10. Vera #3
I unlock the front door. Kick off my shoes. The apartment is quiet and warm and I’m still vibrating from the parking lot, from the way he looked at me, from standing close enough to touch him and not touching him.
Eat something and take care of yourself.
His words. His instruction. I turn them over in my mind the way I’d turn over a brief with a weak argument, looking for the angle that works.
Take care of yourself.
That’s open to interpretation, isn’t it.
That’s not a specific directive. That’s a general principle of self-maintenance, which could reasonably encompass — he didn’t say don’t take care of yourself.
He said take care of yourself. And there are many ways a person might do that.
Many legitimate, self-respecting, arguably Kane-sanctioned ways.
I eat pasta standing at the counter, because I’m covering my bases.
Take care of yourself.
I carry the words into the bathroom with me. Set them on the counter next to my phone while the shower heats up. Steam fills the space, fogging the mirror.
Take care of yourself.
I think about this while I undress.
He said don’t touch yourself. Those were the specific words.
Don’t touch yourself, don’t chase it. And now, standing in a parking lot: take care of yourself.
Two separate instructions. And instructions, when they conflict, have to be read in sequence.
The later instruction qualifies the earlier one, that’s basic contract logic, that’s how language works when you’re being precise about it.
He’s precise about everything.
Take care of yourself is a positive instruction.
An active one. It doesn’t say except in the way you most need right now.
It doesn’t say but not like that. It says take care.
Of yourself. Which means attending to what your body needs.
Which means, if your body has been wound tight for three days and every nerve ending is screaming and you can’t think or sleep or function, and someone who is supposed to be looking after your wellbeing has told you to take care of yourself —
That’s not breaking the rule.
That’s following the more recent instruction in good faith.
I step under the water and let the heat work into my shoulders and think about whether I actually believe that.
I almost do.
That’s enough.
My hand moves.
My knees go weak, and I brace against the shower wall, the tiles cold against my palm.
It doesn’t take long. Three days mean I’m already so close. My breathing comes in ragged gasps. The water pounds against my back.
When I come it’s with a strangled gasp I barely manage to muffle.
For about thirty seconds, the tight coil of it eases.
Then the permission slip dissolves.
Not shame. Something that sits lower than shame, that I don’t locate until I’m already on the floor of the shower, knees pulled to my chest, the water cooling against my shoulders, the tile hard and cold underneath me.
I cared. About his trust. About what I’d agreed to and what that agreement meant. About who I am in this — not the rule itself, but the choice behind it. Whether the surrender is real, or something I only perform when he’s watching.
And I used his own words to do it. Took the instruction he gave me and picked it apart like a contract clause, like a press release that needed a better angle. Found the gap in take care of yourself and walked straight through it.
He told me this lesson lives everywhere. Even when I’m alone. Even when he’d never know.
Especially then.
I already knew that. I just found out I’m not there yet.
I turn off the water with shaking hands. Wrap myself in a towel.
I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror, not because she looks different, but because she watched herself do something she’d already decided to do and called it logic.
My phone sits on the bathroom counter.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I pick it up.
Me: I need to tell you something.
Send. Then:
Me: I touched myself in the shower. I know I wasn’t supposed to. I took what you said, take care of yourself, and I built a case for why it counted as permission. I was very thorough about it. Very logical. And I knew the whole time it wasn’t the point. I’m sorry.
The messages sit there, read receipt appearing almost immediately. Three dots. Disappear. Appear again.
Then vanish entirely.
Five seconds. Ten. Thirty.
Is he done with me? Did I ruin everything?
A full minute. Then two.
Not a text.
A call.
Kane’s name flashing on the screen. My thumb hovers. I swipe.
“Hello?” My voice comes out small.
“Tomorrow. Seven PM. My place.” His voice is even. Controlled. Not cold — but stripped of everything warm. “We need to talk about what trust means.”
A beat of silence. Then he’s gone.
I lower the phone slowly, standing there with my towel damp and my hair dripping and the tiles cold under my feet.
This was Kane with all the softness pulled out, and I don’t know what’s waiting for me on the other side of tomorrow.
He didn’t say it was over. Just gave me a time and a place.
Tomorrow. Seven PM.
That’s all I have. And it has to be enough.