Dean Walsh was happy with his new life, his job, his girlfriend. Until his boss, billionaire Salomon Ellis, discovers his darkest secret. From then on, he will hold Dean hostage to his whims in exchange for his silence.
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Of course I left. I ran away like a damned chicken.
Steph didn't even glance at me when I got home, which gave me the priceless chance to take my chicken ass straight to the shower. I lingered under the warm rain, trying to decide whether I felt relieved or regretted declining Big Ellie's last temptation.
The bed was vacant when I finally left the bathroom, still incapable of telling how I felt, so I got in it. Time for Steph to try the couch. Yeah, anytime. She could be proud and stubborn, but she was no fool. She wouldn't give up her half of the comfy mattress.
I rolled over, turning my back on her, and she got in bed without a word, staying as far from me as the king size allowed her to, so we didn't brush each other even by mistake.
Midnight found me awake, listening to her slow, deep breathing from what seemed a world away, while I tried to find some kind of clarity in the swamp my mind was.
I didn't want to give up on her, on us, just yet. Couple have rough patches now and then. We were no exception. The only problem was that, in the past, I'd always been the one to come around first, and for some reason that escaped me, this time I wouldn't. I knew Steph would need a little time to get it, wrap her head around it and decide what she wanted to do. So I decided I'd give her some time.
Over that week, the seminar became the bright point of my days. I just loved sitting down with Tom and working on our project. Bill helped us out whenever we hit a wall, and by Thursday, we already had an acceptable outline that covered the main segments. Fleshing them out would take time, so our goal was laying out a solid skeleton.
In the meantime, Big Ellie just vanished. He didn't text me or call me, and I didn't catch a glimpse of him. Like before he'd first summoned me to room twelve, he became but a name upstairs, existing in a dimension that never intersected mine.
At home, Steph changed tactics to bring me to my knees every other day. She ignored me to the extreme of omitting my laundry and ordering supplies only for her, or she locked herself up in the bedroom to cry when I was around, or she glared at me and murmured insults under her breath if I was within earshot.
I simply ignored her. I did my laundry, ordered what I needed, went about my life like she wasn't even there.
Which was frigging exhausting.
Soon I realized it couldn't last much longer. Son to a couple that hadn't divorced only because of their religious beliefs, I wasn't about to make the same mistake just for the sake of refusing to acknowledge a failure. I wouldn't waste all my energy keeping up a pathetic charade to conceal my private domestic hell.
I refused to give up on her just yet, though. So far, Steph was just being Steph, and I needed something more to admit defeat. But while I waited for heaven to open up and show me a sing, something else brewed in the back of my head.
No matter how much I hated to admit it, Big Ellie's retreat weighted me down.
It wasn't only that my situation with Steph deprived me of any kind of physical satisfaction. It had a weight of its own, especially after having dinner with him.
