She perches on the counter drinking a glass of wine while I chop vegetables for the stir-fry, and tells me all about the fantasy book she finished this afternoon.
I stop every so often to kiss her on the lips, and she kisses me back and then resumes talking excitedly about a dragon.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the front door.
“I think that’s the next book in the series!” she exclaims. “I ordered it already.”
I put down the knife and wipe my hands on a cloth. “Stay there. I’ll get it.”
When I open the door, I see, not a delivery driver, but Livia’s ex-boyfriend. I stare into his petulant, flushed face while every shitty thing he did to Livia runs through my mind.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters, eyeing me up carefully, as if trying to gauge how much I know about him and Livia and how angry I might be.
Everything. I know everything, you asshole.
“I want to speak to Livia.” He sounds like a sulky boy.
Livia’s voice calls behind me, growing louder as she comes through the lounge, “Who is it? Oh.”
Her voice falls hard on the oh, and she comes to a halt by my side. I start to close the door, but she puts her hand on my arm.
“Wait. Let me talk to him.”
Livia steps past me and faces Piers. I want to grab this asshole by the collar and march him downstairs rather than let him spend even one second even looking at her.
She studies his face carefully. “You’ve been drinking.”
Piers rolls his eyes and gives an angry sigh. “I don’t remember that being against the law.”
“No, but I would have expected someone who wanted a serious conversation wouldn’t wait until they’d had three beers to do it. You don’t really want to talk, you just want to intrude on my life.”
“Jeez, Livia, when did you get so fake-deep? Has this lentil-eating douchebag been giving you self-help talks?”
“No. I just learned some basic self-respect since we broke up.”
His expression becomes bitter. “You mean you turned into a bitch.”
I step toward him and snarl in his face, “Don’t ever talk to Livia like that. Don’t talk to anyone like that, and get the fuck out of here.”
Piers stares me down, breathing beer fumes all over me, but he’s not as confident as he was a moment ago.
“I could say I feel sorry for you, but I don’t,” Livia tells him. “I feel sorry for whichever woman will come after me in your life. I wish I could go to her right now and tell her that she deserves better than you, like I deserved better than you.”
I look carefully at Livia’s face, wondering if she’s upset, but she’s calm and clear-eyed.
“Goodbye, Piers. Don’t come around here again. You’re not welcome.”
She shuts the door in his startled face.
I wrap my arms around her and kiss the top of her head, and murmur into her hair, “I’m so proud of you.”
She squeezes me hard, and then smiles up at me. “Thank you, daddy. I can’t tell you how good it felt to say that.” Then her expression grows serious. “I wish I could pre-warn every woman he meets what he’s really like. It makes me angry to think that there’s nothing I can do to stop him from hurting someone else like he hurt me.”
“You did do something. You stood up to him and told him no. Maybe no one’s ever done that to him before and he needed to hear it.”
She thinks for a moment, chewing her lower lip. “He didn’t even seem like he was listening to me.”
“He heard. Maybe tomorrow, or next week, or sometime in the future what you said will get through to him.”
“I hope so,” she says, heading back through to the kitchen.
I follow her. I hope so, too. I hate the thought of any other women like Livia being subjected to a so-called dom like Piers.
I pick up the knife and resume chopping. “I got a new client last week, and from our first meeting I sensed that she might have been through something like what you’ve been through. I told her the things that made a difference to you, and slowly she’s relaxed into the place and is opening up to me a little.”
Sympathy wrinkles Livia’s brow. “Is she okay? Did she get away from the dom who mistreated her?”
“Yes. She was with this man for eight years, so her number one goal is to relearn her confidence. She says getting through her workouts is making a big difference, and seeing healthy power exchanges around her is showing her how the dynamics are supposed to work. That it can make her happy.”
“It will give her hope that she can have something like it in her personal life again.”
“I think that’s what I love best about Dom Fitness. It gives me the chance to feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives.”