Chapter 46
Two important things happened next. First, Nala finished her script. Second, Varen made some important decisions of her own.
When they sat down to go over things, Varen was the first to speak. Probably not in her best interest. Because what came out of her mouth? Was liable to make Nala kill her next!
“You’ve gotta go away.” That was the first thing she said. “I hate having to tell you that, Nala, but it’s the truth. You’re in too much danger. If you go away into hiding… maybe he’ll spare you out of disinterest. It’s me he’s mainly after. I can set you up financially somewhere.”
Nala crossed her arms and regarded her with every bit of disdain she could muster. “You’re putting me in Varen Protection.”
“If you want to put it that way. You can’t stay around me, though. Not for a long time.”
“So you’re getting rid of me?”
“Don’t think of it that way.” Varen put a hand on Nala’s knee, but it wasn’t enough to make her feel better.
Don’t think that’s possible right now. “It doesn’t mean I care about you any less. For fuck’s sake, Nala, it’s because I care about you so much that I feel this has to be done.”
It wasn’t that Nala didn’t believe her. She was also kinda right.
Xan Ravenwood would probably lose interest in her if she disappeared quietly and kept her head down, far away from him.
She was inconsequential. An upstart. A way to get to Varen.
They would kill her, kidnap her, use her as disgusting fodder to make Ms. Lake fall apart at her already frayed seams.
“Where am I going, hm?” Nala laughed. “Back to Nevada? How about New Mexico or the vacant wastes of Texas? At least your money would go far there.”
“I found a place in Indiana that may suit you well. As well as it can, anyway.”
“Oh, joy, Indiana.”
“I’m serious, Nala. I want to protect you. This is the only way I know how right now. I have some connections that can get you a job with one of your fake names.”
“What about my mom in all of this? Am I supposed to disappear? That would officially kill her.”
She didn’t talk to her mom much anymore, but Nala wasn’t keen on the idea of abandoning her to the whim of the world.
All alone. Her family gone, disappeared.
What would she do? Go back to Russia and try to scrounge up the last of her extended family?
Die?
Nala couldn’t think about it. “You can’t keep me away from her.”
The way Varen wrapped her arms around her and drew her into a strong embrace almost placated her. It shouldn’t be this easy. Now she wants to send me away? When would I ever see her again? Nala tentatively hugged her back.
“I don’t want to keep you away from anyone, but until this all blows over, I’m afraid… well, I’ve already bought it.”
She pulled a train ticket from her sweatshirt pocket and placed it in Nala’s hand.
“Three days from now… I’ll take you to the Amtrak station. You’ll be riding to Indianapolis. I should be getting more money from Lucian tomorrow. I’m giving most of the cash to you to get you started. If I can see you anytime, I will.”
Nala almost shoved the ticket back in her hand. “Are you fucking nuts?” Indianapolis, really? As if that’s my biggest problem… “I’m not leaving you, Ven!”
She didn’t know what she felt. It was kinda like rage…
but also a numbing sadness she hadn’t felt since finding out her sister was dead.
Murdered. Yet it was also… betrayal? Was this what it felt like to have the woman she loved discard her on the side of Seattle roads?
I can’t believe it. I might kill her first!
“Do you think I want you to?” Varen attempted to shake some sense into her. I’d like to see her try! “Fucking hell, Nala, don’t you get it? I love you!”
The red eased from Nala’s eyes as she looked at her through a film of milky white. She was going blind, but by words.
It was the first time Varen told her such a thing. Even though Nala had felt her love more than once over the past several weeks, she had never vocalized it like this before. So clear. So determined. So scared.
She hasn’t loved a woman since Desirée. Nala saw the pain in her eyes now. Pain and fear of losing her. Losing another woman she loved so much.
“Do you? Do you really?” Nala hated how desperate she sounded. I want to hear her say it again. “Do you love me?”
“Yes.” Varen pulled her into a hard, determined embrace as if Nala was about to get on that train at any moment.
