I was gritting my teeth so hard I thought they would crack.
“He coerced me into staying in there for longer and longer periods over the next few days. I didn’t like it at all, and I told him as much, but he told me to stop being a whiney brat; that I only had to sit in time out for a little while each day. Now, keep in mind,” Luke said, holding up a finger for emphasis, “that this entire time, we were also doing some of the things I liked and needed too. So that kept me coming around.”
I wanted to ask him the question that comes up in everyone’s mind when they hear about an abusive situation: Why didn’t you just leave him? But I knew from experience and dealing with domestic abuse that things just weren’t that simple.
“One time,” Luke said, steadying himself, “I snapped out of it and we got into a fight. I told him I was going to leave him. He completely transformed; he was begging me not to go, promising me that we’d stop with the cage stuff. From now on, he said, we’d do only the things that I wanted to do. I wanted to believe him.”
Blinking rage out of my eyes, I continued to listen intently. But I was carefully writing down on a mental notepad all of the things he was telling me so that I could exact revenge in Luke’s name later.
“One night when we were on the rocks and I thought things were over, he came over with flowers and tried to explain himself. Said it was a huge misunderstanding and miscommunication, and that he’d try to be better. He asked me if throwing away everything we’d ever had was worth it. I was naive. I was convinced to give him another chance. So once we did some vanilla stuff for a little while to establish trust, he invited me over to this… place. Now keep in mind, I knew what I was getting into and I consented to it. I knew that this night was when we were going to resume our kink, and it would be in a new location. That was part of the turn-on.”
I squeezed his hand, encouraging him to press on.
“I go there, and it was in this basement with a mattress on the floor. The only light was this dangling, single lightbulb. It was eerie, but I liked it. He strapped me to the bed and we did all of the things that one does in that situation. I was… I was into it. But then, right when I was about to finish, he jumped off of me and left the room without a word.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I thought he was going to the other room to get some water or something, or maybe just disappear for a few minutes or so. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Time stretched out to an eternity. I began to call for help, but no one was there. I was just in this random basement somewhere — no one was going to hear me.”
“That piece of shit,” I hissed as my heart broke for my partner, spilling his heart out to me here in the break room.
Tears beaded at the corners of his eyes. “He’d just left. He was gone, and I was still tied to the bed. I laid there for hours. I called for help; I screamed I cried. And finally, I was able to get my hand out of one of the restraints. Once I got one out, I could free my other limbs easily. So I got off the mattress and went out the same door that I’d seen him leave through. Only, I found that the path outward led to a cell.”
“Like… a jail cell?”
He nodded.
Rage swirled within me. I made it my personal mission to find this suck fuck and make him suffer. This explained why Luke had an anxiety attack when I mentioned I had a cage in my playroom. This is why he wouldn’t look at the criminal in the back of the cop car. Cages were a trigger for him.
“I was trapped in that room for three days without any food or water. I missed a bunch of my classes… then finally, someone came by and heard me yelling from outside the abandoned house. They came in and saved me. I couldn’t tell him what happened. He took one look at me and suggested I go to the police. But what was I supposed to tell them? Was I going to explain to them that I had a kink that got out of control? Hell no.”
“And if they questioned you about it, you’d have to relive it,” I offered.
He nodded. “I didn’t want to do that. I was already bedridden for the rest of the week, trying to get a handle on my anxiety. It was so bad during that time that I couldn’t even get out of bed. Everything seemed like it took an enormous amount of effort.”
I remembered the time that thing happened in my past… and how long it took me to overcome it. The depression that pulled me down into the dark corners of my mind. Luckily, I had a therapist to help me through it. Luke didn’t have that. He didn’t have anyone.
“I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I told them, or they would blame me for the whole thing. I blamed myself, anyway. But then on the last day of that week, when I’d made arrangements to take a break from university and come home for a while, I got a text.”
Dread boiled in my gut. “Was it from him?”
Luke nodded slowly. “He must have figured out I’d escaped, because the text said, ‘That’s what you get for trying to leave me.’”
I narrowed my eyes again, disgusted. “And did you say anything back
