Chapter Seven
Margot
By the second week, breakfast has stopped feeling like homework. Thursday morning, halfway through eating, it occurs to me that I haven’t once wondered whether I’m doing it right, and I can’t decide whether that counts as progress or should worry me slightly.
My phone buzzes on the counter. Richard's name appears on the screen above a message asking if I can come in early, which would be more compelling if I weren't already expected at my desk in forty minutes.
I turn the phone facedown and finish my coffee.
Richard finds me less than an hour after I arrive.
"Margie, I need the Miles numbers pulled together for a four o'clock. Can you make that happen?"
The answer almost comes automatically. I feel it there, ready to leave my mouth before I've even considered what he's asking, but these days I'm getting better at catching it.
"The Miles deck isn't due until Wednesday. Alan pushed it back."
Richard pauses. "Did he?"
"He emailed us the other day."
"Right." He leans one hand against the edge of my desk, coffee in the other. "It might still be useful to have it today."
Normally, that would be enough to make me drop whatever I was doing and get started, even though nobody actually needs the numbers until next Wednesday.
Richard would get what he wanted early, and I'd spend the rest of the afternoon trying to catch up on everything I'd pushed aside to make it happen.
I look at the presentation already open on my screen. "I'll have it ready Wednesday morning, like Alan asked."
There's a brief pause while Richard adjusts to the unfamiliar experience of me not immediately making his life easier.
Then he nods. "Okay, fine. Wednesday."
He goes back into his office.
I return to my presentation.
It takes me nearly ten minutes to realize I'm not anxious.
The first time I said no to something I would normally have agreed to, my heart hammered afterward.
I spent the next hour waiting for some consequence that never came.
Now Richard has asked me to rearrange my afternoon for no real reason, I've declined, and my body no longer considers this an emergency.
That should probably feel like progress.
Instead, the first thing that comes into my head is how Soren will react when I tell him.
I can already picture those gold eyes fixed on me while I tell him I followed his rules again. I know what he'll say, and some deeply inconvenient part of me is already looking forward to hearing it.
Good girl.
Heat creeps up my neck.
"Oh, shit."
"Everything okay?"
I look up to find Dan standing on the other side of my desk.
"Fine."
He glances toward Richard's office, then back at me. "Did he give you something ridiculous again?"
"Surprisingly, no. I think I'm having some sort of personal crisis."
"Before nine?"
"I like to get them out of the way early."
Dan accepts that with less concern than he probably should and continues toward the kitchen.
I stare at my screen without seeing much of it.
The problem isn't that Soren's rules are difficult.
They aren't anymore. I sleep seven hours because I feel better when I do.
I eat breakfast because arriving at work without running entirely on caffeine makes the morning less miserable.
Saying no is still harder, but every time I do it, I discover another thing I'd been treating as my responsibility simply because nobody else wanted it.
Those are good things.
The uncomfortable part is how much I still want his approval for doing them.
I've spent most of my life being useful to other people.
My mother needs something handled, Bree gets herself into trouble, Richard creates an emergency, and I fix it.
Even with Daniel, I spent years anticipating what would make his life easier until apparently being with me became one of the things that didn't.
I know what it feels like to shape myself around what somebody else wants.
This doesn't feel like that.
That should settle it.
But it doesn't.
At lunch, I take my sandwich to the break room and sit by the window instead of eating at my desk. My phone stays in my bag. There are emails waiting for me, but none of them will become more urgent because I spend twenty minutes eating something before I answer them.
For the first time all day there's nothing I have to do and no one waiting on me to do it. The thought I couldn't finish at my desk finishes itself here.
Maybe that's what I've been getting wrong.
Soren told me to sleep. I'm the one who wakes up feeling better.
He told me to eat breakfast. I'm the one who no longer feels half-dead by ten.
He told me to start saying no. I'm the one sitting here eating lunch because I didn't let Richard turn a deadline into an emergency for no reason.
None of that answers why the thought of telling Soren about it makes warmth spread through my chest.
Maybe both things can be true. Maybe I can be doing this for myself and still want him to be proud of me.
I'm not entirely comfortable with that conclusion yet, but when I go back to my desk, I don't open the Miles file.
The rest of the afternoon passes without Richard finding another reason to rearrange my priorities, and I leave the office on time.
There's a bookshop between my office and the train that I've walked past hundreds of times. Usually I barely notice it. I'm either checking my phone, thinking about something I forgot to do, or already focused on getting home.
Today, I slow down.
There's nowhere I need to be, and for once I'm not already thinking three tasks ahead. I stop outside the window for a few seconds, looking at the display, then open the door.
I don't need a book. There are unread novels at home and enough abandoned Kindle purchases to keep me occupied through retirement, but needing one isn't really the point.
I wander through the shelves without checking the time, pick things up because the covers interest me, read a few first pages, and put most of them back.
