Chapter 21 #2
“Again,” I say. “Good girl.”
Guns next. I lay the pistol down, slide the mag out, lock the slide, let her see it empty. “You don’t point anything you haven’t cleared yourself.”
I put the kit beside it. Cloth, oil, and a little brush.
“It’s a tool. Treat it like one.” I take it apart and build it back together, not for speed, for understanding.
Then I hand it over. She mirrors me: wipe, check, re-seat.
Again. Again. Until the motions stop being a string of thoughts and turn into a single breath.
I let her feel the weight balanced in her hands, help her settle her wrists, loosen her shoulders, teach her where not to put her fingers by moving her hands with mine.
Her fingers aren’t shy. She mirrors me, learns the sequence, fumbles once, twice, swallows a curse, gets angry, gets better.
We cycle through the same sequence until the clumsy edges sand down.
Until it doesn’t look to me like it feels foreign in her grip.
Load, unload, stow. Clean, check, stow. Minutes drag into an hour. By the time I take it back to the table, the nervous tremor in her hands is gone.
The next morning, after coffee, knots.
I loop paracord around her wrists, snug, not cruel, then tip her hands palm to palm and make her watch what I’m doing.
“You’re not going to outmuscle anyone,” I tell her.
“You’re going to outlast them.” I turn her to the mat, shoulder to shoulder with me, and show her how to make space, how to breathe when panic tries to shut the ribs, how to hunt for millimeters instead of miracles.
She bites her lip, sweat slicking at her temple as she works. It’s not pretty. When she finally slips free, she shows me both hands like proof. I kiss the red grooves. “Again.”
I tie tighter. She works longer. I tie tighter still.
Her breath goes ragged; she resets it the way I taught her using odd counts and keeps going.
When the cord finally kisses skin open, blood beads.
I’m there with saline and gauze. “That’s the last time we use paracord,” I say, voice even. “Lesson learned.”
Before I set her again, I catch her face in my hands. “Signals.” I tap her wrist: one, three, five. “Five means you’re okay. Three means slow down. One means stop. If your mouth is free, say odd. I will stop on any of them. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Out there, there are no taps, no safe word. Out there you make your own rules with whatever’s left of your breath. In here we build the reflex, so your body finds it when your mind can’t.”
She nods. Chin up. I’m so fucking proud of her, more proud of her than I’ve ever been of anyone in my entire life.
I don’t think she knows what she gives me during these sessions.
The level of trust she so freely gifts. I could kill her before her hand lifts to tap one, before her mouth moves to form the word odd.
Somewhere in her she knows that. But, she comes down here every day and trusts me not to.
Even after London, after the ghosts, after I walked out.
She knows I don’t believe her. She knows I’m pissed.
She stands here anyway and gives me her throat and her wrists.
That’s not naiveté. That’s faith I haven’t earned and will never deserve.
It lodges under my ribs; a promise that one day I won’t have to pretend things are normal to touch her.
I blindfold her, not to scare her, okay, to scare her a little, but mostly to take the cheating away from her hands.
“Feel, not see,” I say, and rest my palm between her shoulder blades until her spine unlocks.
I bind her again, never exactly the same way twice, and step back.
I don’t talk her through it today. I listen for her breath.
Hear the small change in sound when the cord bites.
The slow scrape of fabric over the mat when she rolls to change leverage.
When it’s too much, she says, “odd,” and I’m on her wrists in a heartbeat, cutting her free, rubbing warmth back into her fingers. “Good girl,” I murmur against her hair.
We go again.
I rotate the variables. Hands front, hands back, seated, standing.
I never give her a pattern to memorize. By the time the light in the basement goes from white to dark, she frees herself in under a minute with a blindfold on and her breath steady.
The last mark on her wrist is deep. I kiss and bandage it.
“That’s enough for today,” I tell her.
She leans into me, damp hair against my throat, wrists bandaged. “Again tomorrow,” she says.
“Again tomorrow,” I repeat, then toss her over my shoulder and smack her ass. She yelps, laughing, and I carry her up both flights, straight into the bathroom.
I set the water where she likes it. Hot enough to fog the glass. Steam climbs the tiles. I peel her out of the hoodie, kiss the damp line at the back of her neck, and we step in.
