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“Hello, I’m trying to reach Gabe Campbell.”

My stomach drops, and a wave of nausea fills my mouth with saliva. Lurching forward, I reach for the cell, ready to slap it out of Knight’s hand, but he spins, effortlessly avoiding my attack.

“You don’t know me, my name is Knight Taylor. I work with someone you were in a relationship with, Anders Johansen. Do you remember him?”

I reach for the cell again, but Knight pushes me away, pulling the cell from his ear and pressing a button. Seconds later Gabe’s familiar voice bursts from the speakers, making my gut tighten and static buzz in my ears.

“Anders. Wow, that was a long time ago. Is he okay?” Gabe asks.

“Anders is fine.”

“Oh, that’s good. Jesus, I thought you were going to say he was dead or something, he’s actually on my list, so this is weird timing.”

“Your list?” Knight questions.

“Step eight.”

“You’re in the program,” Knight says, not making it a question.

“Nearly two years sober,” he says, sounding proud.

“Can I ask why Anders would be on your list?” Knight prompts, while I stand, frozen to the floor, desperate to hear what Gabe has to say, but almost as desperate not to.

Gabe sighs. “I was a mess when he and I met. We were both members at a BDSM club, he was a Dom looking for someone who would submit to him, and I was a messed-up asshole, using submission as a Band-Aid for a much bigger issue.”

“You lived together, is that correct?” Knight asks.

Gabe chuckles humorlessly. “I’d gotten kicked out of my place. I spent the rent money on coke, then offered to pay my landlord in blow jobs. Until then, Anders and I had just scened at the club. I knew he liked me, so I suggested we try a relationship in real life. He took me home, and I just didn’t leave.”

“Gabe, excuse me, but I’m a little confused. My understanding is that your relationship broke down because Anders was abusive to you.”

Gabe’s audible exhale has me holding my breath for what he’ll say next.

“Jesus, I told him that, didn’t I? God, I’d forgotten about that. We weren’t together long, three, four months, maybe a little more. He was a real Dom, not a wannabe. He wanted to take care of me, he wanted to set boundaries and use safe words and plan a future for us, and I wanted to take coke and pills and dance until four in the morning. I was a mess back then, and one day he offered to drive me to the club to meet my friends. He always worried if I took a cab alone, so he said he’d come and pick me up when I was ready to come home, that it didn’t matter what time it was, if I needed him, he’d come. I took a bunch of pills, did lines of coke in a toilet stall, then let a group of men run a train on me, while he sat at home waiting for me to come back.

“By the time I’d sobered up, the guilt, the drugs, the alcohol…it was too much, and I knew I had to end it with him. He would have wanted to help. He would have forgiven me for letting five random dudes fuck me in a dirty bathroom. He would have wanted me to go to rehab and get clean, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want his help, so I told him it was over. I told him he was suffocating me. I told him that his need for control was toxic, that he was using his power over me as a Dom to abuse me, then I packed my things and left.”

Both Knight and I listen with rapt attention as he speaks, but I don’t process what he’s saying until Knight says, “So, you’re saying you lied. That Anders wasn’t ever abusive toward you.”

“No, he was a good guy. One of the really good guys, too good for me, and I knew it. He’s a Dom, but he was more of a bossy teddy bear, a caregiver. He could never be abusive, he knew that.He knew that I said all those things so he’d let me leave, so he wouldn’t feel guilty for letting me dig my own grave.”

My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat.

“Gabe, he didn’t know,” Knight says, then hits the screen with his fingers and ends the call.

Turning to me, his expression is neutral, but his eyes are screaming with anger and sympathy.

“I don’t…I don’t.” I mutter, struggling to find the words.

“You did not abuse your ex-boyfriend, Anders. He was a drug addict who made a stupid decision to push you away because he had a disease and he didn’t want to drag you down with him. You did nothing wrong,” Knight says slowly.

“No. I did. I was abusive. I smothered him. I controlled him. I abused him.”

“No, brother, that was a lie, it was all a lie.”

My knees give way, and I sink to the floor, all of the air suddenly gone from my lungs. I don’t know how to process this. The dissolution of my relationship with Gabe has shaped my life ever since. It’s impacted my relationship, changed me as a person, and it was all a lie.

Instead of saying anything, Knight sits down beside me and rests his hand on my shoulder, squeezing me while my entire world spins on its axis and resettles in a place where everything is exactly the way it was, but completely different all at the same time.