Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Catharina
Fury burns along my veins as I grip my Little girl’s arm, pulling her along beside me as I hurry out of the waterpark. My stomach churns with it, along with fear and guilt, all of those emotions making me feel vaguely ill as Gavin holds the back door open for us, his expression full of worry.
“Is everything okay? Is Alexis hurt?”
“Alexis is fine. Her bottom, however, will not be by the time I’m through with her.”
Gavin’s eyes widen, sympathy swirling in the pale brown as I nudge Alexis through the door in front of me and slide in after her.
The moment I settle on the seat, I reach for her, tugging my naughty little girl over my knee and reaching for the waistband of her bathing suit bottoms. “Mommy is very, very disappointed in your behavior today, Alexis Paige.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy, I’m sorry!” Her wails pierce the air before I even get her diaper off her, and once she’s completely bare, she throws a hand back, trying to block the punishment she has coming.
Linking my fingers with hers, I pin her hand to the small of her back and give her thighs two hard swats. “It’s not me you need to apologize to, little girl. It’s Tori and your Uncle Max. Which is exactly what you’ll be doing later this afternoon.”
I’m tempted to pull my brush from her diaper bag, but I’m honestly not sure I trust myself with it at the moment, given how angry I am. Once she’s made her apologies, however, she’ll be going back over my knee for a very thorough paddling while her Uncle Max watches.
For now, I settle for my hand, knowing perfectly well I can make a damn good impression with just my palm as I swat her bare, damp bottom. “I cannot believe the way you behaved today, Alexis Paige. That is not how my Little girl acts in public. That is not how my Little girl treats her friends.”
Feet kicking, hips wriggling, Alexis does everything in her power to escape her punishment as I pepper her backside with firm spanks, her damp skin turning bright pink beneath my palm. “I’m sorry Mommy, I’m sorry! I won’t ever do it again, I promise!”
“You’re right. You absolutely will not do anything of the sort ever again, little girl. Because if you do, Mommy will punish your bottom inside and out and I won’t care who’s watching. Am I making myself perfectly clear, Alexis Paige?”
“Yes, Mommy!”
It’s lucky for my Little girl that the ride home isn’t very long, because I intend to use every second of our drive to impress upon her how unacceptable her behavior is.
Which I do, and by the time Gavin parks the car in our driveway, Alexis’s poor bottom is a bright, angry red and she’s draped heavily over my knee, sobbing uncontrollably.
The back door opens, and Gavin peeks inside, his expression once more a mask of sympathy. “Here. Let me take her.”
I want to argue. For the first time since I brought Alexis to the island, I resent that I can’t carry her to the nursery on my own.
It’s not her fault, of course, it’s just a matter of physics and the fact that Gavin has a solid foot of pure muscle on me when I’m not wearing my heels, but that means nothing to my aching heart as I nod and let Gavin gather her in his arms. Tears blur my vision as Alexis wraps herself around him, her body shaking with sobs as Gavin gently bounces her in his arms.
“Shhh, little one. Your Mommy will be right behind us. It’s all right, sweetheart.”
Turning his back on me, he carries her toward the house and I sigh as I slide from the car, making sure to grab her diaper bag before shutting the door behind me.
Gavin has such a soft spot for my Little girl, and the odds are high he’ll be giving me the silent treatment the rest of the day now that he’s seen how harshly she’s been punished.
And while I admire his devotion, I’m not sure I can handle his rejection right now.
So I do what I do best, wrapping the cloak of icy indifference I’ve worn in every boardroom I’ve ever walked into around me as tightly as I possibly can, and follow him inside.
By the time I make it up the stairs to her nursery, he already has a fresh diaper on her and is laying her gently down in her crib.
Her sobs have quieted, and a peek over the railing of her crib shows me she’s cried herself to sleep.
Dammit. So much for snuggling her and telling her how much I love her before putting her down for a nap.
My heart in my throat, I lean down to brush a kiss over her hair. “Sleep tight, my little imp. Mommy loves you, so very much. We’ll talk more when you wake.”
Part of me wants to stay, to watch over her while she sleeps. But I need space to think, to get my head on straight before we have the talk we so clearly need to have.
So even though it feels like leaving my very heart behind, I force myself to exit her nursery. Gavin is there, waiting in the hall, and I try to pull that icy cloak around me once more.
“Look, if you’re going to give me shit about spanking her, then it’s going to have to wait. It’s been a long fucking day and—oof.”
The rest of my rant is cut short by Gavin’s arms wrapping around me, squeezing me tightly to his broad chest.
“You’re a good Mommy, Cat. I know you don’t always believe that, so I’m telling you now. You're a good Mommy, and I know you had to have had your reasons for being so harsh with her.”
Closing my eyes against the welling tears, I give myself a moment, just a moment to soak in his comfort. “Thank you, Gavin. That means a lot.”
“You’re welcome.” Pulling away, he offers up that mischievous grin I’ve grown so accustomed to over the years. “Go on down to your office, put on that broody music you like so much, and I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and a brownie.”
“That… sounds lovely, actually. But let’s wait on the brownie until after Alexis wakes up from her nap.”
Gavin’s brows shoot up to his hairline and I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t give me that look. I may be strict, but I’m not enough of a monster to deprive my Little girl of her favorite treat.”
“Noted. Coffee now, brownies when Alexis gets up.”
“Thank you, Gavin.”