Eventually, I find a novel I've wanted to read since it came out.
The hardback costs more than I'd usually spend when I could wait six months for the paperback. I buy it anyway.
At home, I run myself a bath.
That feels stranger than buying the book.
I set the shampoo I bought last week on the edge of the tub, leave my phone in the bedroom, and climb into the water with my new book. The bath isn't as hot as the ones Soren runs for me, but I stay until the water begins to cool and I've read enough chapters that staying in feels mildly offensive.
Later, while I'm drying my hair, I catch sight of the new book on the bathroom counter and smile.
Soren would probably approve.
The strange thing is, I didn't think about that once while I was buying it.
Maybe that's the point. I'm starting to want things without waiting for someone else to tell me I can have them.
I'm still thinking about that when Bree calls the next evening.
Her name on my screen usually comes with a mental checklist. Money, car trouble, rent, some subscription she forgot to cancel, a problem with a friend that will somehow require my involvement. I'm already preparing myself for whichever version it is when I answer.
"Hey."
Something in her voice wipes the list from my head.
"Bree, what's wrong?"
She's quiet for long enough that I turn off the stove.
"I think I need actual help," she says eventually. "Not you fixing something. I mean… I think something's wrong, and I don't really know what to do."
"I think talking to someone would be a good idea, Bree."
"Can you sort it out for me?"
There it is.
I close my eyes for a moment. Saying no to Richard is one thing. Saying no to Bree when she sounds frightened is something else entirely.
"Okay, I'll help you."
Her breath comes out in a rush.
"But I'm not going to do it for you," I add. "We can look together and figure out who takes your insurance. I'll sit with you while you do it if you want me to. But you make the call and book the appointment."
Bree is quiet and every part of me wants to fill the silence. I want to soften what I said, offer to call if she gets nervous, tell her I'll handle it this once and we can work on the rest later.
But I don't.
Finally, she says, "Can you stay on the phone while I look?"
My throat tightens. "Of course I can."
So that's what we do.
Bree opens her laptop, and I stay with her while she searches. I answer when she asks what I think, but I don't take over. When she finds someone who looks promising, she writes the number down herself.
"Will you come with me if I get an appointment?"
The automatic yes is right there.
This time, I actually think about it before I answer.
"If you want me there, yes."
"I do."
"Then I'll come."
There's a difference between those two yeses. I'm beginning to understand that now.
By the time we hang up, dinner needs reheating and I'm exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. Listening to Bree struggle without immediately taking the problem out of her hands was harder than solving it would have been.
But she has a number to call.
And I didn't have to become responsible for what happens next.
I reheat my dinner and take it to the table.
Later, I put my book on the nightstand and start getting ready for bed. My bag for tomorrow is already sitting near the bedroom door, and seeing it sends a familiar flicker of anticipation through me.
I get to see Soren tomorrow.
I've been thinking about that more than I probably should.
We've had two sessions. Two. He's a Dom I booked through a website, and his job is quite literally to make me feel good, help me relax, and take care of me for a few hours.
Getting attached to the man because he happens to be exceptionally good at doing exactly what I'm paying him to do would be a spectacular failure of common sense.
Unfortunately, common sense doesn't seem to have much influence over the way I feel when he calls me Angel.
I think about that more than I'd like to admit.
The first time he called me Angel, I'm almost certain he hadn't meant to. I saw the surprise on his face the second he said it, there and gone so quickly I might have missed it if I hadn't been staring straight at him. A moment later, he was back to his usual calm, controlled self.
Maybe that means nothing. Pet names are hardly unusual in what we're doing, and reading something into it because I like the way it sounds in his voice would be embarrassingly easy.
There are other things too, little moments I could probably explain away if I tried hard enough. The way he watches me when he thinks I'm not paying attention. How pleased he seemed when he realized I'd bought the same shampoo he used on me. The soup he made for me.
None of it proves anything.
But it's enough to make me wonder.
And wondering is dangerous when I'm already counting down the hours until I get to see him again.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling.
This is ridiculous. I'm thirty-two years old. I should be able to enjoy incredible sex and being spoiled by a dragon without developing feelings about him.
That was optimistic.
The more immediate problem is that there's something I want tomorrow.
So far, letting Soren decide has been the easy part. I walk through the door, hand over control, and trust him to figure out the rest. Even when he asks what I want, I give him broad answers because broad answers don't require much from me.
I want someone else to decide.
That was true when I said it, and it's still true now.
But tomorrow, I want to ask him for something specific.
My first instinct is to leave it alone. Soren will have something planned, I'll almost certainly enjoy it, and I can avoid the considerably more uncomfortable experience of looking him in the eye and admitting what I want.
Which is probably exactly why I need to do it.
I lie there for a while, rehearsing the words and rejecting every version that sounds like an apology.
By the time I turn off the light, I know what I'm going to say.