26. I Want Forever

Yesterday, I texted Mark. If you don’t answer my text, I’m coming to France, which is where I think you are. If I don’t find you there, I’ll keep looking. Please talk to me.

He actually wrote back, surprising me. I’m at the Charles de Gaulle airport. I’ll be home late tonight. Come over tomorrow.

Well. It’s tomorrow now. I park in front of his house and stare at the building. It’s got solid structure. Sort of like Mark. He’s normally such a solid, strong presence in my life. Losing Evelyn has been the absolute worst, but losing Mark is almost as bad.

Taking a deep breath, I get out of my car and march to the front door. Mark opens it before I can knock. He stands in front of me, his blue eyes hard, his face a mask of nothing. No feeling. No anger, no sadness, no irritation.

“Hey,” I say. I feel like I’m five years old again, wishing my new big brother would like me.

“Hey.” He folds his arms over his chest, then drops them and sighs. “Come in. Get some coffee.”

I follow him inside, immediately looking around to see if Evie is nearby.

“She’s still in Paris,” he says.

“Oh.” Disappointment washes through me. “Is she…is she coming home soon?”

“Next week. For her sister’s wedding.” He faces away from me and pours out two cups of coffee.

This isn’t how I expected the conversation to start. I expected him to yell at me, maybe throw a punch, maybe hand me a shovel and march me to the woods to dig my own grave. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this calm, resigned version of my brother.

I take the cup he holds out and lean back against the counter, affecting a casual attitude I sure as fuck don’t feel. “Mark, I know you don’t want to hear this from me, but my feelings for her are serious and real.”

After a long moment of quiet, where he stares into his mug, he says, “Shit. That’s what I was afraid of.”

He’s just standing there in the middle of the kitchen, coffee in his hand, looking completely unmoored.

“You’re afraid of it?” I ask.

“If it was temporary, I could be mad at you and ignore that any of this ever happened.”

“Hey,” I say. When he looks up, I stare directly at him so he can see how dead serious I am. “I don’t want it to be temporary. I want forever. And I want to be telling her these things right now instead of you.”

“And…Caleb?”

“Feels the same as I do. He’s been harassing me to make you talk to me.”

Mark snorts. “You were really going to fly to France?”

“I fucking was. Japan, after that. I’d search the whole world for her.”

“This is really hard to believe.” He takes a sip of coffee and sighs. “You’re way too old for her.”

“I tried to tell her that.”

“The kind of things you like to do with women…fuck, man. I don’t want to think about it.”

“Then think about how much Caleb and I care about her, instead. How solid we are. Secure. We have good jobs?—”

“You travel all the time.”

“We don’t have to.”

“You’re my brother, Link. Her uncle.”

Nodding, I say, “I’ve always felt like your brother, all the way, like you’re more family than anyone related to me by blood. But we don’t share blood, and Evelyn never grew up with me as an uncle figure. When we first met, it wasn’t here—it was at a dance club.”

“That’s what she told me,” he says. “I’m just having a hard fucking time wrapping my head around it.”

“I had a hard time with it, too, to be honest.”

Setting down his cup, he moves to the window overlooking the back yard. The sun is up over the trees now, bright in a cloudless sky. It’s going to be a hot day, without any fog rolling in from the coast.

“And what about Willow?” Mark asks. “How do I know you won’t do the same to Evelyn?”

“I know how that looked,” I say, wincing. I try not to think about Willow too much, except as a cautionary tale for myself, a reminder to always, always communicate. “She was new to kink. So was I. Our relationship grew around it and we didn’t talk about things like we should have.”

“I know all this.” Mark sounds impatient. “How do I know you’re not doing that with my daughter?”

The very thought of Evie doing the kind of shit Willow did…it feels so fucking wrong. Willow quit her job so she could be home waiting for me, no matter when I got off work. She’d be naked, a crop balanced on her back, and she’d have been in that position for hours, without any communication from me. I would come home late, not knowing she’d been waiting in my apartment, to find her crying while still in position.

I block out some of the even more twisted things she would do, injuring herself to please me. It did not please me, it made me angry, which made me want to punish her. She would see the punishment as love. And the cycle would continue from there.

“Look, the thing you have to know, is Willow debased herself in a way to prove her love. To keep me. She thought it was the way to earn my love in return, but it wasn’t. She earned my affection, yeah, and she turned me on. But the way she encouraged me to treat her wasn’t at all sane, or safe. And looking back, I don’t think she was mentally able to understand what was going on and fully consent.”

She broke the three tenets of the lifestyle: safe, sane, and consensual. I’m still filled with self-loathing when I think about it for too long. She didn’t only hurt herself—by doing all those things, she hurt me, too, and she made me question my suitability as a Dom.

“You don’t think you’ll encourage Evelyn to do those things?” Mark asks.

“No. Hell no.” I shake my head for emphasis. “First of all, Evelyn would never. She’s more mature than Willow was—remember, I was twenty-one, and Willow was nineteen. We were practically kids. And Evelyn isn’t depressed like Willow was. We shouldn’t even be comparing them. They are two different women, at two different points in their lives.”

He nods, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced.

“Also,” I say, “I have Caleb to keep me in line. He would be another voice of reason if things ever took a wrong turn.”

Sunlight glints off the surface of the pool and reflects into the kitchen, making everything brighter.

“I don’t like any of this,” Mark says, “but I guess it isn’t really up to me anymore.”

“So you’ll tell me where I can find her in Paris?” I ask.

“No. If you truly care about her, then you’ll let her figure out if she wants this Paris job, without your influence. Give her some time to explore the city and decide what she really wants.”

“For how long?” Mentally, I’m already booking my flight.

“She’s coming back for Chloe’s wedding. Not tomorrow, but next Saturday.”

I nod. Caleb and I will find out the details and be waiting for her there. “Thanks.”

* * *