“I love you, Nala. That’s why I can’t let you die. This time I have the power to save the woman I love. Why would I pass up that opportunity? Even if it hurts us both, knowing you’re out there, alive, is all that matters to me. Please, Nala. Please understand.”
Nala clung to her with as much desperation as she had.
“I love you too, Ven. That’s why I can’t stand the thought of being away from you, especially right now.”
Nala sniffed, even though tears did not come.
Not yet. “Don’t you get it? I can’t be out there, in a brand new place all by myself. Not again. I need you by my side. I need to know that I’m not alone.”
“You’re not alone, darling. I’ll always find a way to be near you.”
They held each other as if the end of the world knocked on their door.
It does. The end of my world. Nala couldn’t stand thinking like that, yet here she was, desperately clinging to Varen in a vain attempt to keep her close.
I don’t want to leave her. I need her. I can’t lose yet another person like I lost my father and sister.
Varen said she would do everything to be near Nala, but what if Xan got to her?
What if Hawk defied her house arrest to come to get the bitch who put her there to begin with?
Varen didn’t stand a chance unless she went into serious hiding as well!
“Please understand.” Varen kissed the top of her head. “This has to be done.”
“Let’s talk about this later.”
“Okay.”
Nala wiped her face, sitting back as far as she dared without losing Varen’s touch.
This seems like an inappropriate time to bring this up.
Nevertheless, she pulled her notebook out, careful to not obscure the train ticket her girlfriend had given her.
“I’m gonna give this to you to read through. I marked where the final draft starts.”
She flicked the lime green tab sticking out of the notebook.
“Take your time going through it. I’m gonna take a shower. Alone.”
She had to reiterate that point since Varen had taken to showering with her as if they had done it their whole lives.
“We can talk about it when I get out of there.”
Varen kept the notebook closed as Nala disrobed and grabbed her towel to take into the bathroom. It wasn’t until she shut the door, turned on the lights, and went to latch the lock that she saw her girlfriend open the notebook.
She’s going to think I’m a total freak. To be fair, Nala wasn’t too into her right now, either.
I still can’t believe it. She thinks she can send me away?
Nala welcomed the hot water touching her skin the moment she turned on the shower.
What am I supposed to do? Start all over again?
The thought petrified her. At least when she moved to Portland, she had a goal.
Her spirit. Her name. She was Nala Nazarov, the sister of Tasha, and the harbinger of justice.
If she didn’t have any of that after moving to Indianapolis? Then what was the point? Of anything?
The off-chance of Varen seeing her once a year wasn’t worth it. She couldn’t live life like that. Who was to say that Varen would live at all? Their distance would have been for naught.
Nala knew she didn’t have a lot of experience in this realm of the world, but she was pretty sure it was bullshit.
Almost as bullshit as realizing that the woman sitting out in the hotel room, the woman who currently wore a hoodie but could cut a blazer like nobody’s business, was the absolute love of her life.
Nala knew it like she knew she loved her sister.
Nala sank to the bottom of the shower, letting the hot water hit her hair and watching it dribble off her split ends. I need a trim. What was the point? Who would she be dressing and looking nice for in the next few days? Certainly not Varen, the woman half a world away.
Don’t think about that. Think about what we can do together, right now.
Never before had Nala thought so much about “in the moment.”
But then she thought of Varen’s potential reactions to her script, and she wondered if it had been a mistake.
The fantasy seemed perfectly fine in her head.
Then she wrote it down and handed it to her girlfriend. A fucking Domme.
When Nala turned off the shower, toweled off, and dressed in the clothes she brought in, she assumed Varen would be disgusted with her.
But when she walked out, a towel resting across her shoulders so she could let her long hair air dry, she found Varen sitting somberly on the couch with the notebook opened. Nala stood in front of her and waited.
“Well?” she finally asked.
Varen looked between her and the handwritten words in the notebook. “This is totally insane, you know that, right?”
At least she went straight to her judgments. Even so, Nala thought she saw a flash of mischief behind those cold blues she harbored. “You know I’m right, though. If we played that out, we would be… pretty set for a long time.”
