Page 56 of Elevating Eve

“I’m not a damsel in distress, and you can’t hide me in a fucking tower!” she shouted, fisting her hands in her hair so hard it hurt. “You’ve elevated me so high, I can’t even see the ground anymore, and Ihateit. Why can’t you get that through your thick fucking head?”

“Eve,” he said, his voice infuriatingly low and calm. “I don’t think this is a good time to discuss this. We’re both too upset. Why don’t we take a few minutes to calm down and?—”

“Fuck you,” she interrupted, eyes narrowing to furious slits. “Don’t patronize me.”

His face remained deliberately blank, but his hand gave him away. It twitched, as if he longed to take her over his knee and spank her into submission. “I’m not?—”

“Yes, you are,” she snapped, her gaze homing in on his hand. “And before you get any ideas, emerald. Emerald, emerald, emerald. We aretalkingright now. Nothing else.”

Closing his eyes, Jonathan took several deep breaths. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. He opened his eyes, fixing her with a hard look. “Say what you have to say.”

A pair of tears escaped her eyes as she let out a ragged sigh. “I know how hard it’s been for you to lose your dad. I’m so, so sorry you’re going through that. But you can’t use it as an excuse to smother me. I can’tbreathe, Jonathan. You have to let me breathe.”

He staggered back two steps, as if the words had been a physical blow to his chest. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You literally won’t let me go home. When I’m at your house, you won’t let me out of your sight. You didn’t even let me shower by myself today, for fuck’s sake.” She ticked off each example on her fingers. “You forced me to go to the hospital against my will. You went behind my back to have that door installed. And now here you are, telling me what I am and am not allowed to do. It’s too much, Jonathan. I can’t take it anymore.”

He blinked at her in what appeared to be genuine dismay. “I’m your Dom,” he managed after the silence stretched on for far too long. “It’s my job to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

“In bed,” she clarified, over-enunciating both words. “You’re my Domin bed. You get to tell me what to doin bed. The rest of the time, you’re only my boyfriend.”

“Only your boyfriend?” For all the understanding on his face and in his voice, she may as well have been speaking in a different language.

For fuck’s sake. This was what she got for dating a professional Dom. “I have no interest in dating someone who doesn’t let me make my own decisions,” she told him, her tone leaving no room for arguments. “I did that shit for sixteen years, and I’m not doing it again. The way you’ve been treating me since we got back from California...it’sstopping right now. You need to figure out if you can handle that or not.”

Standing there with his mouth hanging slightly open, he stared at her as if she just sprouted a second head. He didn’t say a single word.

Her resolve firmed like cement drying, morphing into something unbreakable. If a woman being in charge of her own decisions shocked him this much, this relationship had been doomed from the start. Better to know that now, before she wasted even more of her time.

“I guess you can’t,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Goodbye, Jonathan.” As she turned and walked away from him, dozens of tiny fractures spread through her heart.

CHAPTER 19

Jonathan

The five days after Eve walked out of his life dragged by, minutes seeming to last hours. He spent most of the time in bed, drifting in that space between sleep and awake, barely eating, too hollow to go to work. It felt as if a mild breeze could blow him away if he dared set foot outside his home.

It wasn’t until day four that Aiden showed up unannounced in his bedroom. “Enough moping,” he said, dragging Jonathan out of bed and into the bathroom.

Even if he wanted to fight, Jonathan didn’t have the strength for it. He simply sat on the tiled floor of his shower where Aiden left him, leaning back against the wall as water ran over him. “Please go away,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Do you love her?” Aiden demanded, not going anywhere.

“It doesn’t matter.” He sounded utterly defeated. “Just leave me alone. You have no idea what I’m going through right now.”

Aiden scoffed. “I’ve been here before. Exactly where you are right now. And a very wise man asked me what I just asked you. So fucking answer me, Jonathan. Do you love her?”

“Of course I do,” Jonathan snapped, glaring up at his friend through the stream of water.

“Then what the fuck are you doing, man.” He reached into the shower, offering Jonathan a hand up. “Get off your ass and go fix whatever mess you made.”

Staring at his friend’s hand without taking it, Jonathan said, “It’s too late for that. She ended it.” After a moment, he sighed. “And I deserved it.”

“It’s only too late if you’re not willing to change,” Aiden said, the water soaking his sleeve as he kept his arm extended. “Go find her. Tell her you know you fucked up, and instead of giving up, start figuring out how to communicate with each other. It’s not going to be easy. You’ll need to be completely honest with each other. Vulnerable, even, which I know you fucking hate. But if you don’t—if you go through the rest of your life expecting everyone to do as you say, never budging an inch...” Sighing, he leaned a little more into the shower, submerging his whole arm in the spray. “It’s going to be really fucking lonely, Jonathan. And I don’t want that for you.”

Communication and honesty.

The words echoed inside his head in his dad’s voice. Mere hours before Orson had a heart attack, Jonathan asked him for advice on how to have a real, successful relationship. He’d thought the answer was ridiculously simplistic then. But now...

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