I wash her. Strawberry shampoo, my hands gentle at her scalp, then down the curve of her shoulders, over the faint rope kisses blooming along her forearms. L I N D Y /// G I R L ghosts careful along the marks. “Three?” I murmur against her temple.
She taps my ribs three times. Okay.
After, I wrap her in a towel from the warmer and kneel to dry her calves, the backs of her knees, each toe. I carry her to the counter, sit her on the cool stone, dab arnica along the angry lines and liquid silk on the places that will ache tomorrow. “You did well,” I say. “Better than well.”
She smiles like it hurts in a good way. “I like making you proud of me.”
“I am proud of you, my gorgeous Lindy girl.” I press Tylenol and a glass of water into her hand. “Hydrate.”
In our room, I tug one of my shirts over her head, sleeves past her knuckles.
I braid her hair loose so it won’t pull while she sleeps and knot it with the elastic she keeps on her nightstand.
I set a heat pack across her shoulders, slide an ice sleeve over her wrist, and then stretch out behind her, chest to her back, an arm around her waist.
“Read to me?” she asks, drowsy.
I reach for the battered Monte Cristo on the nightstand. I read until the last of the steam leaves the mirrors and her breathing evens under my palm. When her lashes flutter, I kiss her forehead.
I watch the ceiling for a while, listening to the house settle and the city breathe. When she shifts, I pull the blanket higher and tuck my hand back under the hem of my shirt on her stomach, palm warm to warm.
Tonight only care. Tomorrow I’ll make it harder.
“Tape lies,” I tell her, the next morning after we’ve had our coffee.
I wind silver around her wrists. “It begs you to pull it apart. Don’t.
You go up. Elbows high, then hammer down hard to your low back.
Find the weak point.” She misses the first time and winces.
I steady her with a palm between her shoulders.
“Breathe.” The next strike pops the seam.
Her laugh cracks the room and buys us a few clean minutes where London and ghosts don't exist. I wish we could live there forever.
The next day, zip ties. I give her choices.
“There are a couple of ways,” I say, laying them out.
“Fast break like what you did with the tape. Or, friction cut if you have something you can use, like a shoelace.” She picks the lace.
I loop it through the tie, knots at her hands.
She bicycles her feet, teeth gritted, heat building until the plastic smokes and parts. She pants, triumphant.
“Again,” I say, and take away the shoelace.
Some days I blindfold her. Sometimes I don’t.
I make the room loud with the bag thudding, punching over and over as she tries to escape.
Then, I make it so silent she can hear my watch tick.
I move around her in the dark and let my boots creak on purpose so she learns to track with ears, not only eyes.
“Where am I?” I ask. She points. Wrong. “Again.” Then right. I touch her jaw with a knuckle. “Good girl.”
The next day when her hands shake too hard to pick a bobby pin up off the mat, I kneel and set it in her palm. “Breathe,” I tell her. “Do you need a break?”
“How do you know all this?” she asks, choosing to keep fighting the knot instead of surrendering.
“I’ve paid in blood and scars to learn every way out.
” I don’t let the words sound like a threat.
Not to her. “Leven taught me a lot growing up, like I’m teaching you.
But, I’m not Superman, darling, I’ve been caught off guard once or twice.
” I wink, then drop to the mat and kiss her swollen lips.
“I also know every way to keep men in,” I whisper against her mouth. “I’ll teach you that too.”
“You’d let me tie you up?” She rocks back on her ass. I guess it is break time.
“Say the word, darling. Not only will I let you, I’ll enjoy it.”
“Now?” This clearly isn’t about training anymore.
“You want to be in control for a while?” Sign me up.
I’ll take her “drill” over my own any day.
I can’t say that because then all actual training goes out the window.
She knows she’s distracting me from her training.
I know I’m letting her. If she wants to play trainer for a while, I’m more than happy to let her.
Nothing’s changed. The anger lives under my tongue, but she’s trying and desperate to please. So, for a few minutes I’ll take the truce she’s offering. She can knot my wrists and call it a drill. I’ll let her own me and call it control. We both get to breathe.
“Yes.”
“I can allow that, darling.” I drop the key for the handcuffs she’s wearing into her palm and sit back, picturing my wrists behind a chair.
She chooses paracord. Of course she does. She double-wraps my wrists, cinching snug, but with more slack than I’ve given her in a while. I don’t fight it. I give her the weight of my trust and let it show on my face.