“Because it’s insane.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You know I’m right.”
Nala shook her head, suppressing a grin. The first grin she felt like showing all day. “So what if it’s insane? It’s a fantasy. One I’m sure I’m not alone in having.”
“I can safely say I’ve never fantasized about some of this…” Varen cut herself off. “Quite frankly, a lot of it made me uncomfortable, even when I read it with a Domme’s eyes.”
“Good. You should be uncomfortable. That means I can trust you, right?”
“I’m not sure that’s what you want to go for, Nala.”
“Of course it is. If I handed that to someone who gleefully read it and then asked, ‘So, when do we get started?’ I would be out of here so fast. You should feel all sorts of uncomfortable reading that. But I won’t blame you if your body stirs while thinking about it.”
“This is like that one night we had together times a hundred.”
“What do you think I was going for? Romantic candlelit dinner and wine?”
Nala was being defensive, and they both knew it, but what woman wanted to have her fantasies thrown back in her face, let alone by her girlfriend?
Varen sighed, flipping the notebook shut. “You really want to do that? We only have a couple of days to make something as elaborate as that happen.”
“Taken care of. I bought all the supplies we need.” Nala pointed to her small untouched bag in the corner of the hotel room.
“Supplies? Sheesh.”
“Like you’re going to tie me up with your sweatshirt?”
Finally, Varen smirked. “It would be a good challenge. Show me what you bought.”
Nala brought the bag over and went through every piece.
Sometimes Varen nodded, and other times she put something back and declared that it wouldn’t do.
When Nala thought she wouldn’t tell her what would do, she opened the notebook back up and jotted down a possible replacement and told her where she could get one and for how much.
“There’s only one thing,” Nala admitted. “I don’t have my collar.”
Varen went to her bag. When she pulled the silver choker from a pocket, Nala gasped.
“Why did you have that this whole time?” she asked. “We were going to the lawyer’s…”
“I always carry it with me.” Varen pushed Nala’s hair behind her ears, a touch lingering on her cheek. “Because it makes me think of you and what you mean to me.”
Nala clutched her wrist. “What do I mean to you, exactly?”
“You’re not just my girlfriend, Nala.” Varen’s lips begged to kiss hers, but she refrained.
“You’re the woman I love. Which means we share something much deeper than other people. You’re my foil. You are the greatest complement I could ever ask for. You understand me in ways I didn’t think anyone could. Most of all…”
Nala’s eyes widened. “Yeah?”
“You’ve shown me that I can move on, too.”
She nearly melted into her arms. “I love you, Ven.”
“I love you, too.”
Nala eyed the spiral spine of the notebook. “Will you do it with me?”
Varen squeezed her tighter. “Of course I will. Even if it’s the last thing we do together.”
“Don’t talk like that. Of course it won’t be.”
“That’s what I want to believe, yeah.”
Nala held Varen so closely that she was afraid she would break.
It didn’t matter which one of them broke first.
All that mattered was that they still had each other for at least a few days.
After that? Nala couldn’t think about it yet.
Her mind was already running through a list of terrible possibilities.
However their role-play worked out would determine Nala’s next action.
I love this woman. I would do anything for her.
I know she would do anything for me. Sometimes, that was the only power Nala needed.
She couldn’t speak for all women in the world, but if asked, she would confidently say that depending on a woman like Varen was one of the most powerful feelings of all…
and that was discounting her inner power.
And she was about to let that loose.
Entry 24
Nightingale has come up with a plan for the two of us.
At first, I was extremely put off by what she had written, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s meant to help.
It’s easy to see it as purely her fantasy…
a fantasy that is so out there that, if I didn’t know her as well as I do now, I would think she’s fairly nuts.
Yet now I see how she has incorporated my needs into it as well. If we go through with this, I think that we will both be freed in ways we haven’t felt in a long time.
It’s amazing how quickly you forget what it feels like to breathe.