Abby must’ve heard something in her voice because she didn’t seem eager to let her go. “You sound off. Is something wrong?”
From the back of the room came the sound of ice falling into glasses. Simon would be out soon. “The short of it is, Simon found out. Before I told him, and he didn’t take it all that well. But we’re working it out. I promise to call you in a little bit.”
“Shit,” Abby said. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
“I promise to tell you all about it when I call you back later.”
Abby agreed, and they said good-bye. Lynne had just hung up the phone when Simon strolled into the room.
He handed her a glass of water. “Who was on the phone?”
She took a sip of water and then another, thirstier than she had realized. “Abby. I was supposed to call her as soon as the practice was over. Obviously, I was a bit distracted.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That you had found out without me telling you. That the practice session went fine. And that I would call back later.”
He nodded and took a sip of his own drink. “Your unveiling, if you will, has changed the way this weekend will progress. As I mentioned before, you will serve as my submissive the entire weekend.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’m not pleased with your deceit. I feel like you’ve been stringing me along, playing a little game with me, to see how far you could go.”
She wanted to interrupt him, to assure him that she was not stringing him along and that she had not been playing a game with him. But she knew he would not welcome her comments and she would be speaking out of turn. Also, he had used the word “feel.” The way he felt was the way he felt. It didn’t matter whether she agreed with him not. That was the infuriating thing about feelings. You couldn’t argue with them; they just were.
“On the other hand,” he said, “I can’t say that on some level I’m not relieved you and Faye are the same person.”
She laughed at that, and he raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, Sir.” She took a sip of water so she wouldn’t laugh again. “It’s just, I’m glad, too. For a while there, I felt like I was cheating on myself.”
He nodded but didn’t seem amused. “Be that as it may, the fact remains that there is now a trust issue between us. And I’m not sure how easily that can be rectified.”
That sobered her up. He had told her that the blow job wouldn’t change anything. On some level, she realized she had held out some hope that he had been wrong. But, of course, nothing was ever that easy. The truth was, she had broken his trust and she was going to have to work to rebuild it.
“I’ll do whatever I have to in order to make it up to you, Sir,” she said.
He didn’t look convinced. She wasn’t sure if it was a wait and see or a never gonna happen. She decided that until he said otherwise, she would take it to mean wait and see. She had to believe there was some sort of hope for them, or else she would never make it through the weekend.
“Tonight,” he said, “we’re going to eat downstairs in the courtyard and then play it by ear.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t going to play it by ear. He probably knew already what he was going to do and didn’t want to tell her just yet. “Yes, Sir.”
“I’m going to go downstairs to work out a few things and to check on Anna Beth. I imagine you want to call Abby back?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’ll be back in thirty minutes. You are to be naked and kneeling on the floor in the bedroom.”
Her heart began to race, but she managed to get out a breathy “Yes, Sir.”
Five minutes later, Simon had left and she timidly dialed Abby’s number. Abby picked up on the first ring.
“There you are,” Abby said, before Lynne could get a word in.
Lynne couldn’t help but laugh. “I told you I was going to call you back. It hasn’t even been fifteen minutes.”
“It seems like longer. Now tell me everything.”
Lynne started at the beginning. Or at least at the point where everything had started to go wrong. She told her about Anna Beth, the computer hacking, her plans for this weekend, and how nothing had gone as she’d thought it would.
“Wow,” Abby said when she finished.
“I know,” Lynne said, closing her eyes. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”
“You can say that again.”
“I’d rather not.” She took a deep breath. “Tell me what I should do, Abby.”
“Are you going to listen to me this time? Because I remember giving you advice on this subject before, and you didn’t take it.”
That hurt. “I know,” she whispered.
“I’m not one to say I told you so, and I won’t start now. But I will say that things go a whole lot smoother, and easier, when you tell the truth.”
Lynne couldn’t see Abby ever not telling the truth. “Sometimes it’s easier not to.”
“No, it only seems easier. Trust me, it is always better to tell the truth from the beginning.”
“You sound as if you have personal experience.”
“I do. And I have a whole ugly story of how I almost lost the most important and precious thing to me in the world by not being honest.”
Lynne was stunned, but she could tell by the tension in Abby’s voice that she was telling the truth. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story, so I won’t go into a lot of detail, but I almost lost Nathaniel.”
Lynne couldn’t imagine Abby without Nathaniel. They just went together; it was one of those things. You couldn’t even think about splitting them up. “When?”
“Ages ago. Before the kids. Before we even thought about kids. Nathaniel and I entered into a relationship with each other and neither of us was honest about our past knowledge of the other person.”
Lynne couldn’t imagine that, not the way they were now, and she felt like she knew them really well. After all, she lived in their house. “What happened?”
“We split up. For months. And even once we got back together, it took time for us to trust each other.”
Lynne chewed her bottom lip. “How much time are we talking?”
“You know? That’s the crazy thing. I don’t think there was one moment I can pick out and say, ‘Oh, yes, that was when I started to trust him again.’ Because the change didn’t happen in a moment; it was hundreds of little moments, and it was only when I looked back that I saw we had built enough foundation to move forward.”
That was what she was missing with Simon. She didn’t have hundreds of little moments. She only had handfuls, and handfuls weren’t enough to build anything on.
“I need to be patient and truthful,” Lynne repeated. “I can do that.”
She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
Chapter Nine
It took Simon longer than he expected to track down the dungeon master he’d passed Anna Beth off on. He finally found him at the front gate, talking with a security guard.
“Master Neal,” he said, addressing Simon, “we ran into some problems with the submissive who interrupted your scene.”
He could have groaned. Of course they had. He should have expected as much.
“What kind of problems?”