“He kicked me out.”

“What?” barks Nate, lunging toward me from the other side of my living room sofa. He grabs my arms, eyes comically wide. “What do you mean he kicked you out? What did he say?”

I take another gulp of wine. “Literally nothing. He shook his head and pointed at the door. Like I was a dog or a freaking solicitor.”

Nate eyes me like I might sprout wings or grow a tail any second. “Why are you smiling? Did he break you?”

I laugh. “No. I’m fine. Embarrassed, obviously, but weirdly relieved.”

“Because you unburdened yourself,” says Nate softly, his eyes revealing far more wisdom than his age should afford. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be dominated.”

“I know. In theory, at least.” I sigh, slumping into the couch and turning my head toward him. “I didn’t use to be this way. My husband and I had a great, vanilla sex life. Do you think him dying rewired my brain?”

It’s the closest I’ve come to admitting I feel responsible for Paul’s death, and Nate picks up on it with a sad smile. “Maybe. But I do know that sometimes submissive are born, and sometimes we’re made. In the end, we all want the same thing—freedom from the true bondage, that of our thoughts, our fears, our emotions.”

“That’s poetic,” I muse. “Is it true?”

Nate’s smile sheds its shadows. “As true as true can be. If you want someone to teach you the ropes, introduce you to some good Doms—”

“I’ll pass,” I interject, softening the words with a smirk. “I’d rather keep my job, which shockingly enough I still have.”

Nate shakes his head, his frustration evident. “I really don’t know why Cross treated you that way. I’ve only ever heard glowing praise from satisfied women about his methods. What he did—there’s no excuse for it, London. If I were braver, I’d tell Charlie what happened.”

“Please don’t,” I say quickly. “If Cross intended to humiliate me and make me think twice about submission, he succeeded. But if he wanted me to feel shame about exploring my desires? He missed the mark by a mile. Hippie parents for the win.”

Nate finally relaxes, swinging his feet onto my new coffee table. “Damn straight. I love your parents and I don’t even know them. Do you think they’ll adopt me?”

I laugh. “Definitely. Nate Limerick has a nice ring to it.”

He smiles wistfully. “It does.”

We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, our private thoughts dancing over soft music from nearby speakers. The sting of Cross’s rejection has lessened, due in large part to two glasses of wine and Nate’s company. Thankfully, neither of us is working tonight. I don’t know if I could have handled seeing Cross again so soon after what happened in his loft.

“Nate?”

“Hmm?”

“If he’s really what he says he is—a sadist—then wouldn’t he have enjoyed humiliating me?”

“Probably,” he replies, then hesitates. “On the other hand, it’s not black and white. If he wasn’t in a Dom headspace, maybe he was just being an asshole.”

I’ve thought about that pretty mouth choking on my dick.

Oh, he was in a Dom headspace, all right, but I’d bet the life I have left that he didn’t enjoy it. Not for one second. My biggest hint being his lack of arousal, even with his zipper right in front of my face.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about Cross.”

Blinking away my thoughts, I ask, “Anything you’ll tell me?” My voice is teasing, but my gut clenches in anticipation. I want to hear something. Anything that helps me understand him. That reconciles my sick fascination with the man—a fascination that sadly burns just as bright as it did before this afternoon.

I want to understand why he did what he did. The impulse isn’t new to me—it’s part of what made me a great journalist—and I guess I can be grateful that I’m feeling it. An echo of my old self.

“I want to tell you one thing in particular, but I’m not sure you’ll want to hear it. But it’s not like it’s a secret or anything.”

I chuckle a little. “That sounds ominous.”

“Yeah, kinda.” He fights a private war with his conscience, then grabs my free hand. “You know how I mentioned you look kind of like his ex?”

I nod.

“Well… that ex was his wife.”

“Cross was married?” I ask stupidly.

Nate nods. “I’ve never seen a man so completely besotted in my life. Obsessed, even. She hung the moon and stars in his eyes.”

I eye him carefully. “Why do you sound bitter?”

“Because she used him. Baited him, trapped him, and wrecked him.”

I stare at him blankly. “Wow. It’s really hard to imagine anyone doing that to Cross.”

Nate sighs. “Ashley was good, I’ll give her that. Played submissive perfectly. It wasn’t until they were married for a year that she dropped the act. Refused to let him top her anymore. I don’t know all the details, but as you know, I’m good at listening and observing. She waged some serious psychological warfare. Made him think he was a monster. Sick. Threatened to tell people he was abusive if he didn’t seek ‘sexual rehabilitation.’ He did everything she asked, and she still left him in the end.”

