Raze (Riven 3)

Dream job, dream man. Seriously, how the hell was this my life?

Dane

We were going to Felix’s mom’s house for the weekend to celebrate his birthday, but tonight Theo and Caleb, Rhys and Matt, and Sofia and Coco had come for dinner. I’d never had so many people in my apartment at one time. Hell, I’d never had this many people in my apartment total.

Felix was enjoying it, though. He got along great with Caleb and Theo, and with Rhys. But he’d especially gotten close to Matt over the last few months. Since Matt worked in the city, they often met up for lunch or dinner, and I was glad Felix had a good friend.

Every time they got together, Rhys would text me, ecstatic, and say that our husbands were best friends now. I would reply that Felix wasn’t my husband. Rhys would send a winky-face emoji and nothing else.

The truth was that I didn’t care at all about marriage. It wasn’t important to me, and it didn’t conjure feelings of permanence or safety in and of itself. If Felix wanted to get married, I’d do it for him without hesitation, but there were things I cared about a lot more.

I cared about the way Felix called me on my shit now, unconcerned that he might make me shut down. That when I did shut down, he gave me space to think things through but never let me off the hook for talking about it later. I cared about how some days Felix let himself show me the parts he wasn’t as proud of—the demanding, insecure parts that he called bratty and I thought simply needed me. And I loved it.

I loved when he begged me, when he told me exactly what he wanted from me, when he told me what to do. Out of bed, it made me feel good, like I was giving him a gift no one else could. In bed, serving him made me ecstatic with joy and lust, and when Felix showed me his pleasure, I felt it as my own.

I cared about the way he would grab my hand as we were walking or pull me down for a kiss because I was too tall for him to reach. About how at the end of the day he’d throw himself into my arms like that signaled the beginning of our time, separate from the time for the outside world. I cared about the sounds he made in his sleep—the tiny fretful sounds when I pulled away to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, the snuffles and sighs he made secure in my arms, and the sexy moans that spilled from his lips when his naked skin would drag against mine just right in bed, waking him enough to touch.

Over the last six months I’d reset myself. I wasn’t experiencing the desperate, conditional relief tinged with fear that had accompanied getting sober. These last months, I felt like I’d woken up and a weight that I’d never known I bore had been lifted from me like a soiled garment. I’d talked through the guilt of cutting back on the time I spent with sponsees with Felix and with Caleb. It was still there but lessened.

But it was going to a meeting and telling Vicki about the reasons behind my decision that had done the most to wipe it away. When I’d explained how I’d been feeling, she looked horrified. She told me in no uncertain terms that that was not the way a sponsor should feel. “Very few people stay connected to the program for this long,” she said. “Not because they don’t care. Because it can be painful when it doesn’t need to be. It can make life more difficult.” She’d laid a hand on mine and said, “Help that harms you is no help at all.”

It was what Caleb had said to me in Sleepy Hollow. Hearing it from Vicki, who’d seen more sponsors and sponsees come and go than I ever would, had made it easier to step away. To turn my energy toward passing along the things I’d learned to others who could do more good than I could. I’d assumed I would miss it, despite how drained I’d felt lately. But I didn’t. The rest of my life simply flowed in and filled the space, until there was no void, only fresh new experiences. With Felix. With the bar. With myself. With Skeleton.

That damned cat. She’d worked her way into my heart just like she’d worked her claws into every piece of furniture I owned.

We’d had a cat when I was little. Patches, a plain-looking calico cat with a sweet disposition who’d followed my mother like a shadow and died a month after she did. I had forgotten the day I came home from school and found my father, mute and shaking, standing over Patches’ body. I’d buried her in the backyard. Over the years, I’d often find my father out there staring at that stretch of grass.