Page 277 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

He stops walking, turns to me, and lifts my chin so I have to meet his eyes. “Bren, I’m not that man anymore.”

“I understand that, Sir. People change. It just makes me a little nervous that she was a full-time sub and that’s what you want with me.”

Mac releases my chin to rub his hand over his brow. “I don’t know what to say to that, sweetheart. You and Amy are absolutely nothing alike. You’re opposites in so many ways I’d have trouble listing them all. I can’t imagine making the same mistakes with you that I made with Amy, but if you want to back off the twenty-four-seven thing until you’re sure you can trust me, I’d understand.”

I already trust him. He won my trust imperceptibly, moment-by-moment, and although I still struggle to let him in, I unquestionably trust him.

“We don’t need to do that, Sir. I’m sorry. I was just surprised. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I assumed your marriage ended because of your daughter’s addiction rather than because your power-exchange was fucked up. But I do understand you’re not that man anymore. It was, what, twenty years ago?”

“Twenty-five.” Mac nods, his eyes still searching mine.

I take a deep breath and let it out, releasing all those little niggles of uncertainty. Emily and I have talked a lot about those moments when the most important thing a sub can do is show her Dom that she has faith in him. This is one of those moments.

Mac smiles. “There’s my bold girl. You don’t back down from much, do you?”

“No, Sir.”

He takes my chin again, stroking with his thumb. “Thank you, Bren. Other than my daughter’s health, nothing’s more important to me than your trust. Amy and I never had trust. That was a hundred percent my fault. I tried, over the years, to regain her trust but she couldn’t forgive me for the things I did when we were kids.”

“Twenty years is a hell of a long time to hold a grudge, Sir.”

Mac nods ruefully. “I don’t know how to even explain it to someone on the outside, but it became this godawful game between us. Counting coup, we called it. Every time she did something to hurt me, she’d count it off against the things I did to her when we were in high school.”

“Did the scales ever balance?”

Mac shakes his head. “Not in twenty years.”

I step into him and put my arms around him, sliding them under his tailored coat. “Tell me to shut up if I don’t know what I’m talking about, Sir, but that’s fucked up. There’s no way you should pay for the mistakes you made as a kid for twenty years. That’s a life-fucking-sentence. Murderers get less time. Why didn’t you leave her?”

“Til death do us part,’” he answers. “I made the vow. I took it seriously.”

I hug him tightly, ignoring the fact we’re in the middle of a busy sidewalk. “I admire your?—”

“Stupidity?”

“I was going to say fortitude, Sir.”

He hugs me back, shifting the leash so it doesn’t yank on my collar. “Thank you, girl.”

After a long minute, Mac moves me back under his arm and begins steering us down the sidewalk again. “I wish that was all of it, but it’s not, and since Amy will probably bring it up when you meet her, you should know the rest.”

“I’m listening, Sir.”

Mac glances up at the cloudless sky, looking, I think, for forgiveness. “I’ve probably made it sound like my marriage was pure hell, but there were good times. Especially after I’d been deployed for a while. When I went home, Amy was warm and loving, at first. Things got better for a while after Naomi was born, too. Amy’s a good mother in a lot of ways and she loved being a mother, especially when Naomi was small. They were always off to another class: ballet, art, piano. Kid had a million friends. Every weekend it seemed like it was someone else’s birthday party. Always dressed to the nines. Nomes had it all.

“But when Naomi hit high school, it fell apart. Amy was on her about her weight all the time, even though Naomi’s never weighed more than a hundred pounds. I didn’t know about it until it was too late, but Amy gave Naomi diet pills. Naomi was only fifteen. They fucked her all up. She ended up in the hospital after taking too many. When the Doctors told me what had happened, I went crazy. I blamed Amy for giving Naomi the pills and Amy started counting coup and I lost my temper. I slammed my fist through the wall in our kitchen and stormed out. I spent two days drunk, sleeping on a buddy’s couch. When I went tovisit Naomi in the hospital, Amy had a restraining order served on me. She said I’d been violent with her.”

Mac blows out a long breath and I squeeze his waist, clinging to him to show my support, even though it makes walking awkward.

“I swear to you, Bren, I never hit her in anger. She had lots of bruises, and plenty of friends who were willing to say that they’d seen them over the years, but I wasn’t beating her. I did discipline her; she was my sub. We did lots of bondage which left her marked to hell. And I thought it was consensual, but maybe I damaged her so badly when we were kids that she couldn’t really consent to a power-exchange. I’ll never know.”

Doms are so vulnerable to allegations of abuse, and it sounds like Mac’s ex knew exactly how to use that vulnerability against him. I don’t even know what to think about the question of her consent. Could I have given consent that young? At fifteen? I don’t know. I’d like to think I could, but I’d seen a lot already by fifteen and knew I didn’t want to have anything to do with boys or sex. I waited for another year to lose my virginity, which at that age is a lifetime, and even longer to start acting on all the weird desires I had. What I do know is that the decisions I made when I was fifteen haven’t defined my whole life.

“Anyway,” Mac continues, “That was the end of our marriage. I moved out. I went to counseling for a year before I was allowed unsupervised visitation with Naomi. She didn’t speak to me for months. I did a better job rebuilding my relationship with Naomi than I did with Amy, though. Naomi forgave me. After she graduated high school, she came to live with me for a summer. She was healthy, happy, she even had a boyfriend. Nice kid, too. Then she went off to college and she started using again and it’s been this fucking roller-coaster ever since. Each time she overdoses, I have to wonder if I’m to blame for it all. If I hadn’t screwed up Amy so badly when she was a teenagerherself, would she have been a better mother to Naomi? Would they both have stayed off the speed? I don’t know?—”

No, that’s just bullshit.

“Mac, Sir, stop. Not everything is a consequence of what you did twenty-five years ago. They must have told you that in counseling.”