Chapter 19 #2
It confused me that such a statement had caused such a visceral reaction in Elliot. Though it had been a difficult thing to come to terms with, to even recognize since I truly hadn’t felt long-lasting happiness during my decade in New York. I’d felt drive, satisfaction, power. But never happiness.
“I’m happy,” I whispered to him, though it felt like a mistake, much like the four-letter word I would never say to him.
Fuck it, if I was going down…
“ You make me happy.” I spoke even more quietly that time. Short of telling him how I truly felt, this was giving away my power. And not in the sexual sense of obeying him. It was acknowledging that he had the power to make me happy, therefore, he had the power to make me miserable.
Not that he would ever wield it that way.
Elliot didn’t say anything for a long while. He just stood there, staring. “I make you happy.”
I nodded, refusing to speak because I didn’t trust that romantic gibberish wouldn’t start leaking out of my mouth.
“I’ve lived a happy life.” His thumb moved from stroking my jaw to my bottom lip. “With some obvious blips…”
I sensed a story there. Some rock left unturned, something I was ignorant to.
I knew about the blips regarding his mother dying and his niece battling a cruel illness—huge fucking blips if you asked me.
“Is there something else that I don’t know about?” I probed as gently as I was able. Which was about as gentle as a prosecutor asking the question to a defendant on the stand.
“I was engaged,” Elliot answered without pause, without considering keeping it hidden.
My fingers tightened around my seltzer, sufficiently shocked.
“It didn’t work out.”
“Obviously,” I chuffed dryly. I kept my simmering jealousy underneath the surface, along with a healthy hatred for a woman whom I didn’t know yet needed to throat punch.
“She was my high school sweetheart,” he continued, glancing out the window.
“I’m not surprised,” I muttered. Elliot seemed like the kind of guy who married his high school sweetheart then popped out a bunch of kids.
“Yeah, I’m kind of predictable.” He smiled good-naturedly. “I have no desire to leave Jupiter, to be anything more than I am now. I’m happy working on my family’s boat, in our family’s restaurant.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” I defended him as if there was shame in his tone. There wasn’t.
“I know that,” Elliot stated confidently. “But Janine, my ex…”
I fucking hated Janine, I decided.
“She wanted more.” He shook his head. “Nothing wrong with that, though I wish she would’ve realized that before we paid for the wedding, sent out the invitations.”
“No fucking way,” I hissed. “She Runaway Brided you?”
He grinned, showing that he didn’t seem to hold any unhealthy resentments toward the woman I’d make a voodoo doll of in the near future. “Not entirely. She realized she wanted bigger. And…” He scrubbed a hand down his face.
“And?” I asked.
“And she wasn’t exactly comfortable with my needs. How I communicated them.” He rubbed my thigh.
I got the picture. She didn’t like the Dom/sub stuff. Everyone was entitled to their kink or lack thereof. But how any woman couldn’t like Elliot Shaw telling them what to do was baffling to me.
“Stupid bitch.” It was rather undignified of me, since I was meant to be on the side of women. Though I wasn’t exactly a girl’s girl.
“Wrong for me.” Elliot shook his head.
“You got that right,” I muttered.
“It broke me for a while,” he admitted, rubbing his chest.
My thirst for her blood for causing Elliot pain was unyielding.
“As far as relationships go, it was a lesson,” he continued, eyes bright on me.
“My brother and I didn’t get out unscathed, losing our mother at young ages.
Coping mechanisms, looking for the wrong things in the wrong women.
” He shrugged. “My therapist thought it was a kind of unconscious reenactment, being drawn to someone I knew I’d lose, knowing in my gut that it was wrong for me to use women as a way to relive the loss of my mother, get a different outcome.
Likely Beau’s situation too, with some unhealthy attachment styles thrown in. ”
“You have a therapist?” I gaped at the easy way he spoke in Freudian psychological terms.
He nodded.
“Must be a good one,” I assumed, considering how easygoing and well-regulated he was in general. Though I knew some of that was just him.
“She is,” he agreed.
“Does she know about me?” I asked, narcissistic as fuck.
He nodded again.
“Well, if she’s a good one, then she’ll recognize that you’re doing the unconscious reenactment all over again with me.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was weighed down with dread that I’d inevitably cause Elliot harm. Reliving the loss of a woman he couldn’t save.
“That’s not what she thinks at all.” Elliot pressed his lips together. “And if it was, I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything, picking at a loose thread on the sofa.
“I thought I knew what it was to be content and fulfilled in life.” Elliot squeezed my thigh harder to get my attention. “Until you, Calliope. Until I heard I had the power to make you happy.”
My heart swelled at the reverence in his tone.
And I had to kill it. I had to. Many years had passed since I was that little girl, uneasy in the calm life offered if you were lucky enough to have good parents and a quiet childhood without turmoil.
Yet I was still her, that little girl, gritting her teeth, muscles stiff, unable to trust something as simple as happiness.
“What do you see in your future?” I asked him, realizing how little information I’d actually asked of him. I had immense interest in Elliot, his life and everything about him. But I had very rarely done something as simple as ask him questions.
“My future,” he clicked his tongue. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time there.” He rubbed his thumb over the back of my palm.
