“Kiernan.”
Callen saying my name shattered the fantasy.
I blinked, disoriented. My knuckles had gone white on the arm of my chair. Below us, Gus had finished. The submissive hung suspended in an intricate web, while observers applauded.
I’d missed all of it.
“You were somewhere far away.” There was no judgment in Callen’s tone, only observation. “Somewhere that put that look on your face.”
“It’s nothing.”
“We’ve known each other too long for you to get away with deflection.” He rose and gestured toward the bar. “Come. You need a drink, and I need to understand why my oldest friend looks like a man being torn apart.”
We claimed a corner where we wouldn’t be overheard, and Callen ordered two whiskeys.
“They’re getting to me.”
“I suspected as much.” He swirled his glass. “Tell me.”
I did, but not everything. Not about the fantasies that had consumed me since I’d met them, not the bone-deepcertainty that they were inexplicably mine. But about the impulsive offer for them to stay at Greymarch that I was already regretting.
He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet long enough for me to wonder if he’d comment.
“You want them.”
“In ways that terrify me.”
Callen understood the darkness in me because he shared it—we’d recognized it in each other before we had words to name it. He knew my history better than anyone alive.
“What happened was a long time ago,” he said. “You’re not the same man.”
“Am I not?” I set my glass down. “The wanting feels the same—the intensity, the consuming need. What makes you think it would end differently?”
“Because you’re asking the question.” He set his glass down. “The man you were then wouldn’t have. He’d have taken what he wanted and dealt with the consequences later. That you’re here, torturing yourself with doubt, tells me you’ve learned from the wreckage.”
I longed to believe him. To believe the years of solitude had changed me, that I’d become someone capable of wanting without destroying.
I could still see the look on my sub’s face when I’d ended it. How our third had crumbled. And in my nightmares, I heard every word said when the news came a year later via a call in the middle of the night. It still woke me with guilt searing through my chest.
“I can’t risk it,” I said. “Not with them.”
“Then, they must leave.” It wasn’t an accusation; it was the truth. “If you can’t trust yourself, remove the temptation. Find another place for him to recover. Let them go before this becomes a fire you can’t put out.”
Sending them away would hurt worse than the memories. Oliver recovering somewhere else, Ophelia caring for him without me nearby—it was unbearable.
That, more than anything, told me how far gone I already was.
“When is the next partners’ meeting?” I asked, changing the subject.
Callen allowed the deflection. “Next month. Why?”
“Just making sure I could be there.”
He shook his head, rose, and clasped my shoulder. “If and when you’re ready to bring the subject back around to your guests, I’ll be willing to listen.”
Before I could object, not that I would have, he left.
I stayed at the club for another two hours, observing scenes I didn’t see, drinking whiskey I didn’t taste. By the time I returned to my car, the storm had eased and the roads were slick but passable.
