Taking my hand again, she tugs me out of the kitchen and leads me upstairs, the way I normally do to her. This is wrong. Everything about this morning is wrong, but I won’t hurt her again. I can’t yell or shout, or get rid of the clawing, gnawing anxiety that’s smoldering inside of my veins, reminding me over and over and over that everything is wrong.
This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. In fact, I’ve had hundreds of days where even my own skin feels wrong. But it’s been years since the last one, and I’d forgotten how the wrongness drowns me. I’m thirty-eight years old. I’ve learned how to cope with upsets to my routine, but I don’t ever remember having to cope with losing track of what day of the week it is.
When we get into the bathroom, Octavia turns on the shower, then tugs my shorts down and leads me under the water.
No. I run a bath for Doll. I wash her body and her hair. This is wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Everything continues to be wrong. Doll dries her own hair. She opens my dresser drawer and hands me underwear and socks. She dresses so quickly that even the ritual of us gettingdressed side by side is wrong. She offers to drive, and even after I say no, she fastens her seat belt before I can do it.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The chair beside Octavia’s that has been empty since the first day we came to the studio, is now filled with a man.
Wrong.
Even though he looks like his sister and is friendly as he introduces himself as Atticus, it’s all wrong.
Doll’s first client is a petite woman who asks to use a private room, so that she doesn’t have to wear a bikini top in the main studio. When I start to follow them into the room, the client’s eyes go wide, and Octavia bars my way, pressing a kiss to my lips as she closes the door and shuts me outside.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Instead of Jaiden, who usually collects our lunch orders, a kid named Michael turns up at 1230 hours, his expression dour and disinterested. He arrives late at 1315 hours with our food, shrugging when Betty and Sully tell him both of their orders are wrong.
“I’m so tired,” Octavia says with a yawn. “My next client isn’t due till two thirty, so I might take a power nap in the breakroom for an hour.”
My lips part to remind her we eat lunch in the car so that I can finger fuck her until she orgasms, but she speaks before I can.
“Will you come sit with me?” she asks, yawning again.
Even as she rests her head in my lap, her warmth pressed against me, all I can think is wrong, wrong, wrong.
TWENTY-TWO
OCTAVIA
Something is very wrong with Knight, but I have no idea what it is. His face is expressionless, but his entire body is so tense he feels like a bomb about to explode. Yesterday was awful, but we fixed things, or at least I thought we had.
This morning, I woke up in the gym like usual, but instead of climbing onto Knight’s dick, I barely recognized the look of pained anxiety on his face. He mumbled something about not realizing what day it was, but then he acted like a zombie, occasionally muttering about things being wrong as I did my best to guide him through our morning.
Things have only gotten worse since we got to work. My first client was a woman called Claudette. She’s a sweet girl who has a lot of tattoos, but she’s always kind of shy about getting them done. Honestly, it’s been a while since I did any work for her, and I’d forgotten to warn Knight that she’d want to use a private room instead of sitting in the main studio.
The look on his face when I told him he had to wait outside the room made me feel sick. He hates having any distance between us, and right now, especially after yesterday’s blowout, it was the worst time possible for me to have to literally shut him out.
I’m thankful I only have one more appointment this afternoon. It’s for a regular client who used to come in for something new once every month or so back in Rapid City. Reggie is an old punk who lost his wife and the love of his life to cancer a couple of years ago. He was a stalwart at Suede’s studio, basically a part of the furniture that all the artists, including Betty and me, adore.
I was a little surprised when he reached out, asking about flying out to Montana to have me work on him, but I figured with me, Bett, and sometimes Suede all working from here, it kind of made sense that he’d want to visit and check the place out.
“Dinner, then bed tonight,” I say with a groan, trying to hide a wince at Knight’s tense shoulders and perplexed expression.
My husband has a full range of stoic expressions that manage to all look the same, but that I’ve started to realize are very different. He can look calm and disinterested with just a hint of annoyed, angry, horny, frantic, sexy, anxious, and a load more expressions I haven’t fully identified yet.
But the look on his face now isn’t one I’ve ever seen before today. He looks…distressed. Like the world is just too much, and I don’t know what to do to help him. There are dark circles under his eyes, and I’m starting to wonder if he slept at all last night, and if me and the argument we had yesterday are the cause of his behavior today.
I know the basics of Knight’s daily rituals, but I haven’t really bothered to dig deeper to understand why he needs them. I’ve learned to embrace them, to need them—as yesterday proved. But I don’t know where they stem from, or what happens if, for some reason, he can’t spend each day the way he needs to.
Something about today has triggered a reaction in him, and I don’t know what to do.
