Page 58 of For Her Own Good

There’s a rush my colleagues in the ER get that never did much for me. Too quick, over too soon. Not enough buildup. It’s perhaps a bit sick of me, but there’s not enough intimacy. Not enough time to get entwined with another person and their fate. Yes, losing a patient is difficult no matter what, but there’s a difference between having dedicated yourself to a stranger for a few hours and having coaxed someone to trust you with their innermost thoughts and secrets, the very clockwork of their minds, familiarized yourself with their emotions and basest and most generous impulses for a period of years. I’m enough of a masochist to have a strong preference for the latter even though it takes a toll.

The point is I shouldn’t be shushing Starla. I should be holding her. I can rock her, tell her I’m here, that she’s safe, but stop her? No. I want her tears to stop because the way my brain receives that message is that she’s in pain, but what if she’s not? I need to give her the space to do what she needs to do. Have emotions without making her feel as though I’m allergic to them, as though they scare me and she needs to keep them hidden because I can’t handle them or they disturb me. I only want her to stop hurting, and I need to let her tell me what hurts before I make another move.

In the meantime, I will disentangle us as quickly as possible so I can cradle her, wrap my limbs around her and lend her the warmth and shelter of my body, and try to be a port in the storm, something solid to cling to as her emotions swirl around her.

It’s maybe unfair of me, and definitely not something I would say to her, but it’s a relief in some ways to feel her quaking in my arms, the maelstrom of feelings overwhelming her. The scariest times with Starla, the times I was most terrified I was going to lose her, were when she would come sit in my office, her beautiful face blank, staring off into nothing because it was as worthwhile to look at as anything else. She’s most certainly not numb now, and even as most of me is fretting over her and fighting the urge to ask how I can fix this, I allow myself a small drip of pleasure that shefeels. Deeply.

Eventually her tears and her breathing slow, and while she’s still clinging to me, her nails aren’t digging into my skin. Her keening’s died down to an occasional hiccup and humming whines. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that she’ll fall asleep and we’ll talk about this when she wakes. I’ll hold her until morning if I have to, but I’m human and, though I’ve learned well to hide it, impatient.

When she pulls away, there’s a beat of panic until she offers me a tear-streaked smile. “Need tissues. I’m so gross. Like the definition of ugly cry.”

I suppose it’s true her eyes are swollen and red, and her skin is splotchy, but… “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you.”

It takes her a few minutes to wipe her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. Blow her nose and push the hair that’s gotten stuck to her forehead out of the way. And then she looks sheepish. Like she wants to hide. She’s not going to hide from me.

“Starla.”

“Mmm?”

She blinks at me, and I want to laugh. Is she really going to pretend she didn’t bawl her eyes out for the past twenty minutes? Not on my watch, absolutely not.

“Can you talk to me? Tell me what that was about?”

I’m not trying to play shrink, but there are some things that can’t be helped.

She studies the tissue crumpled between her fingers and I let her have the silence, hopefully give her the space to say what she wants to say.

“That…that was incredible. Really. And I’m not upset with you, at all.”

A good start. Maybe?

“But it was really…” Her brows crunch together and she frowns at the tissue as though it’s offended her. “It was really intense. Like, I’ve done daddy stuff before with partners. Being little isn’t…it’s not new to me. I didn’t get thrown into the deep end of the pool without water wings, you know?”

I nod to acknowledge her but not interrupt.

“But I kind of felt like I was drowning anyway.”

Oof, punch to the gut, and it must show on my face because she backpedals. “No, no. Not in a bad way. I think it was terrifying because it was so good and it felt so right and it was the sexiest thing I’ve ever done in my life and…it was with you. It’s edgy to be with you like that, more than it is with other people.”

Drowning, terrifying, edgy. Those aren’t words a man usually likes to hear associated with his sexual performance. Although I’m sure there are people out there for whom that would be a point of pride. But those aren’t the only words she said. Incredible, intense, so good, so right, sexiest thing she’s ever done in her life. That helps to balance the scales a bit, and if this is what’s going on in her head, no wonder she cried. That’s a damn lot.

“It’s… Can I tell you something and you won’t regret this?”

I don’t like making promises, but there are very few things—I can think of less than a handful—that could ever make me regret what we’ve done.

“You can tell me anything you like. I hope you will.”

She closes her eyes and punctuates her discomfort with a breath blown hard out of her nose before looking up at me.

“This is so embarrassing. And I don’t want to gross you out.”

I shrug because there’s not much that can shock or appall me. “I doubt very much that it will bother me at all. And as for you being embarrassed, I hope I’ve never made you feel that way. I’ve certainly never meant to.”

It has been my mission since the day I met her to always leave her feeling better when she’s left me than when she arrived. Or at the very least, no worse. It wasn’t always easy because she was dealing with some heavy stuff and sometimes therapy means feeling worse before you can feel better, but whether I succeeded or not, I did always try. No matter what her confession is, I won’t make her feel abandoned. If nothing else, I will always show up.

* * *

Starla

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