Chapter Thirty-Eight

I ached. It had been three days since Dani left.

I had thought about hunting her down so many times. I had so many unwanted paranoid fantasies of her dead, face-down in a gutter. She was my Little, I couldn't help but worry about her.

Seth had offered to find her for me, to trace her credit card usage. He had told me that she called Jess, that Jess had confirmed everything. That she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what I had done. I couldn't be mad at Jess, she didn't understand. She thought she was helping. Lauren had been the one with malicious intent.

I had turned him down. It would only make things worse.

I had been tempted, sorely tempted, but I had turned him down. If Dani was ever going to trust me again, I had to let her come to me. I couldn't go finding her, that would only tell her that Lauren was right, that I was controlling and manipulative... but I didn't feel controlling or manipulative... I had done what I did out of love. Maybe not at first... but I had my reasons - I had to know before making myself vulnerable that she even had the potential to enjoy being Little.

I hadn't done anything to hurt her.

But I couldn't chase her. I couldn't find her. I couldn't swoop in and save her and cuddle her close and promise her that she was my perfect, beautiful princess and that I'd always love her.

I had to give her the space to come back to me - and it was the hardest thing in the world.

I had to hope she would.

* * *

I felt numb. I had been squatting in the hotel room for three days, too jumbled to go out, existing on delivered pizza and infomercials. I had called in sick to work. I had only really left once - to pick up a charger for my phone. I kept logging into my social media accounts to see if Vanessa had left any traces of spying on me, but I didn't even know what to look for. I hadn't caught wind of anything before. She had installed a tracker on my phone... but I never left it unlocked, not after the time Jenni had grabbed it to check the time and got greeted with a dirty picture of Elaine. She could have been watching me through the camera on my phone and I'd have no way of knowing.

I spent the days obsessing, searching for information about spying girlfriends, spying husbands, what would lead a person to do it, trying to figure out the reasons why she had done it, what motivated her. When I closed my eyes, I could see Vanessa's face - the cold expression as Lauren revealed her sins to me. How she had just failed to react. There was no shame there, no remorse.

I had been pondering that face for three days.

Did she even love me? Did she ever love me?

I pondered her other faces, her Mommy face, her gamer face, her friend face, her lover face. Were they all lies? Vanessa had stolen my heart more thoroughly than any partner ever before. She had become my everything, and now that my everything was gone, I was hollow.

Some of my research into spying lovers had led me to psychology articles, and some of them pointed to this being a personality disorder. It was a hard pill to swallow. I didn't want to believe it - she matched so many of the symptoms... but there were so many others that were flat out wrong. She wasn't impulsive - she planned meticulously. She wasn't irritable or aggressive, she was very calm, collected, and gentle. I couldn't imagine her hurting me in anger. She wasn't irresponsible... she was an entrepreneur, she was honestly the most responsible person I knew.

Some signs were unmistakable however - disregard for laws, deceitfulness and repeated lying. Lack of remorse.

That was the one that haunted me. The stone face she had given when Lauren had revealed everything.

What if that face was the true face? What if all the others were false?

But I loved her. I loved her deeply and I hurt without her. I missed my friend, I missed my gaming buddy, I missed my lover. I missed my mommy.

The last three days had felt so empty without her.

But what if the articles were right? The general advice for someone in my situation was to run. To run and to never look back.

It took me three days to sift through all the thoughts and feelings, half expecting Vanessa to come bursting through the door after hunting me down through computer trickery. But she never did. And the conclusion that I came to was that I had to try. I picked up my phone, watching my hand shake as I held it, but I didn't feel it - it was like the hand belonged to someone else.

And I dialed Vanessa.

"Hello?" she sounded worried. She sounded scared.

"Hi," I said quietly.

"Are you okay?" she asked. I had been expecting her to demand to know where I was.. but she was scared, she wanted to know I was okay. But what if it was an act?

"I'm not okay," I said, a lump rising in my throat, "I'm not okay. I hurt so much."

"I'm sorry," her voice cracked, like she was crying. I had never seen her cry before, never heard anything but calmness and happiness out of her. Even her voicemails were calm concern. It was jarring. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm at a hotel in Milpitas - the Baymont," I said softly. "Will you come get me?"

I checked out of the hotel, feeling scared, feeling worried - both that it wouldn't work out and that it would. There was something wrong with Vanessa. Something wrong in Vanessa. But it didn't change the fact that I loved her. That I was ready to take a chance... if she was ready to change. She got there quickly, before the doubts really had a chance to settle in, before I could talk myself out of getting in her car.

