Page 34 of Tormented Dreams

Bringing it back into focus, he tried to decide how he felt about the information it imparted and pretended the subtle quiver of the paper wasn't his hand shaking.

Here was something else he wasn't quite comfortable with, but something which had reared its head more and more in the weeks since he’d last seen Grace.

Sighing, he knew there was no way around having to deal with the reality, regardless of how he felt about it.

Grace had apparently changed her GP details to his practice when she’d come here that first time, something Xavier was still kicking himself at missing. He would have advised her against it, or at least had her placed on one of his colleague's lists, if he'd realised.

Now Xavier was being asked, as her registered doctor, to provide medical and psychological comment on her suitability to join a donor programme that would enable her to have the baby that she so craved.

Obviously, she was determined to go ahead with her plan to have a child, even if she wasn't in an ideal family situation, just as she said she would.

Well, there was no real surprise there, but Xavier found he didn't like the odd sensations pinging through his chest at the thought of Grace continuing on with a life that didn't include him.

He might have been doing his best to avoid dissecting how he felt about it all, but now, it seemed there was no place to hide any more.

Sadness: that was the first thing that ran through his mind at the idea of Grace moving forward without him. There was no denying he had wanted her in his life.

She may have spurned him and decided theirs was a relationship no longer worth pursuing, but that didn't mean his own feelings were quite so easy to switch off.

Was Grace having the same kinds of misgivings? he wondered morosely. Did she sit at night and wonder 'what if', just like he did, whenever he found himself not working himself into a hefty enough state of exhaustion? The type where he wasn't capable of doing anything except crumpling into a puddle of wearinessat the end of a manic day, the bone-weary kind of tiredness that stopped him from doing anything else but sleep.

Xavier knew he’d been using his work as a crutch, with the deliberate intention of not having time to think about any of the realities that were going on around him. But now, things had finally caught up with him and he knew he was finally going to have to face the situation head on, whether he liked it or not.

Slapping his hand down on the intercom, he did something he’d never even considered in all the years in which he’d been practising.

"Penny," he said to his receptionist. "Something important has come up and I'll need you to cancel all of my appointments for the rest of the day."

"Certainly, Dr. Diaz," came the brisk reply. If she was surprised, then she was far too professional to say anything.

He tried to busy himself by filling out the necessary paperwork for Grace's treatment, but every time he tried to concentrate, he found himself hobbled by the intensity of his own feelings toward the proposal.

Damn it, none of this was right. He didn't want her to have children without a support system in place.

And that had nothing to do with being selfish. Quite the opposite, in fact. The thought of Grace bringing a child up on her own, with no partner to share the load, with no extended family to support her, simply didn't sit well with him.

He didn't want to think about her struggling all on her own through night-time feeds and bouts of colic or infant sickness without anyone there to share the burden. With no one availableto give her a break when she was exhausted or suffering with the baby blues, or just plain needed a few precious moments to herself.

And it wasn't that he didn't think she would make a fantastic mother. Xavier already knew she had a whole lot of love she was just waiting to give and that she was mature enough and secure enough to provide a good, stable life for any child.

But when would she ever have any time for herself? Xavier certainly wasn't sexist enough to believe she wouldn't need some down time. It was a basic thing that everyone needed in their life from time to time, no matter how together they thought they were. It was something innately necessary to maintaining a healthy and happy outlook in life. It brought Xavier's thoughts to his mother and the rest of his extended family - to how close they were, how they were always there for each other, chipping in and helping out with enthusiasm and good spirits. Family was the fundamental core ethos to Latino cultures like his own. Sure as hell, his mama and his ninety-year-old grandmother both lamented loud and expressively about the fact he had yet to settle down and gift them with yet another generation to add to their already bursting clan. As if there weren't enough already.

And how was Grace going to get her kink fix? It wasn't so long ago that she’d ended up in A&E, trying her best to disguise the lash wounds on the silky soft skin of her body.

Like him, what Grace craved was a good play session in order to wind down from the stresses of the day. They might be peculiar in their choice of kink, and others may not understand the mind set, but for people like him and Grace, it was their way of relaxing.

Where was she going to find that now? Because she sure as hell couldn't go off for hours during an evening with a young baby, without some kind of support system in place.

He knew she hadn't been back to Club Risqué since their break up. But then, neither had he. The idea of scening with anybody other than Grace just didn't do anything for him. Instead, he had thrown himself into his work, and when Micah had contacted him and asked if everything was all right, Xavier had used his work as an excuse and he continued to do so. But he also knew from that short contact that Grace hadn't been back either.

Was she staying away because of him? Had she gone back to her old club and the dumb fucks there who couldn't work out how to tap into her deep well of masochistic affinity with anything more than a brutal beating? The mere thought turned his stomach.

Was all that soft, creamy skin once again marred with a violence that had less to do with true sadism and more to do with sheer savagery? Xavier had to forcibly wrench his mind away from the idea of her scening with somebody else before he gave in to the sudden impulse to punch something.

Everything that jumbled around in his head just brought up more and more questions. None of which seemed to have any answers, except those pertaining to his own feelings. There were answers there. He just didn't like them.

And as there was nothing he could do about them, since Grace had made it clear that she didn't want to see him anymore, then there was little point in pursuing them. The only direction left for them to take was a direct route to heartache.

The real problem was, Xavier had realised after a whole lot of soul searching, that he was most definitely in love with Grace.And what the hell was he supposed to do with that now she had discarded him?

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