Chapter 29
LINCOLN
“It’s just his preference,” I told myself, standing in front of the brand new toothbrushes in the drug store. “It’s just a toothbrush.”
What was the harm in leaving a toothbrush at Hunter’s apartment?
It would make staying over a little more convenient, and it was also something I wouldn’t mind throwing away or losing when things inevitably went south between us.
But also…would things go bad between us?
He’d basically ordered me to bring a toothbrush over, what would stop him from ordering me to stay if I wanted to go?
And not like wanting to go in a this situation is toxic kind of way, but in a self-preservation kind of way.
Pinching the bridge of my nose with one hand, I dug my cell phone out of my front pocket with the other and did the only thing that had ever made sense in my life. I called my best friend. And even though he was at work, he answered on the second ring.
“Hey!” Silas’s voice carried genuine happiness.
“Hi.” Mine did not.
“What’s up? Are you okay?”
“Uhm, yes and no,” I admitted. “I’m trying to pick out a toothbrush to keep at Hunter’s, and it’s harder than I thought.”
“To…pick a…toothbrush?”
“The other part,” I said.
“Oh. Oh.” Silas hummed thoughtfully. “To leave at Hunter’s.”
“Ding. Ding.”
Unable to look at the toiletries for a minute longer, I walked over to the pharmacy and flung myself down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in their waiting area, phone still pressed against my face.
“It’s serious with him then?” Silas asked.
“He loves me.”
“Aww. I love that, Linc. You deserve that.”
The lie twisted violently around my ribs, and I screwed my eyes closed. “Do I, though?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Why would I?” I shot back. “There’s…I don’t know, Silas. There’s a lot that’s been going on. A lot happening with me and him that you don’t even know about. So you can’t really say that.”
There was a biting silence, and I replayed what I’d just said to my best friend, hating every scathing word of it.
“Does Smith know?” Silas asked calmly. “Should you call him?”
“Jealous much?”
He sighed, sounding like Marshall in my ear. “I just want to make sure you have the support you need.”
The idea was honestly laughable, considering the support I needed had moved out of our apartment and into his boyfriend’s bougie house.
The support I needed had essentially forced me into a studio apartment so he could live his best life, and I’d encouraged it every step of the way.
Patron saint of self-sacrifice or something much fucking worse.
“I shouldn’t have called,” I said, disconnecting before Silas could argue with me.
There was a part of me that knew I was acting irrationally, but there was also no way it was something I could get a hold of. With my phone still in hand, I texted Marshall.
Can I have Keith’s phone number?
Justin’s Keith?
Please.
He sent it over almost immediately, and I pretended the gears weren’t turning in his head about why I wanted to talk to his switch friend in the polyam relationship.
I’d already talked to Marshall about what it meant to be dominant, so he had to suspect there was some wavering happening.
I only hoped he’d not talk to Silas about it, which I also knew was impractical.
He and Silas talked about everything because that was healthy and normal and because Silas was a submissive and Marshall was a dominant, and Marshall told him to and Silas obeyed.
That all felt very straightforward and simple.
I fired off a text to Keith, reminding him of who I was and asking if we could get some coffee. He answered within a couple of minutes, letting me now he was out with a like-minded friend, but I was more than welcome to join them as they were already on their way for coffee.
I figured there was no harm in it because I could not care less if a stranger wanted to judge how messy I was, so I bought the cheapest toothbrush on the rack, then keyed in the address Keith sent me and headed toward it.
The traffic was impossible, but forty minutes later, I finally found parking and Keith.
He was at a small outside table on the sidewalk, his curly black hair falling across his forehead. His friend was…gorgeous in every possible way, maybe a little taller than average with long black hair that looked like silk in the sunlight.
“Lincoln!” Keith waved me down, and I stumbled toward the table, giving him and his friend an embarrassingly awkward wave.
“Hey. Hi. Thanks for meeting me.”
“Any friend of Marshall’s is a friend of mine,” he said, gesturing across the table. “Have you met Verity?”
Verity.
I shook my head.
“Verity and their best friend Landon are the ones who own Rapture,” Keith explained. “Well, Gregory and Aaron have a bit in it now too.”
“I don’t…”
“Gregory is Landon’s partner, and Aaron is mine,” Verity explained, pushing a plastic cup of iced coffee from the center of the table toward the empty seat. “We made a guess on your drink.”
“Caramel,” Keith said.
“I don’t hate it.” I sank down into the seat and took a swallow of the drink they’d picked out for me. It was really good, not too sweet and not too bitter. “Thank you.”
“So, not that I hate it, but what brings you around?” Keith asked. “I have my suspicions, but I don’t want to assume.”
“You know what they say about people who assume,” Verity teased, flipping their hair behind their ear. “It makes you an asshole.”
A laugh formed in the back of my throat, and I swallowed it down, but not before the noise made it out of my mouth.
As a silence fell over the table, I realized they were both still waiting for me to answer.
My cheeks heated, and I found myself suddenly embarrassed over the call in the first place.
They were both strangers, closer to Marshall’s age than mine, and there was no way either of them would even care about me, let alone my problems.
“It feels silly now,” I muttered, pinching the straw between my fingernails.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.” The two of them shared a knowing look, and I frowned at the condensation rings on the table.
“Well, while we try to figure that out, Keith, have I ever told you about how my relationship with Aaron started?” Verity asked.
“No,” Keith said, clearly lying. “I don’t think you have.”
“I met him at Rapture, and he was the most persistent little thing—” Verity said, only to be cut off by a short laugh from Keith.
“He’s hardly little.”
“Oh, I know.”
I looked up in time to see Verity suggestively waggle an eyebrow before smirking at me and continuing their story.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone for months. I finally gave in and went out with him. Mostly to put him out of his misery.”
