Of being his in all the small ways that made up a life.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, I just hummed softly as he carried me to bed, that sound of contentment that meant I was home.
Home in his arms.
Home in his service.
Home in the life we were building one burned piece of toast at a time.
She Thanks Him
One day left, and I couldn't sleep. Not from anxiety or resistance, but from the overwhelming need to express something I'd been carrying for days. Maybe weeks. The gratitude that had been building since I'd stopped fighting and started becoming.
Gabriel slept beside me, one arm draped possessively across my waist even in unconsciousness. I studied his face in the moonlight filtering through his bedroom windows—softer in sleep, younger, but still carrying that intensity that had undone me from the first moment.
Carefully, I extracted myself from his embrace. He stirred but didn't wake, too used to my movements now to find them alarming. I padded naked through his apartment—our apartment, really, though the paperwork wouldn't reflect that until tomorrow.
His study called to me. The one room that still felt wholly his, filled with medical texts and psychology journals and thenotes he'd been compiling about our journey. I wasn't supposed to enter without permission, but something told me he'd forgive this trespass.
I found paper in his desk—expensive stationery that felt substantial under my fingers. A fountain pen that probably cost more than my old apartment's rent. I settled into his leather chair, pulled my knees up to my chest, and began to write.
Gabriel,
Tomorrow the contract ends. Tomorrow I choose whether to stay or go, though we both know that choice was made weeks ago. Maybe the moment you introduced me to Mr. Hoppy and I felt safe for the first time in decades.
But before we cross that threshold, I need to say things. True things. Grateful things. Things that might get lost in the intensityof whatever comes next.
The pen moved across paper like confession, like prayer, like finally exhaling after holding my breath for thirty years.
Thank you for teaching me how to be good.
Such simple words for such a complex gift. You didn't just train me to follow rules or respond to commands. You taught me that being good could feel good. That submission wasn't weakness but a different kind of strength. That giving up control meant gaining something infinitely more valuable—peace.
I was so lost before you.
Lost in anger that ate me alive. Lost in the grey spaces between sleep and waking where nothing mattered because feeling meant hurting. Lost in the prison of my own construction where the walls were made of rage and the bars were all the things I couldn't let myself want.
You found me in that prison and didn't try to tear it down. Instead, you showed me that I'd been holding the key all along. That the door would open if I just stopped being afraid of what waited outside.
I paused, tears blurring my vision. But these weren't the angry tears of resistance or the desperate tears of breakthrough. These were clean somehow. Grateful.
You saw through every defense I threw at you. The cursing, the violence, the stubborn refusal to admit I wanted exactly what you offered. You weathered my storms without flinching, held space for my rage without judgment, waited with inhuman patience for me to stop fighting my own needs.
Do you know what that meant? To be seen so completely and not found wanting? To have someone witness my worst moments and respond with care instead of disgust?
You gave me permission to want things I'd been taught were shameful. To need things I'd been told made me weak. To be things I'd spent years pretending I wasn't.
You taught me that love could include ownership without erasure. That being yours didn't mean losing myself—it meant finding parts of myself I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten they existed.
The study door opened softly. Gabriel stood backlit by the hallway light, wearing only sleep pants, watching me with eyes that missed nothing.
"I'm sorry," I said automatically. "I know I'm not supposed to be in here without—"
"Shh." He moved into the room, saw what I was doing. "Continue."
"It's almost done."
"Then finish it." He settled into the chair across from the desk. "I'll wait."
