It’s a great feeling to like the product I’m advertising.
I flash back to Addie’s posts for Bean There Done That. The woman despises the smell and taste of coffee, yet she takes oodles of dough from the company to advertise their drinks and she has no qualms about doing so.
If I get successful at this influencing thing, I’m only going to post about products or places I truly love. I’ll be the influencer with integrity.
I catch a quick yoga class and then grab some lunch at a drive-thru. By the time I’m home, it’s time for my call with Rosa. I punch in her number.
“Hi, Skye,” she says. “I trust you got home safely.”
“I did. In fact, I have some good news. My best friend and I are back on speaking terms.”
“That’s great! How about you and Braden?”
“He’s still in New York, but I spoke to him after I left your office yesterday, and I think I had kind of a breakthrough.”
“Kind of a breakthrough?”
I laugh a little. “Yeah. I told him I’d talked to a therapist and that I had some stuff to tell him when he got back. He said it didn’t matter when. Whenever I was ready.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, and that was the breakthrough. I’ve been pushing him about his past. About his relationship with Addison Ames, and about his mother. He’s close-lipped about both, though he has told me a little about his mom and his childhood. Anyway, when he said he’d give me the time I need, I realized I have to do the same for him. I have to stop thinking about my own needs and start thinking about his.”
“Your needs are important, too,” Rosa says.
I sigh. “I get that. I do. And in my heart I know I’m not a selfish person. But this desire I have to take charge of everything makes me want to know everything. Knowledge is power, right?”
“True.”
“But he’s not ready to tell me about some parts of his past, and I have to accept that.”
She pauses for a second. “Are you willing to accept that he may never be ready?”
I draw in a breath. “I think I have to be, whether I want to or not.”
“Good for you,” she says. “I know it’s hard.”
“You have no idea how hard. Last night, I met Addison’s sister, and she was ready to tell me everything about Addie and Braden. I stopped her.”
“Really? That took some willpower.”
“You’re not kidding. I had all the answers right in my back pocket, and I told her not to tell me.”
“I’m proud of you, and I’d like you to look at your decision in a different way.”
“How?”
“It took a lot of control not to listen to what she had to say.”
Rosa isn’t wrong. “You’re telling me.”
“So there you are. Control. The only difference is you put someone else’s needs ahead of your own. By letting the information go, you were exercising the control you crave, just in a different way. And you did it because you care for another person more than you need the information.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“You’re young, Skye. We both are.” She laughs. “I may understand psychology, but I still have a lot of growing up to do. The more I know, the more I realize what I don’t know.”
I laugh along with her. “If that isn’t the truth.”
“So tell me. Yesterday we left with the question of why submitting to Braden’s punishment pleases you. Or rather, what we’re calling punishment for lack of a better word, since to him, you don’t feel it’s punishment.”
“Right. His idea of punishment is to deny me an orgasm.”
“Yes. So the spanking, the flogging, the tying up… All those things. You gain a lot of pleasure from that.”
I swallow. “Yes. Especially the bondage.”
“Perhaps you’re just a natural submissive.”
“Maybe, though it goes against everything I know about myself.”
“Sometimes that’s the key,” Rosa says. “We think we know ourselves, but we don’t always. Sometimes our subconscious comes into play, as I think it may have with your repressed memory of your mother in bed with another man.”
“Braden says he doesn’t think I’m a true master of control.”
“Why does he think that?”
“He says I only control myself, and that a true master of control will desire to control others.”
“Do you feel you control others?”
“No. He’s right about that. I only control myself, and apparently I’m not even good at that anymore.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I gave him my control in the bedroom.”
“And what was the result?”
I sigh. “The most amazing and passionate experiences of my life.”
“So you have no regrets.”
“Not a one.”
“Then we come back to the question. Why do you gain so much pleasure from what you see as punishment?”
I take a moment to think. “It probably stems from my insecurity. I feel like I’m only getting into influencing because of Braden.”