“No shit,” I gave him a smirk. Elliot was a true live-in-the-present type of guy. One of the many, many things that I loved about him. “Any rough blueprints?” I relaxed into his arms.
“Rough blueprints.” Elliot drummed his fingers along his chin.
“Watching Clara go to prom, watch my brother scare the shit out of some boy, girl, or non-binary person—whomever Clara elects to be her date.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Beau will be equally protective and threatening to someone who dares think they’re good enough for his little girl.
” He smiled warmly, and I smiled with him.
Not just because I agreed with the gruff Beau who would likely measure up with my brother and Kip in the department of protective girl dads.
But also because that was a pretty wonderful view of the future, Clara growing, healthy, happy, doing normal teenage things. Although I doubted Clara would do anything ‘normal.’ I was excited to see what she grew up to be.
Until I realized that if all went according to plan, I wouldn’t be a part of Elliot’s, and therefore Clara’s, future. I wouldn’t see her. Or him.
I lost the feeling in my fingers.
“Maybe my brother getting out of his own way and getting himself some happiness,” Elliot continued. “My boat. Sunshine. Good hauls. A restaurant with asses in seats.” He paused, his gaze heavy on mine. “A woman I love warming my bed.”
The burn intensified in my throat, so I rummaged through my purse for antacids, even though my heartburn didn’t have a physical cause.
Elliot let me do so in silence, watching me pop the pill with an uptick to his mouth.
I chewed. “Anything else?”
“Think that’s a pretty good blueprint for happiness.”
“You don’t want children?” I didn’t hide the disbelief from my tone.
He shook his head. “Nope.”
I narrowed my gaze on him. “This is some kind of lie because you’ve deduced, correctly, that I don’t want them, and you’ve either decided to sacrifice that want to stay together or you’re sure you can make me change my mind, as society promises you can since women who don’t want children are merely confused about their role in life. ”
Elliot crossed his leg over his knee, leaning back in his chair casually, but I saw his brows furrow. “You think I’d be that calculating and think so little of you?”
“I don’t think you consciously do.” I shrugged, even though the accusation and hurt in his tone hit me in the soft places he’d discovered, ones he’d created inside of me.
“Internalized misogyny is a thing, living in there, camouflaged. Maybe you’re sure right now that you don’t want them, but you’re made to be someone’s Little League coach, to teach them how to fish, help with math homework. ”
Even as I said it, I pictured a smiling Elliot in my mind doing all of those things like he was born to.
I looked him in the eyes, and it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
“I won’t rob you of that.” I’d intended on sounding clear, resolved, but my voice was thin and raspy.
“I won’t rob a child of that. And I won’t change my mind.
I can’t. I ensured that with an irreversible medical procedure. ”
I’d always known I didn’t want children, had been happy to rely on birth control.
But after … the event , having control being taken from me in such a visceral way, I wanted to ensure there wasn’t even a sliver of a chance that I’d be forced to be a mother.
That I’d never have to make a choice not to be one and feel guilt or regret.
I’d had to go to three different doctors, because apparently, a woman couldn’t get sterilized as easily as a man; she might change her mind.
It had infuriated me to no end, but once the procedure was done, I’d felt a weight off my shoulders. I’d never felt regret, emptiness or being broken somehow.
Yet staring into Elliot’s eyes, looking at an alternate future, one with him being the father of my children, I did feel a sliver of it.
Even though I knew it wouldn’t work. A man, even one as close to being as close to perfect as possible, did not have the power to change me so completely.
There was no future where I was the mother to his children. He needed to know that.
Elliot’s expression didn’t change at the knowledge that I was barren by choice, which shouldn’t have surprised me, yet it did.
I couldn’t help but expect the worst of him.
I was constantly on guard, waiting for him to be just like all other men.
For him to reveal that the empathy and understanding he displayed was just a thin veneer to get me comfortable enough so he could strike.
“That means…” He shifted on the sofa to pin me down, hovering over me. “That we can practice as much as we want without any unintended consequences.” He pushed the robe from my chest, lowering his mouth to my nipple and sucking loudly.
My body vibrated with sensation, need and something much deeper. He was still attracted to me, still wanted me, even though he knew I was barren and would never bear his children.
His cock strained through his underwear, pressing against my exposed and already soaking core.
“You have nothing else to say about this?” I was already breathing heavily.
Elliot lifted his head from my nipple, eyes gluing to mine. He didn’t speak. Instead, he reached down to free his cock from his boxers, not giving me a moment to prepare, just thrusting into my pussy, filling me to the hilt.
I cried out in surprise and ecstasy.
“That,” he grunted, “is all I have to say about that.” His eyes never left mine as he plunged in and out in precise, harsh, exquisite strokes.
“In case it wasn’t clear, you are part of my future, Calliope Derrick.” He punctuated his point as he impaled me with his cock.
I saw stars, my orgasm rushing forward, silencing any protests I might have had to his point.
Yet deep down, I didn’t have any protests.
I wanted, more than anything, to be a part of his future.
But we didn’t always get what we wanted.
I’d have to settle for being a part of his present. And then, eventually, his past.