“It was dad. My birth dad, not Hank.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t remember anything about him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me what happened?” I can’t hide the hurt in my tone, and I cross my arms, willing myself to breathe.
“You were so little when it started. The abuse.” She shifts uncomfortably. “I was hoping you were too young to have any memory of what you saw. And it was never directed at you, only me. You were around a year old when we left, and I didn’t see any point in bringing it up and upsetting or scaring you if you didn’t remember it anyway.”
“But I was older in this memory, probably five or six. Not a baby.”
“Your dad was an alcoholic. The more he drank, the worse it got. He pushed me a few times, and I had some bruises. Nothing I could report him for without it being a he-said-she-said situation. I was still technically married to him when I met Hank.”
I stare at her in shock. “But you and Hank got married. I was like three at the wedding. There are pictures of me and Ethan.”
“It was for show. I was still technically married to your dad. He refused to grant me a divorce. We got legally married at the courthouse a few months after your dad, Matt, died in the car accident.”
Shaking my head, I try to make her words make sense in my brain. “I don’t understand.”
“I wanted to move on with my life, and Hank wanted to make me happy. The right man will do that for you. He was so different from your dad. Fun and adventurous and willing to go along with what I wanted. And it sounds dumb, but I wanted to play house. I wanted to get married and have his babies and have the family and the love I craved but never got from Matt.”
“But what does this have to do with the nightmare and the stairs?”
She looks away. “Around your fifth birthday, your dad reached out and wanted to see you. He told me he’d gotten sober, even showed me his AA chip. Something didn’t feel right about it, but he spent months convincing me that he’d changed. He wanted to spend time with you and have a relationship with you. So I agreed to let you go over for visits as long as either Hank or I were present, and you were comfortable with it. Everything went better than expected. He seemed to have healed, and you were begging to see him.”
“What changed?”
“He told me that he’d give me the divorce if we could work out a custody agreement. The visits were like a trial run to see how it’d go. After a month, we agreed to let him have unsupervised visits. Shortly after, you came home with a bruise on your shoulder. I asked you about it, but you seemed fine and didn’t know how it got here. It was weird, but kids get bruises, so I dismissed it. Then you came home with bruises on your arms and legs. And he said you fell down playing tag with some of the neighbor kids.”
A flash of the figure in my dreams pops into my head, but this time the shadows are gone, and I see my father’s face.
“It’s him. I can see him now. He’s not in shadow anymore.”
Tears spill down my mom’s cheeks, and she buries her face in her hands. “He… he hurt you, and I didn’t know. I thought he’d changed. The last time I picked you up from his house, you had bruises on the side of your neck, and I lost it. You were standing behind him at the top of the stairs. I was halfway up the steps when I confronted him about the bruises. He started shouting, and as he got closer, I could smell the alcohol on his breath and he reared back like he was going to hit me. Suddenly, you ran toward me, and he grabbed your arm, throwing you down the few steps between us. It all happened so fast. You hit your head on the wall, and I screamed for help. Hank came running in from the car, and we got you to the hospital. When you awoke with a concussion and a broken arm, you didn’t remember anything that had happened with your dad. So we told you that you broke your arm at summer camp. I should have told you the truth when you got older, but I didn’t think the nightmares were about him. I should have known, I should have figured it out. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
I pull her against me as she weeps against my chest. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
A shuddering sob overtakes her as I rub her back. “Really, Mom, it’s okay. I have a great therapist, I’m okay, I’m going to be okay. We’ll figure this out. Plus, there’s kind of someone that’s been helping me.”
She pulls back, searching for the truth in my eyes. Her shoulders visibly relax. “Is it a guy? I want to hear all about him.”
I tell her about Daddy Dom, sharing only vague details, referring to him as Don since I don’t know his name and don’t want to explain what a dom is to my mom.
CHAPTER 16
JOHN
When class starts and Emma’s second row seat is empty, I know I’ve pushed her too far. I struggled with whether or not I should reach out to her as Daddy Dom after class last week. But her professor witnessed her meltdown, not her dom. If she wanted to talk to me about it, she would have texted. If she had any more nightmares, I would have heard.
More than anything, I want to hold her in my arms and assure her that everything is going to be okay. But I can’t make that promise.
I go through the motions, barely interacting with anyone as they run through their scenes, trying to make it through the rest of class so I can check on her.
I’m not one to cancel classes, but I send out an email and add an announcement to our online message board letting the rest of my classes know that we’re not meeting this afternoon.
There’s a good chance she’s just avoiding me, but just in case she’s not, I need to make sure she’s okay. What the fuck has gotten into me? I don’t normally get involved in my subs’ personal lives outside of the club. But I also haven’t had many subs since meeting her. I’ve done enough to keep my room atPulse, but anyone I’ve engaged with over the past year has been platonic and required very minimal physical interaction from me.
And no one has held my attention. Yet Emma consumes my thoughts and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it as John, and barely anything I can do as Daddy Dom.
I hurry back to my place near campus, thankful that the professor I share the space with is in class for the rest of the day. Once I’m in my room with the door locked, I fish my mask out of a bag in my closet and pull up FaceTime on my phone, making sure my background is neutral giving little away.
