Page 48 of Disciplinary Action
“Yeah. She was playing her violin in the garden and I was playing in the sandbox, then she was on the ground. I guess I started screaming because my nanny came running. I don’t remember much after that.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” Gideon said, wishing he could think of something more profound to say but knowing that there really wasn’t anything that would make it better.
“It was a long time ago,” Cal said, voice stony.
“I don’t think losing a parent ever stops hurting.”
“Depends on the parent,” Cal shot back.
Gideon shook his head. “Up,” he commanded.
Cal fell onto the mattress beside Gideon who sat up, leaning his back against the pillows, before gripping Cal’s wrist and tugging him back into his lap until they were face to face.
“That’s better,” Gideon said, taking Cal’s hands in his. “Your father isn’t dead, he’s locked up. I know you’re pissed at him and you think you hate him, and maybe you do. Maybe you hate him, but…believe me, even when your father is the biggest bastard on the planet, when he’s gone, there’s still an…emptiness. Sadness, frustration, anger. There’s shit you wanted to ask and things you wanted to say, and secretly, you always hoped there would be time to somehow make things better.”
Cal searched his face. “Was your dad a bad guy?”
Gideon thought about it. “Not always. When my father was sober, he was a great guy. He’d take me to ball games and street fairs and the science museum. But when he was drinking, which was often, he was violent, mean, and unpredictable. He took it out on my mom, and when she left, he turned his attention to me by default.”
The look of pity on Cal’s face was almost enough to make Gideon stop talking. “Your mom left you with your dad? How could she do that?”
“My parents got married because my mom got pregnant and my dad had a good job building cars at the factory. They tried to make it work, and for a while, it did. But when he lost his job, he started drinking, and the more he drank, the harder it was to find a job until he just stopped looking. My mom paid the bills, and he resented her for it. She worked as an executive assistant for an advertising firm. It wasn’t the highest paying job in the world, but it kept us in mac and cheese and my dad in cases of Old Milwaukee.
“Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting on her bed while she would put makeup on, trying to hide her bruises, her black eyes, her swollen lips. Always wearing long sleeves, even in the summer, trying to hide his fingerprint marks on her arms, scarves to hide the bruises on her throat. One time, he even broke her arm. The last night I saw her, my dad beat her so bad, she ended up in the hospital. That was the last time I saw her. She just unhooked herself from the machines and walked away from him…from us…and never came back.”
“I just can’t imagine leaving my child behind,” Cal said, words thick. “Especially with an abusive asshole like that.”
Gideon gave a sad smile, more because he wanted Cal to know he was okay now than because any part of it was worth smiling over. “In her defense, my father never hit me while she was there. Maybe she thought I was safe. He was always trying to tell me that you never let a woman control you, never let her talk back. He said that’s how you became a real man. I hated him. I didn’t think anything he did proved he was a man. I always felt so bad for her. She was my mom. I wanted her safe. I don’t know how to hate her for trying to save her own life.”
“Well, I hate her,” Cal said, shaking. “She should have come back for you.”
Some part of Gideon agreed. Life had been misery for him once she’d left. But it was a lifetime ago. No use in hating somebody who probably hated herself enough for the both of them. He gripped Cal’s chin gently, brushing their lips together. “Thank you, little bird.”
“But it wasn’t your dad who gave you those scars on your back though, right? You said that was like a…punishment?”
“No, baby. That wasn’t a punishment. That was assault. I used my safe word, but he didn’t listen. He thought he owned my body, that he had a right to do what he wanted whether I agreed to it or not, and I was too new and inexperienced to know that this wasn’t okay. I thought pain was normal, that love was supposed to hurt like that.”
“But this wasn’t your husband, right?” Cal asked.
Gideon shook his head. “No, this was right after my father drank himself to death. I was sixteen, grappling with the fact that my father hadn’t managed to beat the gay out of me, and I was spiraling. I met a guy at a gay bar. He was a real alpha type. A man’s man like my father. Rough, dominating, liked to slap me around, call me names. Insisted on topping me even when I wasn’t into it, and I just went along with it. I went along with everything. I thought I deserved it. Then I met Grant.”
“You met Grant in a gay bar?” Cal asked.
“No, I met him in college.” Gideon looked at Cal. “He was an adjunct professor of my abnormal psychology class. He was a doctor. A psychiatrist. I think he spotted me long before I spotted him.”
“He was a Daddy dom like you are now?”
Gideon nodded, staring over Cal’s shoulder, faded memories pulling to the surface. “Yes.”
“Did you become a dominant because he died? Because you didn’t want to be another man’s boy?”
Gideon shook his head, leaning back. “I was always dominant. I always wanted to be the protector, not the protected, but I was in no position to care for anybody. Grant convinced me that it wasn’t real, that I just didn’t know how to be loved, to accept somebody caring for me and making my decisions for me because I’d never had anybody who wanted to. He said I was fighting him for control and that life would just be so much easier if I’d surrender to it…to him.”
“But that wasn’t true?” Cal asked.
Gideon was speaking without thought now, no longer censoring his answers, the emotions he’d suppressed for years demanding to have a voice. “I made it true. I needed it to be true because I loved Grant. He was everything I never thought I could be. Rich. Funny. Gorgeous. Charming. Successful. Respected. People stopped speaking when he entered a room. He won awards, published papers. He was everything I wanted. There was nothing he couldn’t have and he wanted me. I was special because he wanted me. He chose me, and I owed him my loyalty and my life. But over time, I just sort of disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
