Chapter 4
Reese
The days grew shorter, and Christmas grew closer, and life continued to move on for us.
Morgan and Annie broke up, which happened with little fanfare and even less regret.
She was fun, Morgan said the day Cory and I had met her to go shopping earlier in the month, and that was the last of it.
I asked Cory if he wanted to go to New York for Christmas, which he’d declined.
He was focused on staying in LA and building a life here.
I swore to him he could do both—hold on to his friends from the city while making more—but Cory wasn’t the kind of man to argue with, so I dropped it.
He’d also kept himself busy with whatever top secret wedding planning he was up to and whenever I tried to ask about it, he was quick to shut me down.
I didn’t want to say I was feeling attention starved, but I was feeling a little attention starved.
It was a Friday night, and I’d just finished getting ready for work when I walked in and found him frowning at something on his laptop screen. When he saw me, he closed the lid quickly, forcing a smile to greet me.
“Are you off for work?” he asked.
I checked my watch. “Yeah, I’m getting ready to head out.”
Cory searched my face, eyes scanning me from my chin to my forehead and back again. “Are you okay, darling?”
“Fine,” I managed the lie, wincing at how gross it tasted in the mouth. “Actually, I’m not. I’m feeling a little ignored.”
“Am I ignoring you?”
“I don’t want to whine. You’re still getting the office going full speed, and you’re planning our wedding,” I said with a shrug.
“Darling,” he said the endearment again like honey on my ears, standing up and coming around to meet me in the doorway.
Cory took both of my hands in his, tracing his thumbs across my knuckles until I looked at him again.
Lifting onto his toes, he brushed a kiss across my pouting lips.
“None of that counts for anything if it’s not with you. ”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve been neglectful,” he said.
I shrugged.
“Haven’t been paying you the attention you need.”
“Cory.”
“Darling.” This time, it was like a purr. “Would it make us square if I asked you to punish me?”
My breath hitched, and I choked on it. “If you what?”
He closed the space between us, the heat of his body searing through my clothes. “If I asked you to punish me. It’s been so long since you took me over your knee.”
“I didn’t…I didn’t think that’s who we were anymore,” I muttered.
He arched a brow. “You know better than most a dominant can still bend the knee, Reese.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
“But is it what you want?” he pressed.
If it had been six months ago, maybe, probably, yes. But now? I felt so steady in my place with Cory, the thought of dominating him in any way felt foreign to my brain.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
It wasn’t that I’d forgotten the logistics of it, but maybe I’d just forgotten with him.
“Alright.” He brushed his fingers across my cheeks, down my throat. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
“Yes, Sir,” I grumbled.
He scoffed but didn’t protest the honorific. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
I kissed him quickly on the mouth, then left for work.
The first three hours of my shift crawled by at a snail’s pace while I tried to sort out the confusion Cory caused in my brain. It hadn’t been that long ago he’d done it for the first time, and after the upheaval of all that settled, I found myself thrown right back into the mess all over again.
I hated it.
I fidgeted with my wedding ring.
“Reese,” my coworker Emily said, gently pressing her hand against the small of my back. “There’s a man at the end of the bar asking for you.”
I glanced down that way, finding Cory in the same seat he’d been in the night we met for the first time. Dropping the knife I’d been using to cut up lemons, I wiped my hands on a towel and switched sides with Emily.
“Hey,” I greeted, feeling a little silly for my emotions at the house. “I wanted to—”
“Whiskey and coke,” he interrupted. “Top shelf.”
I cleared my throat, trying to remember what I’d said to him the first night we met. “I think our top shelf is your bottom shelf.”
“What makes you think that?” Cory smirked, jiggling his bare wrist. “You’re the one with the fifty-thousand dollar watch.”
My cheeks burned, and I turned away to pour him a drink. My hands trembled a little, more than they had a year ago, but the bar was dark enough I didn’t think he would notice. Sliding the drink onto a cardboard coaster, I shoved both of my hands into the back pockets of my jeans.
“Thank you…” he trailed off, the question unspoken.
“Reese,” I whispered. “My name is Reese.”
“Nice to meet you, Reese. I’m Cory, and you’re right. This whiskey is atrocious.”
I laughed, puffing a huge exhale out of my mouth and tipping my head back toward the ceiling. Alright. We were doing this.
“I’ve got better whiskey at my place,” I said, the memories jogging back one after the other after the other.
“I’ve got a hotel,” he blurted.
The wires were crossing, this do-over something different while also being the same.
“Is that an invitation?”
“Did you want it to be?” he asked.
Cory gave me the shyest smile I’d ever seen on him, chin tucked toward his chest like he was embarrassed to be having the conversation with me.
Feelings for him tangled and swelled in my chest, the overwhelming love that lived there for him eclipsing my earlier petulance about him not making me his number one priority all the time.
But I respected what he was doing just the same.
It wasn’t like starting over, but it was a fresh start.
It was a chance to get back to who we really were to each other before life had gotten in the way of everything.
He finished his drink and then pulled out his wallet. He dropped a twenty beside the empty glass and a hotel room key on top of it.
“Los Angeles Gateway,” he said.
Fuck. It was the same script, the same lines, the same shitty airport hotel.
I swallowed hard. “Room 1409?”
Cory fought a smile, slipping his wallet back into his pocket.
“How’d you know?”