“I don’t know if Samuel has ever felt any of those things,” Bria says plainly.

“Well, I don’t think it’s just a feeling, or a collection of emotions. Love is action. Love can be in the smallest details, like trying to make someone laugh, or comforting them when they suffer. It’s putting the effort in to make things right when they go awry. Love is about taking action to make the other person’s life happier or more joyful, not just once but consistently. In little ways. In big ways. Love is empowering someone, putting their well-being first. And sometimes it’s having the bravery to let go when you know you can’t. That doesn’t mean giving up when things get a little rough. It means trying to be a better person so you can be a better partner. I guess love is wanting to enrich someone else’s life, and in the process, you enrich your own.”

Bria is silent for a long while. It’s already on my lips to tell her how I feel about her. It’s a confession I’m burning to let go of. I want to, desperately. But I’m afraid it will run her off. A thought occurs to me then, and once it’s there I know it won’t ever leave. Maybe she’s never been told. 

“Samuel taught me how to swim,” she says into the dark, jarring me from my thoughts with her abrupt statement. “I took to it quickly. I wanted to swim competitively, but Samuel said no, because of the scars.”

I swallow a sudden dryness in my throat, trying to keep up with her when I’m still caught on thoughts of confessions and love. “He was worried about you being bullied?”

Bria huffs a laugh. “Something like that, I guess,” she says, her cheek moving beneath my fingertips as she smiles. After a long moment, her smile fades. “Samuel installed the swim trainer in the house so I could practice against the current. Once a month he’d rent the public pool or he’d take me to his cabin during the summer where he put distance buoys in the lake, and he’d time me. He learned how to coach me to dive more efficiently at the pool, or how to do drills or improve my strokes. By the end of my second year, I was beating the state’s best times for girls my age. I could have entered any state championship and won.”

“Didn’t you have the urge to defy him and try? Go to a coach and show them what you could do?”

“No. I learned the logic of Samuel’s philosophy on life and purpose very quickly. He taught me to balance what would benefit my progress versus what would only benefit my ego. I learned that there would be instances where cultivating the positive opinions of others wouldn’t hasten my progress toward my goals. Some accomplishments, the ones that meant the most to me, had to be for me alone. So I only swam for him and myself.” Bria’s fingertips ghost across my chest, unaware of the fire she lights beneath her touch. Her eyes follow the movement as she slips into distant memories. “The first time I beat the championship record, Samuel made a fist and said, ‘Yes, Bria.’ That night, he took me to my favorite restaurant. We went to a movie. I felt like I had made him proud. What did it matter if anyone else knew?”

I trace a line down Bria’s neck and warm her shoulder with my palm. “Why do you think he went to all that effort?”

“Maybe to ensure I could stick to something and not give up until I was the best. Or maybe to teach me those lessons about hubris so that I could learn to enjoy my success without putting it on display for everyone to see. But now I think maybe it was also the closest he could come to loving me. Maybe he can’t feel it, but he can live the actions of it.” Bria’s eyes flash as they reflect the dim light from the window, bounding between my own. Her voice is quiet when she speaks again. “Do you think that’s enough, to live the actions of love even if he can’t feel it the same way other people do?”

I know without asking that Bria is peeling back a scab to show me a bloody wound. A piece of her suddenly falls into place. Bria is afraid. Everything about love is foreign to her. It’s a painful mystery. She believes she’s never had it, isn’t capable of it, can’t feel it or see or sense it, not in herself or others. She knows she doesn’t understand, and it scares her. “Is it enough for you?” I ask, bringing my hand to her face to trace her bottom lip with my thumb.

Bria is still and quiet for a long moment. “Yes. I think so. It’s the best thing I’ve ever had.”

“Then it’s enough, Bria,” I say as I draw her against my chest. “It’s enough to be love.”

Bria says nothing more, just nestles closer until she presses her ear against my heart. After a while, her breathing slows. I have so many questions, but they dissolve with every breath that warms my skin. I fall back to sleep with Bria’s warmth tucked into mine, dreaming of everything I feel but have left unsaid.

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21

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

When I wake a few hours later, Bria is still asleep. I don’t think we moved at all. I slide myself from her warmth and draw the blankets up around her shoulders. I watch her for a moment then back off the bed.

Looking around, she’s already straightened up everything from last night. The toys and chains and cuffs are all cleaned and back where they belong. When I go to retrieve a pair of pajama bottoms, I find her purple lingerie draped on my dresser next to a folded button-up shirt and a pair of jeans, a black backpack leaning next to them. Christ, one look at that lace and my dick tents my flannel. I scrape my hand down my face and cast a hungry look in her direction.

“Fuck,” I whisper. Duke’s gentle whine from his dog bed is the only thing keeping me from climbing back onto the sheets and driving into her. “Come on, boy.”

I let Duke out in the backyard before I head to the bathroom. On my way back to the kitchen, I set the automatic ball-throwing machine on for him. He lopes around the garden as I put on some music and start the coffee and wash strawberries. I set out whipped cream and butter and syrup as I make batter for pancakes. I’m adding another to the growing stack that’s keeping warm in the oven when Bria appears.

“Hi,” she says from behind me. I turn and she’s standing on the other side of the kitchen island, her hands in her pockets, the top buttons of her shirt undone to reveal a bra of nude lace with gold piping. Bruises pepper her neck and chest. She smirks when I meet her eyes after imagining what this lingerie might look like without the clothes. It reminds me of the look she gave me in the coffee shop that first day. Caught you.

Except this time, there’s no one around to judge me if I pounce. The only thing that stops me is the scent of burning batter.

“Shit,” I whisper, whirling back to the oven, the sound of her giggle chasing after me. I ditch the burnt pancake onto a plate for Duke and then start another. “Coffee?”

“Please,” she says, and I hear her slide onto one of the barstools. I pour her a cup and set it down on the island. She pulls the mug toward her with a smile. “How did you sleep?”

“Aside from our brief conversation? Like the dead,” I say as I flip the pancake. I’m relieved when it lands in the pan as intended and not on the floor. “How about you?”

“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep with a cock still in my pussy, so that was a first.”

“Christ, I wasn’t sure I’d dreamed that,” I reply and she laughs. My heart nearly climbs out my throat and dumps itself into the frying pan. Fuck. Since when did a woman’s laugh make me feel this way? Why do I know I’ve earned something rare and precious?

I finish one last pancake and pull the stack out of the oven, laying out two plates on the island. Bria looks at the food as though a spaceship has landed on the granite countertop. I wait for her to take a pancake but she doesn’t, so I plop one on a plate and drizzle it with syrup, then a dollop of whipped cream, a square of butter, and a handful of strawberries.