“How do we fight, Faith?”
“We do what we just said. We communicate.”
“And with Macom?”
“He never hurt me, but he threw volatile temper tantrums and destroyed things. The next day, he would buy me extravagant gifts to apologize.”
“Well, to start. I’m not insecure, in case you didn’t notice. I’m good at what I do but you have a gift that I admire. You are brilliant, Faith.”
My cheeks flush not as much with the compliment, but the vehement way he delivers the words. Like he means them so very deeply.
He doesn’t give me time to reply, “And as for money. I’m going to spend money on you. BecauseI want to.If I want to do it just because, I will. BecauseI want to. And if I want to do it because I piss you off, I will. BecauseI want to.He doesn’t get to change that. He doesn’t get that kind of say in our relationship.”
“I don’t need you to spend money on me but I don’t want him to define me or us. I hate that we’re even having this conversation.”
“We needed to have this conversation. You lived with him. You must have thought you loved him.”
“I did. The man I knew before the fame and the money.”
“Money and fame don’t change people, Faith. Those things simply expose their true colors.”
“I don’t dispute that, but I don’t know how he hid those true colors so well. I’ve thought about that a lot. How did I miss so much?”
“Were you his submissive?”
“No. I told you. I’m not a submissive. You know that I’m not a submissive.”
“But he tried to make you one.”
“Yes. He did. I refused.”
He narrows his eyes on me. “He found that world while he was with you, not before.”
“Right after his first big sale, he was invited to an expensive, invitation only dinner club.”
“That wasn’t a dinner club at all.”
“Exactly. And I agreed to go because he was still the Macom I thought I knew.”
“And what happened?”
“For us, it was voyeurism and sex that felt daring and sexy at the time. Looking back, I think something was always missing for us, and that night, in that club, it felt as if we filled some void.”
“And so you went back.”
“Yes. And for a while I liked it. In some ways I always did, but why and how changed.”
“Meaning what?” he presses.
“Starting out, we kept to ourselves. Just going there made things exciting. But then he got darker at home. More demanding at the club.” I rotate and face forward. “The first time he crossed a line, he tied me up and then invited people to watch us without telling me, withoutasking. It spiraled from there.”
Nick rotates forward as well, both of us side by side, arms resting on the table. “But you kept going?”
I glance over at him, daring to look into his eyes. “It’s like you said earlier. I use sex to protect myself. That goes back to what I said a moment ago. I don’t know when or how it happened, but that club became the place that I trained myself to be something that I wasn’t before. It’s was where I learned to be in control, even when I was seemingly not in control at all. Sex became a different kind of escape. I actually found those moments, when I could be in a room of naked bodies and still feel alone, sanctuary.”
“From what?”
“Everything I didn’t want to face. In reality, my control in that club was a replacement for claiming real control of my life.”