Page 18 of Healing Hazel
We needed to do a hell of a lot more than talk, but I didn’t need to write a dissertation. I’d gotten advice, I’d listened to others, but all that was really required was to simply give Hazel the one thing the Dominant in me demanded.
A choice.
This is the one and only time I’m making this offer, so pay attention. Whatever your head is saying, forget it for a moment and think with your heart. If you honestly can’t see yourself with me—not as your boss, not as a guy you’re dating—but as your Dom, now is the time to let me know. If I don’t hear back from you by noon today, I’m coming to get you. Like I said last night. I’ve got you… forever and always. Yours, Nigel.
About to hit send, I shook my head.
Start as you intend to continue.
Sure, it was a little too late to pretend this was the start, but when put in the context that Hazel had actually believed in something totally nonexistent only a few hours earlier, I decided it qualified.
I tapped the delete key exactly five times and then inserted six letters I hoped would make it absolutely clear to Hazel that she was exactly what I’d been searching for and she was who I didn’t want to live another day without.
Master Nigel.
A press of a button sent the text that would determine my future. Not that I had any intention of standing in the lobby of the lodge and tapping my foot for the next six hours. Shrugging into my coat and this time with keys in hand, I returned to my truck. I knew exactly where to go.
Chapter Eight
Hazel
It wasn’t tears that had my eyes constantly blinking this time. It was the clock in the corner of a screen located on the dashboard of my car. Unlike the odometer, which was ticking up with every mile, the clock was clicking down with every minute that passed.
7:42 a.m.
Which meant I had exactly four hours and eighteen minutes to make the hardest decision of my entire life. Funny, less than sixty minutes ago, I’d known exactly where my life was headed. Anywhere but Rawhide Ranch. Forget the job, forget the university, I could find another job and enroll in classes somewhere other than the very place that was responsible for ripping my heart from my chest. I’d even started throwing clothes into a suitcase the moment I’d run up the stairs to my apartment in Porter’s Corner.
Then my phone had begun vibrating. I’d considered ignoring it, but it wasn’t just buzzing, it was playing the beginning strains ofGod Save the Queenwhich never failed to make me smile. Even as messed up as my emotions were at the moment, I still recalled the first time I’d heard Nigel singing during the Ranch’sIndependence Day festivities. I’d subtly dug my elbow into his ribs and told him he needed to learn the proper words to one of America’s favorite anthems.
He’d looked down at me, cocked that eyebrow, and said, “Seriously? Take a moment and think about that.”
I’d rolled my eyes and then did as he suggested and felt my entire face flushing. He knew when the exact moment of realization happened because the eyebrow lowered and he’d chuckled as he bent down and kissed the top of my head as I mumbled, “Fine, I guess you Brits didn’t steal it from us after all.”
“I’d say not considering we laid claim to that tune almost a century before your Samuel Francis Smith wroteMy Country Tis of Thee.”
That memory was what had me looking at my phone instead of ignoring it. A new text message appeared at the swipe of my finger. The first word I saw was my name… the name I’d so wanted to see last night. The following lines had my knees threatening to give way and me dropping onto the bed beside the suitcase.
For the first time in years, I remembered something I’d forgotten Something I never should have included when locking that box. .It wasn’t the fact that for the first time Nigel had addressed himself asMaster. It also wasn’t that he’d given me a deadline I had no doubt was set in stone. It was because doing both reminded me that Dominants weren’t the ones in control. At least not any worthy of the very title. Dominants had no power without it first being bestowed on them.
Submissives not only granted that power, they offered thegiftof their submission to someone who’d earned it.
Did that mean mistakes didn’t happen. No, if there was one thing that happened with regularity it waslife.Life happenedevery minute of every day and with that came errors in judgment as well as abuse of powers.
I’d left the suitcase and the apartment and run to my car. And now, I was about to reach my destination with a full…
8:13 a.m.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes until, one way or another, the rest of my life began.
Parking wasted another few minutes but also served to cut the clock off, at least visually. It didn’t occur to me until I was halfway across the parking lot that the very person I sought might not be here. It had been almost instinctual to go to the last place I’d seen him.
Stop! You’re not going down that road. So far you’re batting zero by making assumptions. It’s time to get the facts and then deal with the choices…
“Because even though I’d forgotten I have choices, one man hasn’t,” I said, not caring if I was speaking to myself. I needed to hear those words. Hell, I might need to both say and hear them a million times, but that was fine.
I pushed through the door already scanning the room. And when my eyes found him, I might have stumbled a bit, but I didn’t fall. It was as if the time I’d been so conscious of before suddenly suspended. Everything disappeared except for the man who was looking at me as if I were the one person he’d never expected to encounter here again and the man he’d been deep in conversation with a moment ago. A man who was now turning as if in slow motion, and when his eyes met mine, I did the same thing I’d done the last two times I’d seen him.
I ran.
