Page 27 of Love By Design

“I’m not going to air out his personal life, but if Barrett wants to return to Rapture in any capacity, he needs to understand the expectations that come with engaging in that sort of play.”

“I thought you had a pretty thorough screening process,” I said, biting my lips between my teeth.

“Financially and socially. There’s not much we can do about the rest.” Landon cleared his throat, tone turning more business-like. “Either way, Barrett knows what he has to do if he wants to come back. We’re also installing monitors in the loft and the downstairs playroom to act as a second set of eyes for our guests.”

“That’s good.” I swallowed hard. My right foot was asleep, and I would have rather chopped it off than let the next question come out of my mouth, but I didn’t have a saw in my office. “And what about me?”

“Hmn?”

“What do I have to do to come back? Is my membership also suspended?”

“You’re not suspended, and it seems to me you already know what you need to do,” he said.

“Negotiate more clearly on the front end.”

“A partner can only hold a safe space for you if you’re an active participant in creating it,” he said. “I’m confident that you know that better now.”

The light bulb went on over my head, and I groaned.

“I do. Thank you.”

“Feel free to save this number, Silas,” Landon told me. “If anything else comes up or you have other concerns about the safety measures in place at the club, please let me know.”

“I will,” I croaked. “Thank you.”

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye, not intentionally, but because my hands were shaking so badly I fumbled the whole thing and disconnected the call on accident.

“Fuck.” I crawled onto my hands and knees, letting my head hang low, the weight heavy between my shoulders. I bowed my back and arched it, repeating a pose I used to do in yoga but hadn’t thought about in years.

I hadn’t heard from Marshall since I’d left his house on Saturday afternoon, but I’d thought about him every day since. At the time, I hadn’t understood what to do to make myself safe for him. I hadn’t even understood why I said it, why I wanted to. Marshall, on paper, was not a good road for me to walk down. He was closer to my dad’s age than he was to mine, and he was our biggest competition. My dad would disown me if he ever found out, but…was it worth it?

I stretched my arms and legs until I starfished myself on the floor, then I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. It was shitty pressboard panels and annoying overhead fluorescents that I never bothered to turn on. Everything in the office was dated and old, and I didn’t want to drown in the past the way my father was. Marshall wasn’t a way out, but he was abreath of fresh air, and I didn’t realize how much I needed to breathe until I’d been with him…breathing.

Picking up my phone, I opened the notes app and started typing out a message I wanted to send to Marshall. I knew better than to do it in the messages app because my fingers weren’t steady enough to trust. Some of the things I wrote him felt silly, childish even, but they needed to be said so I wrote them anyway, and instead of sending the message, I slid my phone across the room.

The words would keep, and it was barely three in the afternoon. I had at least two and a half more hours of work to finish before I could head home for the day. Forcing myself onto my feet, I headed back into the conference room, finding my dad still poring over whatever he’d been tangled up in on his computer. I’d been multitasking, splitting my attention between the bid and another article the editor ofLA Design Digesthad asked me to write.

“I can’t look at these numbers for one more second,” my dad said, closing his laptop and pushing it toward the center of the table.

I glanced up at him, brow raised.

“Maybe a change of scenery,” I suggested. “Go work at a Panera or something.”

He snorted. “What do you think I am, Silas? A millennial?”

I rolled my eyes and tabbed my own screen around until the outline of my next article took up the prime real estate of my screen.

“Go take a walk then,” I suggested. “Get some fresh air and come back to it with better eyes.”

“Why don’t we just call it a day?” he proposed.

“Excuse me?”

“I own the place,” he reminded me, as if I could ever forget. “The work will be here next week. I know the deadlineis pretty close, but I think we’re giving Marshall a real run for it.”

I was too beaten down from my call with Landon to argue. I took one last look at my outline then closed my laptop. “Calling it a day sounds good.”

My dad stood up from the table and picked up his computer, tucking it under his arm. “Bright and early Monday?”