“I’m sure that was it,” Keith drawled, swirling ice around his cup and rolling his eyes. He obviously more than knew Verity and Aaron’s history. I imagined he’d been there for it.
“I was very certain when I met Aaron that I was a switch. He was not, and I truly didn’t see how we could be compatible there…all things considered.”
If my ears perked up, I hoped neither of them noticed, but I imagined they both did.
“When all ended up said and done between us, I think I still am. At least in the heart of me, but I also think it feels very good to submit whenever it suits me…which is more often than not.”
I licked my lips, pretending I didn’t see them staring at me.
“I get that,” Keith said, going on like I wasn’t there. “When Justin and Micah brought me into their relationship, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. They were already very established in their roles, and Justin is…he’s an amazing Dom.”
“He is,” Verity agreed. “Comes by it very naturally.”
I thought about Hunter, and how easy it was for him to command me, even from his knees. And then I thought about myself and how it was so often a struggle to maintain my own handle on that control.
“I thought I was submissive, and I am, but it made sense for me to switch between the two of them,” Keith said, even though I had the suspicion Verity was intimately aware of how things were between Keith, Justin, and Micah.
“I’m dominant to Micah because that’s what he needs.
It’s what he brings out in me. And I’m submissive to Justin because that part of me is safe to breathe when he’s around. ”
Verity hummed their approval.
“Justin gives me a safe space to be both at the same time,” he said, and I scratched absently at the back of my neck. “It’s a real special bond.”
After that, neither of them said anything, but both of them watched me quietly, waiting.
“I, uhm…” Fuck, this was difficult. “I’m a Dom.”
Neither of them laughed, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that recognition.
“Or I thought I was. I…recently, maybe. I’ve been…things with my boyfriend…”
Verity took pity on me, reaching across the table and patting my forearm until I looked at them. Their expression was soft and earnest, finely arched brows raised over the kindest eyes.
“Aaron brings out parts of me I didn’t know before I met him,” they explained. “Is that what it’s like for you?”
“Yes, no. Kind of. I suspected before Hunter that I might enjoy it.”
Verity nodded, giving my arm a squeeze before settling back into their seat.
They wore a silk shirt with cranes on it, the flowing fabric never looking still, even when they were.
It was…hard to look at them being so stoic when my brain felt like it was actively trying to claw itself out of my skull.
“It doesn’t need to be a serious thing,” Keith said, and we both looked at him next. “I mean, it’s obviously serious, but it’s supposed to also be fun. You’re supposed to enjoy it, right? It’s meant to be a benefit not a burden.”
“If it was a burden to serve Aaron, I would never.” Verity laughed and chased the sound down with some of their coffee. “And he’d be happy with that, I think.”
“Things with Justin and Micah would be different if I wasn’t a switch,” Keith agreed. “But I’m certain we’d still love each other. And things between us have changed so much since we first got together.”
“Five years now?” Verity asked.
“Six, I think.” Keith shrugged and smiled. “I’m honestly very bad at keeping track, but Micah could probably tell you down to the hour.”
“He’s a bleeding heart.”
“Hopeless romantic,” Keith agreed, nodding. “The moral of the story is, there’s always room for growth and understanding in these kinds of relationships. Maybe more than in relationships that don’t play with power exchange. It’s…it’s meant to be fluid and evolving.”
“Like you wouldn’t have the same limits your whole life, would you?” Verity asked, tapping my arm with one of their slender and manicured fingers. “Even as a dominant?”
“No,” I rasped. “They’d change.”
“So why is it okay for your limits to change, but not your likes?” They chuckled. “And isn’t that kind of the same thing.”
I groaned, dropping my elbows onto the table and catching my face with my hands.
Verity was so fucking right. I’d locked myself into a box, built partly out of self-preservation and also a little bit out of fear.
Dominance had been a safe place for me when I needed it to be, but Hunter showed up and made a new kind of safety, a safety that allowed me to explore things from the other side.
If I’d ended up with anyone else for that very first hookup, it was very possible I’d still be thinking I was only a Dom. And maybe I was, but it was easy to not be that way with Hunter. It felt right to let myself have both.
“I can still be a dominant man,” I said, mostly to myself, “who is submissive to one person.”
“Yes!” They both said at the same time, Keith louder than Verity, but Verity clapped their hands and stomped their feet onto the sidewalk, their joy contagious.
“I’m embarrassed about this” I mumbled into my lands, loud enough for them to both hear. “You don’t even know me, and I just dumped this whole sob story—”
“What sob story?” Verity asked, curling their fingers around my wrist and giving my arm a shake until I looked up at them. They smiled at me so sincerely, it made me want to cry. “We’re just three friends getting coffee, talking about how scary it is to be seen by someone for the first time.”
“But also wonderful,” Keith said. “Empowering.”
Verity hummed their agreement.
“Our stories are all very different,” he said. “But submission gives me more control than dominance ever could.”
“Hey now,” Verity chided, tutting their tongue against the roof of their mouth. “It’s balanced and you know it.”
“I like to call him Sir when he’s on his knees for me,” I blurted, sending their casual conversation straight to silence.
A moment passed, then another, and Verity finally said, “Damn, Lincoln. That’s…really sexy.”
I laughed then, covering my face again with my hands and blinking back tears I didn’t want to cry in front of these two strangers who’d dug my brain out of a miserable black spiral in less than half an hour.
“Does Micah call you Sir when you’re on your knees for Justin?” Verity asked Keith, who pouted and shook his head.
“No, but he’s going to tonight.”
The two of them burst into laughter, and it was impossible to not join in.
I always felt good and secure when I was with Hunter.
It was the away times that had been the problem, but at that coffee shop with Keith and Verity laughing about something I’d always imagined to be so very serious, for the first time in a long time, I felt okay on my own too.