And her brothers and sisters, for what good it did her.
What did it say that she had more contact with them via Facebook than she did on the phone or real life?
Her parents weren’t even on Facebook, so she had even less contact with them. They were too busy with their lives to pay her much attention, and any time she did call them to say hello, the condescension flowed like rancid honey through the connection.
She didn’t need that.
When they finished dinner, Eliza drove them home, dropping Kennedy off first. As they headed toward Noel’s, Eliza broached the subject.
“So how are you going to handle this weekend?”
Noel shrugged. “I don’t know. Not thinking about it, I guess.”
“What if he meets someone?”
“Part of me hopes he does, and part of me hopes he doesn’t. I know what the inevitable conclusion will be, and I want him to be happy, but I can’t help but selfishly hope we keep going the way we are.”
“Which isn’t fair to either of you.”
“I know.”
“Sometimes, you have to make the hard decisions, take the hard risks, to make a better life for yourself.”
“I have a good life
now
,” she quietly said.
“Uh, yeah. You’re forcing yourself to be his Dominant, when you hate doing it.”
Noel looked at her.
“Honey, please,” Eliza said. “I top Rusty all the time. I have
fun
doing it. Watching you and Scott…it’s painful. For me, anyway. You’re just so not into it, it’s sad. I can see it. Maybe because I know you two better than some people, but I watch you play and just want to smack the crap out of Scott for pushing you into this role.”
“He didn’t push me into it.”
“Bullshit. Maybe he didn’t force you into it, but he’s not backing off and giving you the freedom of choice.”
“He is.”
Eliza glanced at her, eyebrow raised.
“I want to make him happy.”
“Making yourself
un
happy is not the way to do it.”
“I’m already
un
happy, so what difference does it make?”
“Wow. That’s a pretty fatalistic viewpoint.”
“It’s just a matter of if, not when, he meets a guy. Then we end up getting divorced. Then…” She turned away, looking out the passenger window.
“Again, not a healthy point of view to have,” Eliza pointed out, “but it’s your life. I’m your friend.” She sighed. “Do you want to spend the weekend at our place? The mini-me isn’t coming home this weekend for a visit. You can get out of your head for a while. Maybe a change of location will do you good.”
“No, I’m okay. I’m used to being alone at home. I’ll just pretend he’s at work.”
They pulled into Noel’s driveway. Eliza shifted the car into park and turned to her.
“I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life. But I’m concerned about you. If your worry is a place to live, you can live with us if you leave him. You’ve got summer coming up in a couple of months. Maybe that’s when you need to take the leap and make the changes so that going into next school year you’re settled and have that all behind you.”
“Maybe he’ll come home this weekend with it out of his system.”
“Sweetie? I’m your friend. And I’m calling bullshit. If you want me to piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining, I’m not that kind of friend. I can’t be. I’m the brutally honest friend who’ll walk through fire with you, but I won’t lie to you. There is an ocean of fish out there. Trying to get one guppy in a small fish bowl to take the hook when you’re fishing with the wrong bait isn’t going to lead to anything good. And you know it.”
“But I love him.”
“I know that, too. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for the people we love the most is to let them go, even if it rips us apart from the inside out. By holding onto him, you’re denying yourself the opportunity to move forward. You need to go through the grief process. You’ve anchored one of your feet in a concrete block of denial, and the other in a block of bargaining. That’s not how life works. Two
years
, honey.”
Noel felt the tears slipping down her cheeks and didn’t bother wiping them away. “I know.”
“Two years. It’s been two years now you’ve tried and been miserable. Two years of your life you can’t get back. Now, I’ll be the first to applaud you for your tenacity and love and devotion to the guy. You gave it your best shot. But, honestly? You’re starting to slip from tenacious into blind martyrdom, and that’s not healthy for you or for him.”
Noel knew all of that. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t already told herself.
But to finally hear someone else say it…
“I know.”
