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  Mal stood, and Kel felt too stunned to do anything but stare at her. “Will you drive me home?” she asked him. “Or do I need to call someone to come get me?”

  Susan stood, moving to block her path to the door. “Wait, you want to leave right now?”

  “Yes. I already packed. I’m ready to leave right now. I’m going to check myself out. I got my prescription renewals this morning from the psychiatrist, and I’m going home.”

  Kel felt his stomach drop as the abyss raced up to meet him. On unsteady feet, he stood. “I’ll drive you,” he heard himself say, fighting the urge to be sick, wondering if he was now facilitating his wife’s death. He realized he was holding her bracelet in his right hand and he finally slid it into the front right pocket of his slacks. “I’ll drive you,” he quietly said again.

  “Thank you.” Mal smiled, and how much peace he saw there terrified him. “I love you so much right now, you have no idea.”

  Chapter Three

  Mal had been prepared for Kel to try to work on her the entire drive home to Sarasota, to beg, plead, even go Master on her to order her to reconsider this.

  She hadn’t been prepared for his devastated silence. Not a cold or chilly one, either.

  More one of…grief.

  When he reached the exit on I-75 for their house, she finally broke the silence. “I love you, Kel.”

  “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said.

  He slowly nodded. “I get that.”

  “I have to do this. It’s been over eighteen months.”

  He took a moment to respond. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” She hated that she knew he weighed every response to her now, terrified of causing a reaction in her.

  “I want to know you’re not angry with me,” she said.

  It was as if he deflated, and that was somehow worse. “I’m not angry, sweetheart. Not at you,” he muttered.

  “Don’t you dare yell at Doyle and Niall and Doug.”

  From the grim set to his jaw, she knew that’s exactly what he wanted to do. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on this plan? Especially with them?”

  “I don’t want you lashing out at our friends.”

  “If they were true friends, they would have told me you reached out to them so I could have talked you out of this.”

  “Not when I reached out to them as a patient and not as your slave, no. They wanted to talk to you, believe me. I told them no.”

  He pulled over into the next shopping center and threw the shifter into park before he turned to face her. “What do you want me to say, Mal? You want me to wish you luck in trying to kill yourself? Because you sound pretty damn fatalistic, honey. It’s like you want to die.”

  The tears he tried to blink back and hide from her gutted her, but she didn’t cave as he continued. “It feels like I’m the only one working to keep you alive. You’ve pushed us all away—me, Mom, Chelbie, our friends.”

  “Chelbie has the baby to take care of,” she said. “And everything she’d doing for Rich’s career. She doesn’t need extra work on her plate babysitting me because I don’t have my shit together.”

  He played dirty, and honestly, she was surprised he hadn’t played this card earlier. “If Tilly was here, you damn well know what she’d tell you, right?”

  Mal slowly nodded. “Yeah,” she softly said. “I know exactly what she’d tell me. She’d tell me to suck it up and move forward and pull my own weight. She’d tell me if what I’m doing isn’t working and I know it, then it’s time to quit making excuses and find something that will work. And you know she would. Because that’s what she has told me in the past. Want me to call her so she can confirm she said it?”

  Kel threw his head back against the seat and stared out the windshield for several minutes.

  Mal didn’t interrupt.

  “So you trade one kind of limbo for another?” he eventually asked.

  “No. Four weeks.”

  He drew in a ragged breath and looked at her. “You want me to live at the apartment for four weeks?”

  “At the end of four weeks we’ll revisit it.”

  “And if you’re doing worse?”

  “How much worse can I be doing, Kel? Other than dead?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of!” he finally roared.

  Finally.

  Even though she flinched when he said it.

  She reached over to cup his cheek. “See?” she said. “I didn’t break. You won’t even cry in front of me, Kel. You’re terrified I’m going to keel over. That’s not healthy for you.”

