Page 34 of Bound and Branded

“I’m really sorry about your mom,” she says. “Mine just left. I’m really difficult. Apparently. She was never happy after I was born.”

“Oh, that doesn’t have anything to do with you,” I say.

“How do you know?”

“Because it doesn’t. Because parents are just a collection of their own issues. Which is something I wish I would’ve understood a lot younger. I used to be fucking furious with my mom. For not being able to get the house clean. For not being able to hold on to me. For quitting on me when I needed her. Because I thought of her suicide as another way she abandoned me. But that was childish stuff. She was just a person. Just like me. And I sure as fuck don’t have everything worked out. Not only that, she was a woman with… I think a lot of mental health issues. No one around to give her support. No one to give a fuck. She did the best she could.”

“Well, maybe the best my mom could do was leaving. But the end result is the same. My dad’s a mess because he can’t cope without her, and I’m left to pick up all the pieces.”

“Your dad could pick up some of his own fucking pieces, Avery. It shouldn’t be you. It’s not your mom’s job to raise him. Though, it was her job to raise you. And you’re right about that. She should’ve stuck with you. But… There are things people can’t do. We’re all just trying.”

“Well it’s heavy,” she says. “Everything feels so heavy.”

“That’s why we fit,” I say. “Because when you’re with me you don’t have any responsibilities.”

She looks down. “Don’t be offended by this. But I have a hard time with that. With what it says about me that I need a man to… Take my power away from me.”

“That’s not what you want. You don’t want your power taken away from you. You just want to not carry everything for a little bit. And there’s nothing weird about that. There’s nothing fucked up about it. You’re tired. And in your position who wouldn’t be?”

“I don’t know. I love my dad. He needs me and…”

“And you need him. But he’s not stepping up in the way that he should. And hell, I don’t even know who my dad is, so I guess your dad is a lot better than that.”

“You have more sympathy for my mom.”

“I think I have more sympathy for others in general. Just based on my own experience.”

She seems to consider that. “That makes sense. I guess.” We finished eating in relative silence. “I… No one ever talks about your mom.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, people do talk about you. I did know that you were in foster care. I did know that you had done some internet thing.I… I didn’t know that you were Dom. And I didn’t know about how you lost your mother.”

“It’s one of those things people whisper about. But they don’t talk about it. Because there’s so much stigma around all that stuff. And it’s not fair. I’ve come to a place where I really believe that she did her best. Where I really believe that she thought I would be better off, that everyone would be better off if she wasn’t here. And the thing that makes me really sad about that is I wish I had been able to make her see that wasn’t true. But we were both just products of a system that didn’t function as well as it should. I don’t actually blame anyone for that. There were plenty of people who did their best.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s really awful.”

I nod slowly. “It is.”

Silence lapses between us. “I was twenty-five when I first tried BDSM.”

“Older than me,” she says.

“Fuck. Thanks for that.”

She laughs. “Sorry. I didn’t know that was a sore spot. I thought men liked an age gap.”

“I’ve never given one much thought either way.” It was a lie. I’ve given a hell of a lot of thought to our age gap. I don’t like it. It’s not right. It’s one of the reasons I should’ve stayed away from her. I’ve had sex with subs that were younger than me, subs that were older than me. In the context of the app and scenes, it doesn’t really matter. A lot of times we are on equal footing. I’ve had subs that were very experienced in their mid-twenties. And inexperienced subs in their forties. That’s typically how I gauge things. But with her it’s different. Because I do know her.

Have known her for a while.

And I know all the circumstances of her life, the way that her dad is frittering away their money. It makes me want to offerthings that I can’t. Makes me want to give more. More than I have.

So yeah, it was true in every case except with her.

“All right,” she says. “Tell me the story.”

“I knew I was interested. Like you I had full access to the internet.”

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