“Obviously, it’s your life. What kind of life is it? Neither of you are living authentically at this point.” She leaned in and hugged Noel. “I’m always here to talk if you need me. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Eliza waited until Noel was inside her front door to back out of the driveway. Inside the empty house, Noel stood there and looked around.
It felt different.
Yes, she could tell herself Scott was just at work, but she knew that was a lie.
Just like her life was a lie.
She didn’t even bother turning the lights on. She locked the door behind her, dumped her purse on the table in the entryway, and headed toward the bedroom to get a shower.
* * * *
The next morning, Noel lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. It was a little after five in the morning.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the kind of person who could sleep late on the weekends. She hadn’t had enough to drink the night before to give her a hangover, unfortunately.
Then at least she would have had an excuse to stay curled in bed in a fetal position and ignore the papers she’d brought home that needed to be graded.
With a resigned sigh, she climbed out of bed and went to start the coffee. Today, she suspected, she’d need the whole damn pot.
Throughout the night, she’d tossed and turned, trying not to think about the fact that Scott wasn’t at work.
That he was out. Probably with someone.
Her reasoning being that if he wasn’t with someone, he would have called her, chatted with her, or at least texted her more. She’d vowed not to be uber-clingy wife, to not text him every ten minutes.
She had a life besides him. She did. A job, friends, hobbies. She wasn’t some weak woman who considered herself the half of a whole. By herself, she was a complete person. It wasn’t healthy to look at things any other way than that.
But Scott was a huge part of her life and one she wasn’t looking forward to losing, either.
After the coffeepot was burbling, she retrieved her phone from her purse.
No texts.
Not that she’d expected any. Scott, with his years of crazy scheduling, could drop off to sleep in minutes, and sleep late if he had a day off. She envied him that ability.
Especially now.
I wonder what he’s doing.
She eyed her messenger bag sitting on the floor in the foyer, where she’d dumped it yesterday after getting home from work. In it, at least three hours’ worth of work.
I guess I’d better get on it.
Returning to the kitchen, she grabbed her mug, fixed herself a cup of coffee, and headed back to the living room to get to work.
Scott felt a moment of disorientation when he awoke a little after seven Saturday morning in the hotel bed.
Especially when he felt the warm, hard body pressed along his back, an arm draped over his waist.
It took every ounce of will Scott had not to snuggle against the man’s body.
They’d talked last night into the wee hours of the morning before making love again. This time, actually making love, not just a Sir and his boy. And Keith had gone down on him, making him come again, in a condom but still
damned
good.
They had a lot in common. Too much, almost. In a good but scary way.
It almost felt like Scott had met a long-lost twin.
He also knew just walking away from Keith wouldn’t be possible. This wasn’t a simple weekend fuck.
This was the start of something real.
That it felt very much like what he’d felt for Noel when he’d first met her scared him even more, because he realized that truly signified the beginning of the end of them. Of their marriage and the life they had together, the past.
It meant she’d be forced to start over, facing her asshole family alone.
Maybe we could just fake it. Not tell them about the divorce. I could go with her at holidays and pretend we’re still married so she doesn’t have to listen to them. Unless she meets someone else.
In a way he felt guilty over having nudged her—okay, pushed her—into a dominant role for the past two years. She’d tried. Tried damned hard, out of love and the desire to make him happy.
It wasn’t her fault it hadn’t been enough. The problem had been his, not hers.
The more he’d talked with Keith about that, spilling things to him he hadn’t been able to talk to anyone else about, the more the realization struck him that the sacrifices Noel had made for him over the past couple of years, since he’d admitted to her he was gay, spoke to the depths of love she had for him.
He felt like a real shit for doing that to her without realizing the silent price she was likely paying.
Behind him, Keith stirred, pulling him closer, his hard cock nestled along the seam of Scott’s ass. “Good morning,” he mumbled, nibbling on the back of Scott’s neck.
Scott closed his eyes, sucking in a slow, deep breath. “Good morning, Sir.”