“Good God,” I whisper. “Why would she do all that? For what possible reason?”

Nate’s brows lift. “Haven’t you ever Googled him?”

I shake my head.

“Oh, sugarplum, you’re seriously the cutest. Cross is ex-Special Forces. Basically GI Joe. Left the military ten years ago and founded Titan Security.”

My jaw drops. “The international private defense company?”

He nods. “Yep. Cross started it because he wanted the freedom to help struggling governments and nations during crises without dealing with miles of red tape.”

“What happened?”

“His wife happened. His brother David runs the company now, and he turned it into what it is today—a business that capitalizes on war. And shitting on Cross’s dream wasn’t even the worst thing David did. Guess who he married after the divorce went through and Cross was deemed unstable by the Board of Directors?”

My jaw dislocates. “Shut the fuck up. His brother married his ex-wife? Was it a whole setup to push him out of the company?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, but what does your journalistic spidey sense tell you?”

I sink back into the couch, stunned and deflated. “That Cross’s dislike of me suddenly makes more sense. Do I really look like her?”

“Honestly?”

“Yes, honestly!”

He grins. “You’re way hotter.”

That night as I lie in bed, I think of Dominic and my heart hurts for him. I can’t imagine the pain he must have felt having someone he loved—someone he married—betray him so profoundly.

Yes, I’m still embarrassed and angry at the way he treated me, the undeserving lesson he taught me—to be careful what I wish for. But if I’ve learned anything in the last year and a half, it’s the truth is rarely cut and dry. People are rarely black and white, either. Not one or even two-dimensional, but living, breathing channels of energy and emotion, their experiences strung together, creating a design of identity more complex than the mind can comprehend.

In a weird way, knowing what I now know about Dominic’s past makes me feel a kinship with him. We both had our dreams ripped away by others.

As I drift to sleep, I allow myself a few minutes to think of Paul. To appreciate the love he gave me, and the short but happy life we had together. We had our ups and downs like any couple, but at the end of the day, our love for each other was unconditional. He would have never betrayed me as Dominic’s wife did him.

Paul and I married at nineteen, just four months after meeting at NYU. My parents were supportive. His were not. Old Money from Greenwich, Connecticut, they couldn’t fathom their son marrying a girl from Podunk, upstate New York. Nor did they approve of Paul’s decision to drop out of college and enter the Police Academy. Maybe that’s why I wholeheartedly approved, having been subtly conditioned toward rebellion against social norms by my eccentric parents. Who the fuck knows.

I was so young. Stupid. Full of aspirations about doing good in the world. Paul was terminally optimistic about his career path. Arresting criminals. Making the world a safer place. As disapproving as his parents were, they nevertheless pulled strings. Big strings. Their son wasn’t going to be a run-of-the-mill beat cop if they could help it.

Right before Paul planned to officially withdraw from NYU, he begrudgingly accepted an offer from his father to play golf. It was no accident that they were joined by Rudolph Schultz, head of the New York branch of Homeland Security. Those eighteen holes would change Paul’s life—our lives—forever.

Despite their role in altering his career trajectory, Paul’s parents still blame me for his death. Most of the time, I believe I deserve their loathing. But what they don’t know is how frightened I was when Paul came home that day full of bright-eyed passion about going after terrorists, drug cartels, and sex traffickers as an undercover ICE agent working with Homeland Security.

In their quest for Paul’s long-term stature, his parents never grasped one of the fundamental facets of his personality. Specifically the focus—or limitation, in their eyes—of his ambition. Paul didn’t want to sit behind a big desk and issue orders, or stand behind a microphone and spew rhetoric to the masses. He wanted action. To be in the middle of events. To exact real change.

I couldn’t stop him. My fear didn’t sway him. But over the years, while he completed his degree and started his training, my trepidation faded. I’d found my own trajectory in studying Journalism. I had my own plans. And for a while, we were happy. Paul’s parents made sure he got the job he wanted, working in New York, and I landed my own dream job at the New York Independent, a small newspaper that specialized in investigative journalism.

We were both bound to our separate passions and each other, wearing matching cement boots we couldn’t feel. The only difference is Paul’s life ended and I’m still breathing.

But I’m still underwater, in the murky dark.