We stayed up till the early morning hours, just talking. Other than a few reassuring kisses and embraces, we merely exchanged our experiences and the emotions that went with them.
I opened up about my alcoholic mother who never had time for me and treated me as nuisance. A reminder that she was an adult and had to provide for the mistake she had made after a crazy, blacked out, drunken night. How I had strived so hard to be a good daughter, doing well in school with grades, not getting into trouble. How I spent my free time cleaning up our tiny two bedroom trailer, making sure she was cleaned up and put to bed when she staggered in through the door. How I had no friends because none of the other kids wanted to or were allowed to be friends with the town drunks kid.
When I finally met some people I thought were my friends, that got me hanging out, smoking, drinking, and just doing stupid things. That those friends were how I was introduced to Billy. I didn't cry as I told him how I lost my virginity. How Billy had tied me up while I was drunk and had his way with me until later the next day, as he crooned that I had put a spell on him, that he'd fallen in love and I was now his. Nor did I cry when I told him how, when I tried to tell my mom about what had happened thinking she'd help me, she didn't believe me.
I confessed that I still do not know how I made it through till I graduated high school, still with high grades, with out anyone realizing or speaking up or me breaking down over what was going on in my home life. That no one cared until I woke up in the hospital, not able to recognize my own face from the swelling and the bruising, the perfect bruised hand marks around my neck, the three days that suddenly disappeared from my memory.
Those three days I was awake and attacking and trying to run away from everyone in the hospital, but to this day can not remember a thing due to shock.
The day I woke up and met the old lady nurse, who gave me hope and helped get the right people to come talk to me. Who had helped save my life.
I told him all the ugly truths and my lowest moments. He still looks at me like I am the best thing that could ever grace his presence.
In return he told me about his ex, how she had made her self out to be this perfect person, a persona of perfection to the world, but would diminish Lance in every way possible, but made it seem like he was the one making those choices. How she had convinced him he was so controlling that when things went wrong and they'd fight, it was all because of how cruel of a person he was. She made him believe he deserved to be cheated on, lied to, and treated like scum cause he just wanted to control everything about their life. He admitted that after she had cheated the first time, how he would try to know everything she was doing, but none of it mattered since she just lied to him.
She had isolated him from his friends, his family, and made him feel like she was all he had. Then one day his mother came by the house, just wanting to check in with him because she was worried after not hearing from him for a while. When Lance saw Melissa try to push his mother out of the house when he came down from a shower, he finally saw the light. He forced her to pack her bags and leave, with his mother watching every bit of the show that Melissa tried to put on to make herself seem the victim. She threw the engagement ring at him at the end, swearing that she'd 'never wanted to marry a pathetic, controlling, manipulative, loser like him anyways'.
She tried to get back into his good graces later, but when sweet talking and tears didn't work, she started vandalizing his vehicles and his home. Cameras caught her red handed and she was hit with a list of charges from the vandalism to the charges of home invasion with malicious intent, and attempted murder. She was tossed into prison after video evidence was shown of her adding stuff to his food in his house that was seen in his surveillance videos and he then had tested to show she had added arsenic to those for him to ingest. She was sentenced to thirty nine years with no chance of parole until twenty five have been served.
We laid in comfortable silence, just holding each other as a thought came to mind.
"Is that why you're a submissive? Because of what she did?" I asked him, curious.
"I guess you could say that, yeah. It's my reminder how I do not need, nor want to control any aspect of a relationship. What about you?" He asks, running his fingers through my hair.
"Yes, and I'm going to borrow your phrasing of you could say that. I've never felt in control of my life, and having that power, knowing that I make the choices, that nothing is going to happen that I can't handle or don't want to happen, that I'm safe."
"Do you feel safe with me, Lirael?" Lance inquires, watching as he runs his fingers down my cheek to my chin.
"I do. I feel safe and happy." A shy smile creeps across my face as I add, "And loved."
He pulls back with a mirrored smile to my own, a touch of awe in his eyes. "I make you feel loved?"
I nod, nuzzling my face into the crook of his neck so he can't see how I'm turning into a plum.
"You make me feel loved too, Lirael." He runs his hands through my hair to cup the back of my neck, encouraging me to look up at him.
He says softly, gazing longingly into my eyes, "Thank you, Lirael."
I blush and reach for his lips with my own, cradling his face in my palms, kissing him slow and sweetly. We part from each other slowly, cuddling up closer to each other, content to just be in each others arms. Safe and loved.
We wake in the late morning, the sun up high and bright and warming up our little bungalow. Crawling out of each others arms, I get up and open the windows for a better breeze to work its way through the room. After morning ablutions, we go to get back into bed, when a knock on the door rouses us back up.
Housekeeping asks us for our laundry and we're quick to gather up and hand the bags over to them. Once they've left, Lance decides to order room service, so I grab my phone to charge it since it's gone dead. Lunch had arrived by the time I took it off the charger.
Lance and I are enjoying our food, feeding each other and just being much more intimate in our affections with each other when my phone dings with an email notification.
"I better check and make sure that it doesn't have anything to do with work." I sigh, reaching over and open it up.
In the next few seconds though, I really wish I hadn't.