As he makes his way downstairs to make my coffee, I turn to stare at the closed nursery door. Something about today still isn’t sitting right in my gut, but I can’t quite figure out what it is.
Soon. Once Alexis wakes from her nap, we can sit down with our brownies and talk about today, and hopefully I can get to the bottom of what happened with my sweet babygirl.
Lexie
The first thing I notice when I wake from my nap is how much my butt still hurts. The second thing I notice is that I’m completely, utterly alone in my nursery.
My stomach twists at both realizations as I push myself up, wincing at the lingering pain in my bottom. It wasn’t the worst spanking ever, definitely not as bad as the whipping I got for my first-day-of-school tantrum, but it was way harder than Mommy usually spanks.
Because you hurt her precious Tori, and she loves Tori more than you.
Fresh tears well in my eyes as the truth settles heavy in my chest. I’ve always known it was true. Known that Catharina would realize someday I’m not the Little girl she wants, and who she really wants is Victoria.
It doesn’t matter how hard I’ve tried to be good.
How perfect I’ve been. Snuggling Tori the way she can’t snuggle me, giving Tori her milk, spanking me the whole way home, passing me off to Gavin like I was some kind of burden she couldn’t be bothered with any longer.
All of it has made one thing crystal clear: I no longer have a place as Catharina Montgomery’s Little girl.
Swiping at my streaming eyes, I force myself to breathe past the ache in my chest. For weeks now, I’ve been watching my Mommy and Gavin unlock the crib, set the alarms, all the things I need to know to get the fuck out out of here and off this island.
And, as luck would have it, I overheard Mommy and Uncle Max talking about the lumberjacks and how they’re leaving again today.
Apparently they’ve been making back-to-back trips for almost three years while the island was under construction, but now that it’s mostly finished, they’re headed home for a while.
It’s almost like the Universe is telling me this is the right move.
Once my breathing is more under control, I reach for the latches on the underside of the crib railing, gently lowering them just in case Mommy is listening in through the monitor.
No. Not Mommy. Catharina. Once I leave the island, she won’t be my Mommy anymore, so it’s better if I stop thinking about her that way sooner rather than later. Ripping the bandaid off, as they say.
Speaking of ripping things off… I lower myself to the ground and then hesitate, looking down at my diaper. Better, probably, to just get rid of it. I can move better without all that bulky cotton wrapped around me, and I won’t be using them anymore once I’m on the ship.
To my surprise, tears once again fill my eyes as a sense of loss hollows out my chest. Not loss at the diaper, necessarily, but the loss of those moments with Mom—Catharina changing me, telling me what a good girl I was for wetting my diaper for her.
If I’ll miss anything about the island, it’s that sense of belonging I’d had for the first time in my life.
It doesn’t seem to matter to my heart that none of it was real.
It felt real, and losing that feeling is ripping a hole inside me I don’t think will ever be filled.
So like the metaphorical bandaid, I rip my diaper off, tossing it and my bikini top to the side as I hurry into my closet. Thank god for our trips to the farm, because I don’t think I’d be very comfortable wearing one of Solene’s dresses on the ship, especially without a diaper underneath.
I pause in front of the one-of-a-kind dress Solene made just for me, running my hands over the rainbow tulle. That ache in my chest threatens to crack me clean in two, so I force myself to turn away from the beautiful creation to go hunting through my dresser drawers.
Clad in a pair of denim overalls and a t-shirt, I slip from my bedroom, carefully checking each direction in the hallway and listening for either Gavin or Catharina. When I don’t see or hear either of them, I creep toward the stairs, pausing every so often to check again.
At the bottom of the steps, I give myself a moment to pause and breathe. But then the sound of Catharina’s voice freezes me in place, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Holding my breath, I listen again, straining to hear which direction she might be coming from. And nearly pass out from relief when I realize she’s in her office.
Unable to resist the pull of hearing her voice one last time, I creep toward the door to her office. It’s cracked, just a bit, but enough for me to hear her side of the conversation she’s having.
“I already spanked her, Maxwell, and when you bring Victoria over she will be apologizing for her behavior.” A long pause, and then a deep sigh that sounds like it comes from her very soul. “Fuck, Max. I’m so, so sorry. You know I love Victoria like she’s my own—”
There it is. Straight from the horse’s mouth, as the saying goes.
I didn’t know, until now, that a person could feel the kind of pain I feel at those words. It was one thing to think it, even to know it deep in my soul. But to have Catharina, the woman I love with every cell of my being, admit she loves someone else…
It’s more than any one person should be expected to bear.
Unable to stand the thought of listening to another second of her telling Uncle Max how much she loves Tori, I turn on my heel and hurry toward the front door, pausing only to punch in the code I’ve memorized.
Again, the thought flits through my mind that the Universe must be on my side right now, because it’s almost insultingly easy to slip from the house and into the wooded area surrounding it.
Once I’m deep enough in that I can just barely make out the building I thought would be my forever home, I unhook the locket from around my neck.
Mommy told me it would help her find me if I ever got lost, so I have to assume there’s some kind of tracking device built into it.
Assuming they come looking for me at all, this should buy me some time.
Standing beneath a tree that seems to stretch all the way up to the sky, I pull my arm back and throw. The locket falls uselessly to the ground and I let out an annoyed huff as I bend down to grab it again. It takes three more tries, but finally the chain snags on a branch.
There. That should keep them busy for a little while.
With my decoy in place, I hurry back toward the road. Hugging the treeline, I follow the pavement to town.
To freedom.