ZANDER
The two of them are sitting in the blue room in front of the fire, and I know right away that the session has pushed Ella to one of her boundaries. Or to a place where she needs someone else to act as a boundary for her. She needs me. Her face is pale, and her eyes shine, but she’s not crying. I pull a chair directly in front of her so I can take her hands in mine and look her in the eye. Damon watches from his seat, his face neutral.
“What’s wrong?”
Damon begins to answer. “Ella and I were discussing her past with her—”
“Wait, Damon. Quiet.” My tone wasn’t meant to come out the way it did. “Please,” I add for good measure. “I want Ella to tell me what happened.” I stroke a lock of hair away from her cheek.
Her only acknowledgement is to scoot on the sofa and make room for me to sit next to her. There’s a sadness that doesn’t leave her gaze, which flicks between the mine and the fire.
“She has a voice, and I want her to use it. Tell me.” She knows a command when she hears one, and her body settles into the sofa a bit.
“There’s a lot,” she admits, and her voice is soft and slightly shaken. “I have a lot of memories. Some of them I wish I could forget … and today,” she pauses to take in an unsteady breath, “I’m just remembering a lot right now.”
“We’re going to go over them now, in a safe place.” I don’t want to push her past what she can take, but because Ella is a submissive, I make the decision for her. She still holds the power over the conversation. She can use her safe word at any time. “I’m listening.”
“James—” Ella lifts her chin a fraction of an inch. “James knew about it. He knew about what happened, and I wish—” Now her eyes brim with tears.
It’s obvious how difficult it is for her, and I’ve never wished for anything more than I wish she didn’t have to remember these things. I wish she had a clean slate, and that her life had been the fairy tale she deserves. “I wish you already knew so I didn’t have to say it out loud.”
“You will say it out loud, and I’ll hear it, and then I’ll know,” I reassure her. “It won’t have so much power over you once you’ve told me.” I hope it’s true for Ella. I kept what happened with Quincy bottled up from as many people as possible, but it all had to come out eventually. Otherwise I couldn’t have survived it. The longer you let a secret fester, the worse it gets.
Ella takes a shaky breath, and I run my thumb over the back of her hand. “My father abused my mother. He—he beat her. Not just once or twice, Z.”
“And you saw?”
“Yes. I saw it. And it didn’t seem to matter if anyone knew. He knew I saw, and that only seemed to make it worse. If he caught me looking, he would make it worse for her.” Tears spill down Ella’s cheeks. “Watching was dangerous, and so …”
“So what? What were you going to say?”
“I don’t know. I like people to know, I like them to see what’s really there. I want them to know it all … and see it all.”
“I’m not sure this is—” Damon pipes up and makes his hesitation known. Whatever conclusion Ella’s come to, he doesn’t necessarily agree with.
“So maybe with James and other men, I liked for people to see me. It’s wrong to even talk about those things one after the other—”
“It’s not wrong,” I say, cutting off that line of thinking, although I’m still not entirely sure what she means.
“I think I like people to see and hear it all, because I wish they knew everything I knew back then. So ranting about what’s on my mind … fucking whoever I want on camera, whatever it is, I want them all to see it. They’re going to judge me anyway, so let the facts of my judgment be crystal clear and out there in the world for all to see.”
“Each part of your life affects every other part. If being a witness was wrong in your childhood, then being witnessed can be a way to take back your control over that. It’s okay, jailbird.”
The name slips out before I can stop it, but Damon says nothing. I’m going to have to ask Kam about all this shit. This is much darker than I thought it would be. Than I ever imagined for Ella.
“Maybe I wanted to be seen back then, because it wasn’t dangerous with James.”
“Do you think it would be dangerous to be seen with me?”
“I don’t know.” She doesn’t take her eyes off my face. Doesn’t glance in Damon’s direction. But the color has come back to her face and she leans closer to me, her breath quickening with anticipation. “I want to feel powerful enough to show everyone what really happens,” she whispers. “I want them to see what my life is really like.”
I take her face in my hands and pull her in for a kiss. Hard. Deep. Like I don’t give a fuck if Damon is sitting there. The truth is that I don’t. If Ella wants power, I have one way to hand it to her—by taking it from her. That’s the game we play, at its core.
With tearstained cheeks she peers up at me through her thick lashes and murmurs, “Do you still want me? Even if I’m this fucked up?”
There isn’t a second I hesitate. I stand her up between my knees and strip off her jeans and panties together at once, consumed with her body. With the delicate, elegant frame under a soft baggy sweater. It means that even when she’s naked below the waist, she’s still partially covered. Ella reaches for me over and over, not wanting to break the kiss. I let her kiss me for as long as I can stand it, and then I push her back into the sofa. I know Damon’s seated in a dark blue armchair behind us, and the angle in relation to Damon will keep her partially out of view.
But not entirely. My heart rages in my chest, wanting her to know I want her all the more for confiding in me. More than I care about anything else.