested in keeping you two together.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“Sponsor me, and I’ll talk to her.”

His face betrayed nothing but doubt. His body told another story. He leaned forward, elbows on the table as if getting closer to me gave him hope. “What could you say? She’s willful. She won’t just take advice from you. Nothing personal, of course.”

“No offense taken. And I have no intention of giving her advice.”

“She won’t respond to threats.”

“Stefan. Come on. Threats don’t work with anyone. Not even masochists.”

He smiled from his perfect white teeth to his sparkling, devilish eyes. “At least not from other masochists.”

“Just trust me.”

“What’s your plan then?”

“Tell her the truth,” I said.

“I like this plan.”

“Will you sponsor me? Or do you need to see if I’m successful first?”

“I will honor the spirit of the favor. Eat now, would you? Adam will get on my case for not taking good care of you.”

We finished lunch while making small talk about Sweden, the endless night, New York snow, and the beauty of Montauk in the winter.

He walked me to a cab. “I want to apologize. For the note. If I’d known he’d act like a child, I wouldn’t have left it.”

“Don’t worry about it. If it wasn’t that, it would have been something else.”

He kissed my cheek and closed the door. Once the cab got moving, I turned on my phone.

If it hadn’t been for the note, would things have been different? Would we have stayed together? He’d come home from the city ready to settle into a life with me. Had that one thing not happened…

No.

I wasn’t stupid. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. A request to go to the club. A call at an inopportune time. Anything. Adam wasn’t ready to love submissive Diana, and he would have found a way to run just as I would have found a way to chase.

The phone connected to cellular. Adam’s half-hour-old texts buzzed.

I sent mine without preamble, negotiation, or agreement.

I’d gone from pushing for four redlines to having only two that mattered.

My first was non-negotiable. Whether he thought he loved me or not, letting other people into our relationship wouldn’t help my cause. The second was me carving space for myself. And the third was the point of the whole thing. Without it, we had no chance.

And thus, he agreed to let me hope that I could fix the mess I’d made.