As I sat in her passenger seat, as we sat in the parking lot of the hotel, I couldn't look at her.

"I didn't run into you at the coffee shop by accident, did I?" I asked quietly.

"No," she admitted. At least she was telling the truth. I'd probably believe her if she lied at this point. "I knew it was your regular stop and I waited there for you."

"You already knew I liked the dumpling house we went to on our first date too, didn't you?"

"You left a glowing Yelp review for it," she said softly. "I wanted to take you somewhere that I knew you'd like."

"Our whole relationship is based on a lie," I whispered, feeling like I was bleeding all over again.

"Not a lie," she said. "Not a lie. I had more information that you thought, but I only used it to get closer to you."

"Don't you see how wrong that is!?" I turned in my seat to face her, fury rising inside me. "Can you even hear yourself? You only used it to get closer to me? That's something you'd hear a from a psycho in a thriller film, Vanessa!" She winced. I felt a pang of guilt in my heart.

"But I'd never hurt you... "

"You stalked me!" I wailed, my sadness and frustration pouring out of me, emotions I thought were drained and gone after three days of spiraling through them over and over. "You violated my privacy! You violated my trust! I thought trust was sacred to you? I don't understand how you could teach me all of these things about knowing myself, about loving myself, about boundaries and honesty and trust. And you were stalking me!"

"I... " she stammered. I had never seen that either, not like this. She was always so sure, so confident. Her façade was cracking, and I could see Vanessa beneath it, vulnerable and hurting too. I wanted nothing more than to reach over and comfort her as she had comforted me so many times, this emotionally mature, together woman... but I felt peeled back and raw, I ached from the betrayal. "I was so afraid, Dani."

"Afraid of what?" I demanded.

"Afraid of getting hurt again. I didn't think of it as a violation, I thought of it as protecting myself. I had to know how likely you were to even want the things I wanted, to want to be my Little. Not everyone is suited to it, and it's so very important to me. I've been rejected so many times, I've been torn apart and discarded after I poured everything into a relationship, into forming a bond with someone I thought could be Little... I had to know if you would hurt me the same way."

"That's not how you do it, Vanessa. Love hurts. You're going to get hurt. You have to be vulnerable, you have to run that risk. I made myself vulnerable to you, I trusted you."

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I did it wrong. I just needed to know... "

"Are you sorry?" I demanded. "Are you? Or would you do it again? Are you going to do it to the next girl if I leave?"

"Please don't leave," she begged. It was a sobering sight, the mighty Vanessa pleading. My heart hurt for her.

"Why shouldn't I?" I sighed. "Why shouldn't I just walk out of your life and never look back? Are you going to hack my accounts to make me stay?"

"No," tears were streaming down her face and regret bit me hard. "No, I would never hurt you. I won't stop you from leaving. I don't blame you for leaving. I'll miss you... "

"Do you see that what you did was wrong?"

"No," she admitted. "I see that it hurt you and that was wrong, but isn't it normal to try to protect oneself? I've been hurt so many times... "

"And if you want to find love, you have to open yourself to that hurt again. And again. And again. It sucks, but it's part of being human."

"I'm sorry, Dani. I'm so sorry... I think there's something wrong with me. What should I do? What do I do now?"

She looked so lost, sounded so hurt. I had shattered her as thoroughly as the revelation had shattered me. She was shaking, tears rolling down her cheeks, her breathing ragged. I had never seen her so wounded, so destroyed. It was hard to look at, to see the woman who had been my Mommy so recently... so defeated.

And I knew I loved her. I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone, and that's why it hurt so much. That's why it was so hard. Because no one had ever touched the core of me before, not in the way that she did. She was my best friend. She was my lover. She was my Mommy. She was all those things to me and everything in between, and so she had more power to hurt me than anyone else had ever had in my adult life. I had bared my soul to her, not knowing that it had begun on a foundation of mistrust and lies. And now, as it crumbled around me, I couldn't let go of that shining hope.

Intellectually, I knew that the answer was to get the fuck out of there. To run and to never look back. To never have the name Vanessa on my lips again. I had all the resources I needed, I could stay in a hotel room for a few more nights, I could find a new apartment, I could keep going with my normal, vanilla life - I could go back to being what I was. But I couldn't. I had never had a relationship as deep as my love with Vanessa. I had never bound myself three ways to a person before, friend, lover, caregiver. She had taught me things about myself that I had never suspected. She had awakened parts of me that had been dormant my entire adult life.

And I loved her for it.

Her question echoed in my ears: What do I do now?

"We get you help," I said. "We book an appointment with a psychiatrist and we talk about why you did the things you did. And we work through this. Together."