Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
STEVIE
Audrey fucking Taylor is the day-shift charge nurse.
Why had I not even considered that she could have transferred to labor and delivery in the last couple of years that I haven’t been around?
*The woman that I have not been able to get out of my mind for the past two years is now someone that I have to work with—closely. Almost as close as she was when she was looking up at me with her tongue in my cunt.
I came on her face.
Her fucking husband paid me for that experience, and now I have to see her every day.
And she’s my high school best friend’s mother.
I was at their house more than I was at mine growing up.
What the actual hell was I thinking that night at Sin’s? I should have turned around and walked out of that room and never looked back. One of the other Dommes could have easily taken over, and they wouldn’t have known the difference.
But the jealousy that immediately flooded my system at the thought of someone else being with them was something I had never felt with any clients before—so I stayed.
Coming back to Manitou Springs was something I never thought I would do again.
I loved my life in Vegas and having the opportunity to continue working at Sin’s to blow off steam whenever I had the urge was beyond amazing.
But I knew Springs Hospital had amazing midwife support, and when my grandma called, needing a little more help at home, it was an easy choice.
My grandma raised me. If it wasn’t for that woman, I’d be dead.
My mother was the ultimate piece of shit up until she died my senior year of high school.
My therapist always says I never really mourned my mother’s death, and I’m always quick to explain that she was already dead to me when she left me in my first drug house at ten.
She was so high she forgot I was with her.
That drug dealer was one of the nicer ones I came across, but the last time I remember being with her, my grandma had to pay them before they would let either of us go. After she paid him off, she took me from my mom, and to this day I still don’t think she cared if I was alive or dead.
That’s when I mourned my mother.
While she was alive, actively choosing drugs over her own daughter.
My grandma took care of me, and the least I can do now is return the favor. She’s well into her seventies now and her house is becoming too much to manage on her own, so I moved in with her, and honestly, it’s been great to be back.
Did I think about Audrey and Boden when I said yes to this whole situation?
Of course.
But they still have no clue that I was the Dominatrix that they spent that evening with back at Sin’s.
And I’m going to keep it that way. No one in this small-ass town knows I used to be a sex worker.
Some days it seems progressive, but then I’ll overhear a conversation in a patients room or people out in public, and I tamp down any hopes I had of ever talking about that time of my life.
A part of my life I truly wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
I’m in my patient’s room trying to waste time so I don’t have to speak to Audrey, but I know it’s a pointless effort. I just keep telling myself that she doesn’t know, but all I can see is her on her knees, sitting on Boden’s face, eating my cunt, and falling apart for me.
I don’t get attached.
I won’t get attached.
I can’t get attached.
But Audrey and Boden are the closest I’ve ever come to feeling that way.
It scared me so badly that I completely stopped taking married couples because I thought my feelings were stemming from them being married. Maybe I had that married-person kink—like the more off limits, the more I wanted them. And they sure as hell are off limits…
But it wasn’t.
No one else has made me feel the way they did that night, and I have been chasing that high for the past two years.
So much so that I started taking on as many births as I could to distract myself, plus Sin’s whenever I had an ounce of free time.
I almost set myself up for early burnout in the career I fought so hard to get.
I ended up completing my required births faster than anyone else in the midwifery masters program ever has before.
Once I got my license I calmed down a little after that, but my grandma couldn’t have called at a better time.
Before the start of my patient’s next contraction, I tell her, “You’re doing great. Hit your call button and tell your nurse if you need anything. I’ll be around whenever you need me.”
I quietly shut the door behind me, and when I look up, Audrey is standing face-to-face with me.
I jump, placing my hand over my heart. “Audrey, you just scared the shit out of me!”
She wraps me up in a hug again, and I immediately tense. Not that I don’t want to be wrapped in this woman’s arms, but if we’re going to keep this professional, she can’t keep doing this. My body is feeling things that it shouldn’t be, and I need distance between us again.
She whispers, “I am so proud of you.”
Goddamn it, she’s going to make me cry.
Again, she grabs me by the shoulders, holding me out, inspecting me. “A CNM in four years?!”
“You know, I graduated from high school with almost a bachelor’s… That shit was boring.”
Tears well in her eyes before she pulls me back in for another squeeze.
The mommy issues are crawling to the surface quicker than I can stomp them back into the dirt. So I wrap my arms around her, too. But I tell myself it’s only as friends.
As my best friend’s mom.
She’s my mom’s age—there’s nothing between us. It was one night, and she still has no clue it was me, and it’s going to stay that way.
Maybe we can just be friends instead, and everything will be just fine.
“Dani still doesn’t even know what she wants to do in school.”
And there’s the ice water pouring over me, immediately pulling me from any unruly thoughts.
I give her a tight smile.
“She’ll figure it out.” I step back and am met with the door. “Yell if you need me. I’m going to grab some shut-eye. This will be a long, seventy-two-hour shift if not.”
* THE REPLACEMENT - Kae