But all of that was imagined, I realized as I stared down the human sitting in front of me.
“You wanted to see me,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You wanted to apologize.”
He grimaced and looked down at his coffee cup, playing with it in his hands. “I did. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by without me thinking about what I did to you.”
Now that I looked at him closer, I couldn’t believe that I’d ever convinced myself that I might love him. Looking through my rose-colored glasses, at one time he was the hottest guy in the world to me.
The thought that I’d even put him on a pedestal like that, let him control me like that, made me sick to my stomach.
“I’m still waiting for that apology,” I said with command. I thought of Adam, and the authoritarian edge he carried to his voice.
Kirk sighed and looked into my eyes. “I am so, so sorry about how I made you feel.”
I snorted. “That’s a crap apology and you know that.” I sat back in my char and spread out my arms, trying to communicate that I was the one in control here.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, blinking a few times.
“You said, you’re sorry about how you made me feel. Kirk, you tied me up and left me in a basement with no food or water for a couple of days. That’s fucked up.”
His eyes shifted, and all of the false warmness was gone from them. Now they looked at me with this deadness. “It’s what you were into, I was just doing something I thought you’d like.”
“No, what you did was… it was abusive. You’re an abuser, Kirk.”
He raised one of his hands to his chest and opened his mouth as if he couldn’t believe that I would accuse him of this. “What we do— what we did in the bedroom could look like abuse to people who aren’t into it, but what I did to you was never, ever abuse.”
“Yes, it was,” I said, not falling into his trap. “You’re a monster.”
Then his face shifted into that evil look I’d only ever seen a few times before when I’d pissed him off. “How dare you say that to me,”
But I steeled myself. Even though my heart was beating quickly, even though my panic threatened to take me under again, I had to face him. I had to face my own personal demon personified into the man sitting across from me. “You have someone else now, don’t you?”
His eye twitched.
“Yeah, I thought so,” I concluded. “You tie him up too? Do you leave him in cages? Do you stop when he tells you to stop?”
People in the coffee shop were turning their heads, and the ambient noise faded away as people began to listen.
“Shut up,” he said dangerously. “You’re just as much into this stuff as I am. You’re a freak like me; no one is ever going to understand you the way I did.”
“You’re wrong. I found someone too — quite possibly the love of my life. He’s a real man, a real dom, not an abusive poser like you who gets off on power trips.”
“I SAID SHUT UP!” Kirk cried as he stood up.
The coffee shop was silent. Everyone was staring at us as Kirk looked down at me, his brown eyes blazing with fury.
The version of me from the spring would have cowed down at his yelling. Hell, even the version of me from a week ago would have flinched and tried to make himself look smaller.
But the person I’d become wouldn’t do that. Instead, I stood up, matching his height.
Kirk was watching me with wide, angry eyes, his nostrils flaring.
I could tell by the way he was looking at me that he couldn’t believe this act of defiance; he couldn’t believe that someone would dare cross his threshold of control.
Then fear tinted his eyes, as he felt the control pulling away. He shouted to the entire coffee shop, “Get a load of this guy, everyone!” A wicked smile crossed his face. “This guy — Luke DuPont — is into the most depraved shit you can imagine,” he sneered.
I wouldn’t let my facial expression change. I wouldn’t look shocked. All I had to do was stand tall and take it. It was only words, after all.
“He’s into ball and gag torture,” Kirk continued, “nasty BDSM stuff. Tying him up and fucking him,”
The audience blinked at him, keenly attuned to the drama.
“It’s true,” I said nonchalantly to the coffee shop, robbing Kirk of the power that he had over me. The power of that secret. “You done?” I asked, a bored look crossing my face.
He was sputtering and stammering, trying to think of something else he could hold over my head. “He— he likes it up the ass! He’s a deviant, a sexual deviant!”
More and more of the coffee shop patrons were losing interest, turning back to their conversations.
Kirk was losing steam, and losing his mind the more his control slipped away.
“No one cares, Kirk,” I said, deadpan.
He turned to me, his brown eyes brimming with rage. Then he whispered dangerously, “I should have locked the door to that house. Left you in that basement to starve!”
“You don’t scare me,” I said simply. “There’s nothing you can do to hurt me anymore.”
As the words left my mouth, I felt a thousand feet tall. From confronting him like this, he was reduced from this huge monster that had been lurking in my mind to the size of an ant.
“You’re going to pay for this,” he threatened, scrambling for the tiniest scrap of power and gritting his teeth. “You better start looking over your shoulder when you’re alone at night…”
“I already am,” I said confidently, giving
