Page 94 of The Story of You

“Do you doubt my delight in your suffering?”

“Not for a second. I also don’t doubt how much it will drive you crazy to see my neck bare. Your possessiveness always wins against your need to delight in my suffering.”

“Fine. You’re right.” It’s been driving me crazy since I removed it. It churns my stomach and I wonder if he’ll vanish at any second as though my collar locks him in this universe with me. “But I don’t have to give you the leather one.”

I nuzzle into said bare neck and suck—hard—tugging the skin with the goal of a golf-ball-sized hickey. “There. Not bare.”

“Then you won’t mind me doing this,” he says, reaching for his neck, not allowing any room for denial.

I catch his hand. “Stop.” Digging around by the headboard where I saw his collar land, I fish it out from the pillows and waste no time securing it around his neck.

He snuggles into me all fucking smug.

“Don’t do any of that again, Lakshan.”

“Sure. So long as you don’t begin falling apart. That’s my condition—my hard limit if I were to have one. In that case, I will do whatever’s necessary.”

Authority is an illusion. It’s no match for free will. Especially when dealing with those you love more than the air you breathe.

Their obedience is out of respect and love alone and because they feel respected and loved in return.

“So long as you understand that if you do—no matter the reason—I’ll make this feel like a holiday.”

He shivers. “It was pretty awful, sir. Sugar bear? I might make that a hard limit too. I could require therapy.”

I roll my eyes, threading my fingers through his. Lakshan is one of the pieces I keep at the center of my heart—pieces in the center are less likely to fall off.

Not like the ones hanging on the frayed edges of my mind.

ChapterTwenty-Nine

Oliver ~ May 23, 2009

Darry kicks off his polished shoes, tossing his gym bag in the corner. He works on removing his black slacks. I raise a brow. “You didn’t want to change upstairs?”

It’s weird for him to have a gym bag in his own house—even for him.

“With the day I’ve had, if I’d gone up the stairs before hitting the gym, I wouldn’t have made it to the gym, little brother. Plan ahead. Ensure success.”

“Whatever.” Sometimes I think he forgets that I’m a super successful dancer. Just because I love it, doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The gym isn’t the most comfortable place I could be reading, but I am about to read the most incongruous moments of the story. They’re going to be painful, but I want to know my brother-dad better. Understand him. In a lot of ways, I do. We have similar threads. Like Darry pointed out, we live on an island together.

But he lives in a state of eternal torment. I want to know why.

I sprawl onto the sprung hardwood floor ready to dive in. Silas used to lie on this floor just as I am now, watching me practice until I’m sure his eyes were about to fall out of his head.

“Baba, was that landing, okay?” I’d ask him. “My extension’s shit, I’m trying to improve it.”

I’d learned to talk like that from everyone and no one corrected me. I was advised not to swear at school, but I guess in a house full of young men with mouths as dirty as a gas station bathroom, it was a waste of time to stop me from using vulgar language.

“You’re perfect, Eaglet,” he’d say, chugging back coffee to stay awake.

Silas doesn’t know the first thing about ballet, but I thought he knew everything back then. If Silas said I was perfect, I believe him. Darry was willing to critique me, even though he knew about as much as Silas.

“You need to float more,” he’d tell me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”