Dear Reader,
It was pointed out to me that there was some POV drift, and continuity issues in what I have posted. So I have made corrections to chapters five, six, seven, nine, ten, twelve, and thirteen and hope that this won’t be an issue going forward. If you see something, do let me know at [email protected].
Thank you
Chapter Twelve
The cottage was quiet in the particular way it got when Duncan was gone — not empty exactly, but differently occupied. Jake had been at the kitchen table since mid-morning with his laptop and a second coffee, the cursor blinking at him from an open document he hadn't added anything to in forty minutes.
He'd tried reading first. He'd pulled up the State website and spent twenty minutes going down a rabbit hole of Civil Engineering requirements, prerequisites, credit transfers — figuring out what it would cost him to switch from Business Administration, what he'd need to pick up, whether the math was possible. It was the kind of research that felt productive right up until it started feeling like procrastination wearing a disguise.
He'd tried texting Bobby, who had responded with a GIF of a cat staring at a wall and nothing else, which was either profound or useless and Jake couldn't decide which.
He'd tried not Googling.
He lasted eleven minutes before he opened the browser.
life of a submissive in a BDSM relationship
The first article was the same clinical sanitized exploration he'd found before, full of buzzwords and frameworks that had nothing to do with kneeling on a rug in a room waiting for Duncan to decide what came next. He closed it.
The Reddit forum was worse. Not because it was bad exactly, but because the abbreviations multiplied the more he read — TT, CBT, OTK, a whole vocabulary for things he'd already experienced without knowing their names. Knowing the names didn't help. If anything it made the gap between what he was living and what he understood about it feel wider.
He closed the laptop.
Bobby's voice in his head, calm and certain: Stop Googling. You learn it from him. From Duncan. Not from anonymous strangers.
Jake pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping against the tile. He stood in the kitchen for a moment, the cottage settling around him, and made a decision.
He pulled on his running gear.
He heard the Grenadier before he saw it. The familiar growl of the engine, the crunch of gravel in the drive. Jake was lacing up his runners at the door when Duncan came through it, jacket still on, keys in hand, an expression on his face that was hard to read — not upset exactly, but settled in the way of someone who has just done something they'd been preparing for.
"How was the city?" Jake asked.
"Instructive," Duncan said. He pulled out his phone, scrolled for a moment, and set it on the table between them. "My father had opinions about you living here."
Jake looked at the phone. Then at Duncan.
"I recorded it," Duncan said simply. "I always record my father."
He pressed play.
The audio quality was clean, the room acoustics of an expensive office giving everything a particular weight and stillness. Jake heard Graham Smythe's voice first — the same cold measured register he'd encountered in the kitchen, the voice of a man who had never needed to raise it.
“Your mother tells me you've moved a boyfriend into the guest house. Did you not think you might want to check with the homeowner first?”
Then Duncan's voice, and Jake felt something shift in his chest hearing it — Duncan in that room, without Jake, without the cottage, without any of the armor the caretaker's cottage provided.
“You're a powerless judgmental prick. In 49 days I turn 21 and have access to trusts from my mother's side. Enough to short your meager empire's stock and leak your true financials. Of course a profitable lemonade stand would yield a fortune bigger than you can imagine.”
Graham's response came without pause, quiet and absolute.
“One day you will go too far. God help you when that happens, because it certainly will not be me.”
Duncan's voice, smooth and final.
“Always a pleasure, Father.”
The recording ended. The kitchen was very quiet.
Jake sat with it for a moment. The cold of that office coming through the phone speaker. The particular quality of the silence after Duncan's last line before the recording ended. The particular loneliness of a man who has been having this conversation his whole life and has gotten very good at winning it without it ever actually ending.
He looked at Duncan, who was watching him with the steady patience of someone who had already processed this and was waiting for Jake to catch up.
"He's always like that?" Jake asked.
"Yes," Duncan said.
Jake nodded slowly. There was nothing to add to that. Graham Smythe was who he was and Duncan had known it longer than Jake had been paying attention.
"Enough of that noise for now, I've got some calls to make," Duncan said, shedding the costume he'd worn to see his father. "What's your afternoon?"
"I need to go for a run," Jake said.
"Run fast, I like you all sweaty!" Duncan teased, already moving toward the stairs.
The estate path was familiar now, the particular give of the dirt under his feet, the way the trees opened up halfway through to show a wedge of sky before closing again. He'd run it enough times that his body knew the route without asking his brain for directions.
He started slow, the way he always did, letting the tension in his shoulders find somewhere to go. The morning's correction was still present in his body — a dull warmth, not unpleasant, a reminder of last night's firelight and the chain and Duncan's particular brand of patience. He didn't try to think around it. He just ran.
The first mile was always the hardest. His lungs complained, his legs complained, the coffee in his stomach made its opinions known. He ignored all of it and kept moving.
By the second mile something shifted. The thinking started to thin out. Not disappear — Jake's brain didn't do that, had never done that, would probably be generating commentary on his own funeral — but thin, the way fog thins when the sun gets to it. The recording was still there somewhere, Graham's cold measured voice, the particular loneliness of a man who had been having that conversation his whole life.
By the third mile he wasn't thinking about any of it. He was just running.
He was halfway through when his phone buzzed in the armband. He glanced at the screen without stopping.
A text from Duncan.
We are going dancing tonight! Be ready at 9:39 pm!
Jake read it, a slow incredulous smile spreading across his face. He put the phone back in the armband and kept running.
A moment later his earbuds came to life — Dog Days Are Over blasting through without warning, the same song Duncan had clearly been playing in the Grenadier on the way home, still queued in whatever shared playlist lived between their phones.
Jake didn't stop. He just ran, the music soaring through him, Graham Smythe's voice already fading behind the beat.
Five miles. A good run. A cleansing run.
Time for a shower, a shave, and a protein shake. He had a date to get ready for.
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