Page 47 of For Her Own Good

“Starla. Hey, where’d you go? What’s going on?”

Trying to breathe and formulate thoughts at the same time seems suddenly overwhelming, and things are kind of greying out. I’d climb off him, stand up, and get away from him if I didn’t feel dizzy.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to. It is. I mean, I have a partner I play with sometimes. Not recently, but that’s because…” I definitely don’t feel like spilling any more of my guts to Lowry right now, and that includes the painful and awkward matter of me having control of my father’s company and not really wanting it, but not knowing how to get rid of it without disappointing him. Yeah, without disappointing mydead father, okay? But I haven’t dared go to see Jade because if Tad found out, I’m sure he’d find some way to use that against me in his battle to control my father’s empire. “But I totally can. I could call her. So, it’s fine. Just, you know, say it. That it’s not to your taste. Because people’s most personal and private kinks are totally like not really enjoying olives. It’s fine. I’m totally fine.”

Clearly, from the word vomit exploding out of my mouth.

“Who said anything about it not being to my taste?”

Sometimes when I was his patient, we would talk about something someone had said to me. Could have been my father, someone at school, hell, sometimes it was Lowry himself. And he would want me to repeat very carefully what the person had said—The literal words that came out of her mouth. Tell me what they were.

Because like some shitty, useless hardwired translator, my brain can take what people say and turn it into something awful. Seriously, someone could ask me to pass them the salt and because of my goddamn depression, I would hear it as, “You worthless piece of shit. How the hell did you not realize I needed the salt? I’ve been waiting for like twenty minutes because you’ve got no sense in your head and you’re basically a waste of oxygen. Fuck off.”

I’ve gotten better about that, partly through doing ECT so depression doesn’t hit me so hard, but also through therapy and having these conversations over and over and over. Turns out I can be taught. Sometimes. So, yeah, a lot of times I can replay the videotape all by myself and realize that no, she asked for the salt and that’s it. But sometimes? Especially when I’m stressed? It’s like I’m being dragged behind a runaway horse, and it’s crapping on my face as I’m tumbling through the dirt at great speed.

The point here, though, is that…

“No one?”

He nods slowly, seriously but encouragingly. “That’s right. No one said that. Can you take a guess why not?”

“Because you’re trying to figure out a nicer way to say it or maybe planning your escape route? I can tell you the sole means of egress is right there.”

Like a flight attendant, I two-finger point with both hands toward the door to the hallway. He squeezes my shoulders and then runs his hands up my neck to cup my face, forcing me to look him in the eyes.

I don’t want to. Makes me feel vulnerable in a way I’d really rather not, like offering him all of my fears and insecurities and deepest, darkest desires on a platter for him to do with what he likes. I feel my own frailty—which I fucking hate—down to my bones. But I do it anyway because he’s given me so much, allowed me the luxury of trusting someone with my most disturbing thoughts and urges without being judged, so I can at least give him the simple courtesy of listening while looking him in the eye.

“It’s actually because what you’ve said sounds absolutely brilliant. I mean that. Having that kind of relationship with you wouldn’t be something I would tolerate, it wouldn’t be something I’d gloss over and make you fulfill your needs with other people.”

His face is open, brows lifted—though not so far as to be surprised, he’s too sincere for that. Staid and impassioned at once, if a man can be such things at the same time. If anyone can, it’s Lowry.

“It’s… I…” He actually blushes, his pale skin turning ruddy and coloring all the way down to the collar of his shirt. Then he half smiles, shakes his head, not quite shrugs. “I don’t have any experience with it in real life, but I’d like very much if you were to be my little girl. I might not be very good at it at first since I haven’t done it before, but I’d like to think I could learn to be a very good daddy to you.”

I am clearly deceased because the only way this is happening is that I’ve died and was a good enough person in life that I’ve been escorted straight to my personal version of heaven.

Lowry blinks and draws in a deep breath. It’s possible I should offer up a response but I don’t have one yet. So, I let him exhale and stroke his thumbs over my cheeks while he looks at me gravely from under his heavy brows.

“Do you think you could be a bit patient with me?”

I’m finding it difficult to locate words, any words, which is probably why I come up with “how patient?” and he laughs.

* * *

Lowry

“I don’t mean that we’ll have to put this whole thing on pause while I study up and get some kind of daddy doctorate or anything, if such a thing even exists. I am, in fact, rather impatient to do these things with you, but I’m not going to be perfect. I won’t be perfect—ever—but especially not right out the gate. That’s all.”

How is this real, how is this possible, how is this happening? When she said she enjoyed being manhandled, I thought it might be my lucky day.

But to have her say she wants these things, that she is basically everything I could ever wish for and some things I wouldn’t have thought, wouldn’t have dreamed, to ask for? And the poor girl panicked because she thought I might not want those things too. I could see that simply talking about being little has had an effect on her. It’s as though saying the words had the effect of scraping away some of the enamel of adulthood and leaving her an exposed and painfully sensitive nerve.

And hell, do I understand that. I’m feeling raw myself. It’s one thing to have your mind conjure these things and give in to the sweet temptation in the privacy of your own thoughts, your own bed, your own home with no one else there as witness. It’s another to say them out loud.I’d like to think I could learn how to be a very good daddy to you.It’s dizzying in more ways than one.

“Okay,” she whispers, unbelieving, her gaze darting about my face, searching for signs. Signs of what I couldn’t say—perhaps signs that I can be trusted or that I’m indeed the worst sort of person and am fucking with her head. I wouldn’t.

It’s fair, though, that uncertainty. I’m not insulted. I feel the same kind of bewildered disbelief because what are the odds? I want to rush ahead, take a cannonball into this lake I never thought I’d even get to dip a toe into, but it also seems important to be cautious, careful. Because that’s something a good daddy would do. Makes me warm with pleasure to think of that, the possibility of being that for Starla. Also chokes me a bit, but I’m trying to focus on the positive, the good here.

“Can I ask…is being little, is that a sexual thing for you? Or do you enjoy it purely for the affection and the respite it gives you?”

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