“Fuck no. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than how badly I want you.”
“And I was your student.”
“That too, but I never interacted with you as your professor.”
“Okay, Daddy Dom,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“I’m going to let that go, brat, given the situation,” I say, crossing my arms. “There was a reason we couldn’t be together until now. I had to make sure that my marriage looked legitimate so Mary could get her green card. She could still get it if we divorced at a certain point, but I didn’t want to chance it.”
“What did that require?”
“It had to look like we lived together. We have a mortgage in our names, have joint banking accounts and tax returns, and I even changed my last name to hers.”
“That explains why I didn’t figure out your relation to Robert sooner.”
“Yeah, we only recently reconnected, and I couldn’t put off him meeting Mary any longer without either hurting his feelings or him getting suspicious.”
“What happened to Samira? Did she make it to the states?”
“She did. She and her son were able to escape to Canada as refugees and are now citizens, but she’s here on a work visa.”
“Do you all live together?”
“I rent a space near campus during the school year. Since Sam travels a lot for work, Mary gets scared of being in the house by herself, and I end up staying there when that happens. She lived in a war zone for most of her life, and it’s the least I can do to provide her some comfort.”
“What about the letters?” she asks.
“What about them?”
“Jeremy said he stole some letters from you. Those were the ones that kept showing up on my door. I was having a hard time following what he was saying because I was groggy from whatever he drugged me with. One of them was addressed to M and signed J. At first, I thought you sent it to me because you’ve called me Em before. And the letter talked about you not wanting to be separated from me, and it showed up right after you broke things off.”
“Jesus, if he got my letters to Maryam, that means he was in my fucking house in Columbus. No wonder she’s been scared to be alone in there. I wrote those to Maryam while she was still in Yemen. We wrote to each other regularly, and we saved all that mail as proof of our relationship so we could apply for the K1.”
“So you didn’t mean anything in those letters to her?”
“No. We just needed it to look like we were in love. After a few months of penning my own, I just started using letters and love declaration passages from literature. You’re lucky I didn’t use any James Joyce for those letters, or you would have been really embarrassed.”
“Oh my God, my sister and I found a letter he wrote his wife in a book at the library once. He went on for ages about doing it in the butt while his wife farted. Ella and I almost got kicked out of the library from laughing so hard.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think the government needed a letter like that as proof of a relationship.” I laugh.
She looks up at me, her brown eyes shining under the fluorescent lighting of the ER room. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with love as I stare at her.
“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you. I kept telling myself that I needed to get through this week with the show before we talked about all this.”
“Are you sure you want to talk about this now? We can wait until you’ve gotten some rest,” I ask, rubbing her leg.
“It’s okay. I’m okay. This is more important right now.Honestly, I told myself that there was nothing you could say to justify keeping all that from me. That any excuse you gave me for not telling me you were married was going to be total crap. And then you had to go and tell me the only thing that could justify everything you did. All the lying, all the secrets, all the rules.”
“I wanted to tell you. So many times. And it’s not that I wouldn’t trust you with that secret, but I haven’t told anyone. Besides Mary and Sam, no one knows. Not even my family. Hell, I didn’t even invite any of them to the wedding. And it’s been eating me alive for six years. Other than Mary, I’ve had no one to talk to about this, and while Mary and I are close friends now, I couldn’t really tell her how isolating it was, how lonely I felt. How I felt like I had no control over my life. But I was happy to do it for her, and I refused to make her feel guilty for my decision.”
She looks at me, her brow furrowing as she works out her thoughts in her head, careful with her words when she speaks. “Is that why you became Daddy Dom?”
“Partly. I’ve always been into BDSM, and never shied away from exploring my dominant side, but once I became a married man publicly, I essentially agreed to become celibate. I had it in my head that I couldn’t risk it ever looking like I was cheating on my wife if I wanted our union to look believable. If anyone ever saw me at the club, I could explain that I just worked there, but it was the only outlet I had to control these urges I could never act on. And I didn’t want to get involved with anyone because I knew I couldn’t pursue it as long as I was married. I didn’t want to jeopardize her citizenship, and I couldn’t imagine any partner I had being okay with waiting all those years for me to get a divorce. So I came up with rules that allowed me to indulge in a scene at the club in private while also protecting myself from getting attached. And I pushed you away when I felt myself falling for you.”
“That’s why you wore the mask and disguised your voice. Does Alyx know all of this?”
“He knows some. He didn’t know I was married, though. He knew I was a college professor and knew my first name. And he figured out that I was Professor A-hole pretty quickly.”
