50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Torn: Chapter Thirty-Seven

    After an abbreviated workout session, Aubrey announced that he was going to take a shower. The announcement was an invitation in disguise. Destiny declined the unspoken offer. He showered, dried off, and stood at the mirror while dressing. He caught a brief glimpse of Destiny walking into the bathroom with a bundle of clothes in her hands.

    He could see the broken spirit in her, and it took him back to the early days of their relationship. The scene was all too familiar. Whenever they dared to get closer, to become more intimate, he never failed to throw in a monkey wrench that set them back a few paces. Back then, her gripe had been that she knew he loved her, but he hadn't had the guts to say it. She'd known that he was capable of loving someone at a time when he hadn't known that about himself. And one of the reasons he loved her is because despite him being her Dominant, and despite her being a submissive, the tenacious little spirit she had would not let up. She continued to push at him and test him, sometimes even at the expense of being punished, until he could see that she was right.

    And this time? He knotted his tie. His movements were robotic, and the expression on his face was stoic. Going through the motions. This time, she's furious with me because I didn't respond to her dream the way she wanted me to. Family is long-term. Family is a commitment that is to be taken seriously, and even though I'm having those heavenly dreams about a future family with her, even entertaining the thought about family when he and Destiny were in this odd love triangle arrangement with Brian seemed wrong. 

    She'd told him about her dream in hopes that she would get him to guarantee that he wanted to have a family with her. The dream had only served to instill doubt in him. In her dream, he'd told her that he had changed his mind about having children. Hearing that had led him to wondering if he could potentially change his mind about the possibility of having his own family.

    I'd gotten it into my head that the dreams I had at Palmer's were real. They always felt real. The love I felt for Destiny and for our children felt real. But who am I to say that my dreams were any more real than the dream she had? How do I know that I won't wake up one day and decide that I'm not father material or husband material?

    The bathroom door opened, startling him.

    He'd been standing in front of the mirror with his hands frozen in mid-air, holding two ends of his blue silk tie.

    Destiny walked out of the bathroom wearing a black hoodie, jeans, and socks. She hadn't put on any makeup and her hair was pulled up into a sloppy topknot. She passed him on the way to the hamper, and dropped her tank top and shorts in the cylindrical stainless steel bin. Then, she opened the closet door and walked inside. When she came back out, she had a pair of Nike sneakers in her hands.

    The last thing he wanted to do was annoy her any further than he already had, but her choice of outfit genuinely confused him. "Are you taking the day off?" he asked her.

    She shook her head, avoiding his gaze as she walked around the bed. "Nope."

    He finished knotting his tie and turned away from the mirror. "You're...going to work in that?"

    "Yup."

    "HR will probably give you grief for wearing that," he cautioned her. "It's against the dress code."

    "I don't care," she muttered, sitting on the edge of the bed and setting one shoe down beside her. "Besides, my boyfriend owns the company. Right? So...I dare them to say something about what I'm wearing."

    He watched her put her sneakers on. Sighing heavily, he walked around the bed and sat down beside her. "Are you really going to let a dream affect how you feel about me?"

    She glared at him. "The dream scared me, and it worried me. But the dream isn't why I'm pissed off at you, and you know that." She put both of her sneakers on and stood up from the bed.

    "Why are you pissed off at me?" he asked calmly.

    "You know why," she insisted.

    He did know why. "Tell me," he said anyway.

    "You said that you would work on opening up to me," she told him after a moment of consideration. "You told me that you would be more open. But whenever it comes to something important, you clam up and close off. At the restaurant, there was a dream you didn't want to tell me details about. I let that slide, because it was just a dream. But then today? Right out there in that living room, you were going through something. You were just as distraught as I was, and you wouldn't tell me why. I know that it was relating to what we were talking about. I even think I know what you wanted to say, but you were too chicken to say it."

    He stared blankly at her.

    "It was like...before. When I could tell that you loved me, but you refused to say it. It was just like that."

    He turned his head.

    "You know you can tell me anything," she told him, the anger in her voice subsiding a bit. "I can tell that there's something you want to tell me. So...just tell me. We can work through it together."

    "There's nothing I have to say."

    "You're lying." She snatched her cell phone off of the nightstand and walked out of the room.

    You're losing her. You're losing her. Don't let her slip away just because of one cowardly move. Cursing under his breath, he followed her out of the room and jogged to catch up with her. He grabbed her by the arm and backed her against the hallway wall. "Wait. Don't go."

    Defiance flashed in her eyes. "Or what? Or you're going to punish me? Throw me across your lap and spank me? Put me in a cage? Bring another woman here, just to show me that you have options?"

    "If you don't follow my order, then yes. You will be punished."

    She yanked her arm out of his grasp and rose up on her tiptoes. "You don't get to tell me what to do anymore," she told him. "You're not my Dominant. Our contract ended. The new one doesn't go into effect until you win, and you are far from winning, Aubrey."