Keith patted him on the abs, where his hand rested. “Keith and Scott this morning, at least until after breakfast. I want to talk some more. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Keith made Scott roll over to face him. He had brown eyes, not like Noel’s, a different shade. Hers contained flecks of amber and green, while Keith’s were dark, like mocha, or rich, creamy coffee.
Keith laced fingers with him. “We need to go out and find breakfast. I’d rather eat off-property so you can relax while we talk.”
“Okay.”
“And there’s an Army-Navy store I want us to hit so we can get you a pair of boots.” He smiled. “You need your own.”
“Okay.”
“What’s wrong? Regrets?”
“Yes. Not about this,” he quickly added. “I guess it’s finally slammed home how unfairly I’ve treated Noel.”
“Not knowing her, based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like she made the sacrifice willingly enough.”
“I didn’t really give her much of a choice. I sort of sheepdogged her into it.”
“Still, she’s an adult. And she did let you come here this weekend.”
“I know.”
“Another hard question,” Keith said. “When do I get to meet her?”
“I hadn’t planned that far ahead yet.”
“If we’re going to be dating, I need to meet her and talk to her, face-to-face, at least once. I need her to tell me she’s okay with what we’re doing. Not that I don’t trust you, but this won’t work with us sneaking around.”
“I don’t want to be in her face with this.”
“That’s not what I want, either. I personally think that under the circumstances it would be cruel to be in her face. But that talk needs to happen, sooner rather than later. I’m not saying you have to leave her or divorce her right now. We still don’t know for sure yet what’s going to happen between us the more we get to know each other. I won’t, however, be your piece on the side.”
“I can’t go flaunting you around to my coworkers.”
“Did I say that? No. I need you to be able to tell her you’re going out with me, or whatever code you two come up with for you going out with me, or spending the night with me, without you having to lie to her. If it means we have to back off sex and just date for a while until your situation is resolved with her, we’ll do that, too.”
That’s not what Scott wanted. The sex was…well, no offense meant to Noel, who was great, but this had been even better.
Exceptional.
As if Keith had known exactly what he’d wanted and needed.
Which, of course, he had.
“She said she’s okay if I have a relationship with someone.”
“That’s good. But
I
need to hear her say it. I’m not going to run around behind her back.”
“Okay.”
Keith sat up and swung a leg over Scott, grabbing him by the wrists and pinning his arms over his head.
Scott felt the slide into subspace. Another perfection. While he could manage a submissive headspace with Noel, he’d never fallen so hard or deeply into subspace as he did with Keith.
Especially so quickly.
Keith smiled as he felt Scott’s cock harden between their bodies. Keith’s was already hard.
He crushed Scott’s lips with a deep, possessive kiss that swept coherent thought from his brain. Rough stubble scraped against his flesh in a sexy way.
“We’ve got a long day and a longer night ahead of us,” Keith told him. “Let’s go grab a shower and get moving. I don’t want to waste a second of it.”
He climbed off Scott, catching his hand and pulling him up off the bed with him and leading him to the bathroom. There, Keith pulled him into his arms under the steamy spray, putting Scott’s hand on his cock while he wrapped his fingers around Scott’s.
“We can take the tension off,” he said, his other hand gripping the back of Scott’s head as he kissed him again, hard.
* * * *
Yes, he was a Dominant man and needed a submissive partner. Key word there being partner. He needed to know Scott outside the role of boy, and this morning would help with that.
Scott slowly stroked Keith’s cock while Keith stroked his, catching and swallowing Scott’s moans.
Under his fingers, Scott’s hard cock throbbed, slick, hot pre-cum leaking from his slit. It took every ounce of will Keith had not to taste it.
Yes, likely everything was fine, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
His fingers dug into Scott’s scalp as he kissed him, sucking on his tongue, biting his lips. All the while his hand stroked harder, faster, wanting to get him over, wanting to make him moan. Scott’s hand felt like magic on his cock, perfect, stroking him as if already an expert on his body.