  He stared into her eyes, Mal reading the obvious confusion there, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I want you to use these four weeks to find you,” she told him. “You’re every bit as lost as I am, and the only difference between how I’ve been killing myself and how you’re killing yourself is I’m doing it by withholding food from myself, and you’re doing it with worry about me.”

  “So, what, I’m supposed to ignore my wife’s suffering?”

  “No.” She forced a smile. “I want you to get involved with the club again. I want you to tie people. I want you to go to munches, and go to parties.”

  “I don’t want to do any of that without you. I can force myself to work, but I don’t have any interest in tying anyone else.”

  “You did all those things before me.”

  “Again, before you.”

  “You’ll be okay,” she insisted. “You need this.”

  She hated the pain on his face. “Why are you trying to shove me away?”

  “Because you’ve already rescued me once, Kel.” It hurt like hell not calling him Sir or Master, but she forced herself to forge on. “Now I’ve got to rescue me. I’m the only one who can do this. If I do, if you still want me on the back side of it, you’ll have a stronger slave for it.”

  “I’m your husband. I promised you in sickness and in health. As your Master, I promised to take care of you and protect you.”

  “I release you from that promise, Kel. I mean, I’d appreciate you not going out and cheating on me, because I’m hoping you’ll still want me, but I need to figure out who I am. I wouldn’t even blame you if you met someone and decided fuck this shit, you’re out. I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.”

  She watched his jaw tense as he angrily shook his head. “I’m not cheating on you, Mal. I’m not leaving you, I’m not divorcing you. I love you. I don’t want anyone but you. I wouldn’t be fighting so damn hard for you if I didn’t want to be with you! You’re my life!”

  “You had a life before me. I want the life back we had together. I want to play in the shadows with you again. I want that with you, and unless or until I can get my shit together, I know we won’t have that because you’re terrified to harm me.”

  She squeezed his hand before sitting back. “Take me home. Please.”

  * * * *

  Kel remembered a functional numbness that had set in during the immediate aftermath following his father’s death.

  This uncomfortably reminded him of that time. He’d desperately hurt after they lost the baby, but at least he’d had Mal to focus on to take the keen edge off the worst of his grief.

  Even now, his days were a haze of stumbling through taking care of work, of business, all while driving back and forth to Tampa to see Mal and participate in her treatment.

  How was he supposed to deal with that buffer…gone?

  When they returned home, he unloaded her things from the car and carried them into the bedroom, but when he tried to start unpacking for her, she smiled and caught his hand.

  “Stop, please. I’ll do this.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do now.”

  “You should probably pack.”

  He started to argue with her, but she gave him that sad, resigned smile again.

  “I’m not banning you from the house. You can still come and go from here as
you need to. Heck, come home and take showers and do laundry here. But I need some space. I need to be alone with my thoughts at night. If I thought I could handle all those stairs, hell, I’d move to the apartment for a while and let you have the house to yourself.”

  That shut him up. He didn’t want her there alone. The image of her tripping and falling down the stairs and hurting herself flashed through his mind and nearly made him shudder.

  A little over an hour later, he was at the apartment. It was a unit in the industrial complex he owned, the unit directly behind Venture, the BDSM club he was technically partners in with Derrick and Marcia.

  Another responsibility he’d allowed to fall to the side, because he’d been too consumed with worry about Mal.

  He drove his truck and left Mal’s car at the house for her, although the possibility of her attempting to drive right now terrified the fuck out of him.

  He’d considered disabling her car so it wouldn’t start and realized that would only piss her off and probably make her not trust him, but he did extract a promise from her to either call him if she felt she couldn’t drive, or to call an Uber, or friends. It was small comfort, but he had to believe she wouldn’t lie to him about something like that.

  Downstairs was his office, and that was where he worked, his computers there for processing photographs he took as part of his vanilla job. He hadn’t been doing much photography work lately, though. Much of that work was for commercial clients, like product photography for boats, cars, buildings and houses for real estate companies and builders, and retail products.

  He also did lifestyle photography, especially of shibari and rigging, but he’d let that part of his career fall to the side with all of this.

