1
Sam
Opening night. This was what I’d been waiting for, but now that it was here, all I wanted to do was
hide in the office and wait until someone noticed I was missing. My stomach churned and I made a
beeline for the employee bathroom. My only saving grace was the fact I was still able to hurl in
relative privacy.
There had to be something seriously wrong with me. Iwantedthis. When I’d first interviewed for
a management job at The Lodge, I knew I’d been in over my head, but Jack had taken a chance on me.
Since then, it had been nothing but chances. For some stupid reason, he looked at the ideas I brought
to the table and thought I was onto something special. He didn’t realize the ideas I’d come up with for
my final project in business school were a fantasy. They were safe spaces I felt like the kink
community was missing.
My only logic for showing him the ideas my professor had been so excited about, was that I had
bumped my head and was suffering from a bout of temporary insanity. Otherwise, I never would have
had the balls to show him my drawings and the business plan that had been fueled by too much
caffeine and insomnia.
“Sam, are you just about ready?” William’s booming voice stopped my race to the bathroom.
“Yeah, give me a second,” I called out as I sprinted to the end of the hall. Jack and I were going to
have a long talk when he got back. I was pissed that my boss had decided to take some time off right
when we were getting ready for the grand opening of the first playroom. He was out there somewhere,
but he’d said tonight was on me. If he wasn’t such a good boss, I’d have suspected him of not wanting
to be held accountable if the playroom was a flop.
I barely had time to flip the bolt on the door and throw myself over the toilet before the lunch Jack
had insisted I eat came back to haunt me. No matter how many times he told me how happy he was
with the progress, and that people were going to love my ideas, I couldn’t let go of the fear that it
would fail, and it would be my fault. Maybe there was nothing wrong with the way he’d run The
Lodge for years before I’d ever set foot in the bar. Maybe we didn’t need a space where littles and
their Daddies could congregate. Maybe I had myself fooled and I was enough of a smooth talker that
I’d convinced him to waste thousands of dollars.
“Sam, open up or I swear I’m going to break down this door.” I wasn’t scared of William. He was