  Mal had been his favorite subject…before. His beautiful canvas for his own personal dark art.

  At least he had his income from the commercial properties he’d invested in. That paid his bills both for the commercial properties and for their home. Mal had worked both as a graphics designer, as well as helped him with his photography business. But it’d been months since she’d actually worked, because he’d ordered her to focus on her recovery.

  He carried his laptop and overnight bags upstairs. The apartment’s air felt a little stale, so he flipped on the AC after he dropped his things on the couch.

  It didn’t feel right being here now like this.

  Before he’d met Mal, it’d been his home, his cozy fortress of protection from the world.

  It was where he and Mal fell in love and became a family.

  He felt…

  Helpless.

  Except…there was one thing he could do.

  He dug out his cellphone and called Niall.

  Honestly? He was shocked when Niall answered on the second ring. He’d expected his friend to let it go to voice mail.

  “Hello, Kel. She already called an’ told me she was home. I was expectin’ yer call.”

  Rage washed through him. “How could you fucking talk to Mal and not tell me?” Kel realized he was screaming and didn’t even care. “She’s my goddamned wife and slave, and you didn’t think her coming up with this plan warranted a fucking heads-up to me?”

  Niall sighed. “I asked her for permission to talk to ye about this, an’ she asked me not to tell ye that, or to get into details with ye beyond what she okays, now that she’s home. She’s seein’ me as a client. I cannot break confidentiality, an’ neither can Doyle, nor Doug, an’ ye damn well know it.”

  “As my friends—”

  “As yer friend, I’m gonna tell ye to shut yer bloody gob an’ listen to me for a feckin’ minute!” Niall roared over the line, shocking Kel.

  He’d never heard Niall raise his voice. Ever. The friendly Irishman was usually chill as fuck.

  “Ye gonna listen?” Niall asked.

  Kel swallowed back his fear, his anger—his feelings of betrayal. “Yeah,” he finally said.

  “She’s in pain, an’ ye damn well know it. Here’s what I can tell ye, an’ both Doug an’ Doyle are in agreement with me. The fact that she’s tryin’ to take control of this is a positive step.”

  “You’re not a specialist in eating disorders.”

  “No, I’m not, I’ll give ye that. But I’ve done a lot of training an’ work in the field of obsessive-compulsive disorders, an’ there is a bit of overlap with that. I have had training in eating disorders, in school, even though my focus is addiction recovery. We’re also bringin’ in Dr. Doug Strickland. I believe ye’ve met him. He’s a friend in common.”

  “Is he a specialist in eating disorders?”

  “Eh, no. He was a priest—”

  “What? Are you shitting me?”

  “Now, listen to me, dammit! He’s got a psychology doctorate an’ twenty years’ practical experience. His main focus now is addiction recovery, but he’s also had training in various specialties, including eating disorders. He’s counseled people with eating disorders, in the past. He brings a different focus to this.”

  “Neither of us are religious.”

  “I know, I know. An’ he’s not a priest anymore, although he’s working toward ordination in the Unitarian Church. He’s not gonna try to convert her or anythin’, that’s not what this is about. He’s had real-world experience counseling a wide variety of people. Very calm kind of chap. Very…Zen.

  “The three of us, working in tandem with her, an’ bein’ that we’re all in the lifestyle, I wouldn’t be agreein’ to this if I didn’t think we can help her. Doug is a submissive, so he’s got that end of the spectrum covered. All three of us are experienced practitioners of CBT. Eh, cognitive behavior therapy, not the other kind. An’ CBT has proven effective with eating disorders.”

  “They use CBT at the treatment facility in Tampa, and—”

  “She’s got vanilla health professionals up there. Maybe they’re kink-friendly, but let’s face it—maybe it’s time to let two determined Doms an’ a damned smart sub take a whack at it, eh?”

  When Kel didn’t respond, Niall pushed on. “Plus we’ve got a nutritionist in the clinic who’s agreed to work with her about her diet plan. She’s already had a phone conversation with Mal’s dietician in Tampa an’ received a copy of her file. We’ve got a psychiatrist on staff who will take over supervisin’ her medications, so we can stay on top of that in case we need to make any changes. An’ no one’s tried hypnotherapy on Mal in all this time. I can try that. I do that clinically, not just as a neat party trick. The three of us have put our heads together, an’ we’re gonna try a multi-pronged approach to this. We already have a treatment plan in place.”

  Desperation tied painful knots in Kel’s guts. “She needs to be inpatient, Niall,” he pleaded with him. “They can keep an eye on her.”

  “How many times, then, aye?” he quietly asked. “What’s this, the third, fourth, fifth time? Ye keep her locked up fer the rest of her life, or until she kills herself because she’s so feckin’ depressed she doesn’t have a life anymore?”

  Kel swallowed his simmering rage, because…yeah.

  He’d had that exact fear himself.

  “An’ before ye go off wantin’ to kill us,” Niall continued, “we’ve set a hard limit of one month with Mal. If at the end of one month the three of us have reached a consensus that she’s not makin’ progress, she’ll willingly go back inpatient. This will be a month-to-month process with us, an’ she has to earn every month after this first one. The fact that she asked us about this, that she took this step to approach us an’ talk to us, it’s a good sign. She’s taking control, an’ she needs to if she’s gonna beat this.”

  “She didn’t tell me any of that.” Kel was no longer sure if his anger was at Niall, or at Mal for not telling him any of those details.

  “Then she likely didn’t tell ye that we also told her if we feel she’s lapsin’ before then, or is in danger, that we’ll force her back to in-patient immediately. That we’ll Baker Act her, if need be, to protect her.”

&nb
sp; “No, she didn’t.” He slumped onto the sofa. “She just asked me to stay at the apartment for a month.”

  “That wasn’t our idea, either,” Niall told him. “In fact, I told her I’d prefer she let ye stay at home, with her.”

  “Then why is she doing this? What about UCAN and FBT, huh? What about involving families and partners? I’ve read the research, Niall. I’ve had plenty of time.”

  Niall’s voice gentled. “Because she’s scared. For a lot of reasons.”

  “She isn’t the only one.”

  Niall sighed. “I’ve already got a call in to Dr. Abrahms in Tampa,” Niall told him. “I’m goin’ to set up a conference call for the three of us with her to get fully up-to-speed with her end. We already have Mal’s case file. I promise ye, if we feel Mal’s in danger, we’ll tell ye immediately an’ get her readmitted there. But none of the three of us can disagree with her logic here. It’s not like she doesn’t understand she’s in danger. She does.

  “Keep in mind it doesn’t matter how renowned a treatment facility is. Not every treatment works for every person. There’s no magic bullet, whether it’s addiction, or OCD, or eating disorders. She’s got a lot of old baggage from her childhood, an’ that’s not breakin’ her trust to tell ye what ye already know.

  “The only way treatment will work is if the person goin’ through it feels it’ll help, an’ she’s hit the point she feels the center has reached its limit in what it can do for her. So if they tried a month or a year, it likely wouldn’t help her anymore an’ would only end up frustratin’ both of ye with her lack of progress. That means ye need to let her try this.”

  Kel felt his tears start again. “I can’t lose her, Niall. She’s the love of my life, and I’m scared I’m going to be burying her, and that’s going to kill me.”

  “I know,” he gently said, sounding somber. “An’ that’s somethin’ she knows, too. An’ it’s a guilt I’m sure she’s holdin’ on to. But when somethin’ isn’t workin’, it’s sheer insanity to keep beatin’ yer head against a wall an’ hopin’ it turns out different. I promise ye, we’re going to try to get her to let us at least talk to ye to keep ye updated. But only she can do this work. Maybe it’s time ye talk to someone, yerself. She said ye’ve neglected yer own self-care.”