Submit and Surrender (24 page)

Derrick slumped his shoulders and began a long, slow slide down the wall.

“Jesus Christ, you’re serious?” he said.

Ford was silent.

“Nothing happened, man,” Derrick said. “I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“Before that, Derrick.”

“What?”

Ford crossed his arms. “Start with what you did to her before, when you were together.”

Derrick looked up at him, mouth open. “Dude.”

“She trusted you?” Ford asked.

The very idea made him itch to hit things.

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Derrick said, running his hand through his hair again. This time his palms were sweaty.

“You knew about her family, about her father, her brother,” Ford said, his voice dangerously calm. “She trusted you.”

“We lived together. Kinda hard not to—”

“And then you left her, the exact same way? Disappeared?”

Maybe it was something in the way Ford said it. Maybe it was something in his eyes. But whatever it was, all the color drained out of Derrick Duvall’s face.

It wasn’t just fear, either. It was anger, too.

That was interesting.

At this point, Ford had Derrick Duvall down to rights. He knew the little worm, knew what made him tick, and he was in no way gratified to know he’d seen through the other man from the beginning. Derrick was powered by a raging insecurity that drove him to treat people like fuel for his constantly starved ego. He was a fucking narcissist. That was why he needed to be a Dom, that was why he leaked damaging info to the press, that was why he’d harassed Adra until Ford scared him into stopping.

And Ford could just see it. He could just see Derrick worming his way into Adra’s heart, getting her to trust him, not because he cared, but because it was a challenge. Because if someone who was already damaged could bring herself to open up to him, it was a big win for that monster ego.

And then he’d be done with her.

“You’ve only heard her side,” Derrick finally said. He sounded bitter.

Two things: Ford didn’t expect the bitterness. That was also interesting. And he hadn’t heard Adra’s side at all; he’d only guessed. And this asshole had just confirmed everything.

Ford took a very deep breath and rolled his neck.

“Tell me your side,” he said.

“You think she really trusted me? She never went all in, man,” Derrick said. “She always had one foot out the door. She was always waiting for me to run, or fuck up, or whatever. You know how much that sucks? If you care about someone, and you fucking try, and you
know
they’re not buying it?”

Ford blinked.

He took a step back.

Did he know how much that sucked? Yeah, he did.

But he wasn’t thinking about his ex-wife, or even Adra and all the times she kept things from him. He was thinking of Adra’s face, just that morning, when she’d asked him about his divorce and she’d known, she’d
known
, there was something that Ford wasn’t telling her.

He was thinking of how hurt she’d looked.

He was a fucking idiot.

Ford had spent all this time convincing himself that he’d moved on from his marriage, that he was over what Claudia and Jesse had done. And he was, in the sense that he no longer wanted anything from them, that he was over being angry. But that didn’t mean he’d moved on. He’d just killed the part of him that they’d hurt, cauterized that wound, and called that getting over it.

Only Adra had made him come alive again. And that had hurt, for a while, and made him cautious, because maybe he didn’t trust people like he used to. He hadn’t trusted Adra because of one screw up early on. And then this morning he hadn’t trusted her to learn the truth about the divorce and stick around. He hadn’t trusted her not to freak out. To be the kind, caring person that she always had been.

And she’d known. And that had hurt her.

“Christ, I’m an idiot,” Ford muttered.

Derrick laughed, like now they were friends. “Yeah—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ford barked.

“Jesus, what is your deal?”

“You rationalize your behavior because you’re a coward,” Ford snarled and shoved Derrick back against the wall. “You did the thing that would hurt her the most, and you did it knowingly. And she was
right
never to fully you trust you, because you’re a piece of shit.”

“If I was so bad, why does she still trust me?” Derrick said, standing up a little straighter. “You saw us yourself, the other day. Didn’t you want to know what we were doing?”

“Watch your mouth,” Ford growled.

Derrick straightened his shirt and laughed, covering up his injured pride. Then he pretended to dust some dirt off of Ford’s shoulders and said, “Hey, relax. I’m not even really into her anymore. It’s just a nostalgia thing. Plus, she’s hot.”

Ford closed his eyes, slowly shook his head, and thought,
Fuck it. She’ll let me have this
.

“You’re going to want to brace yourself for this, Derrick,” he said softly. “So you won’t suffer any internal bleeding.”

Ford looked the other man in the eye. Waited.

And then he punched him in the stomach.

“Now get the fuck out of my club,” Ford said. “Your goddamned movie can figure it out, or not, I don’t care. But you are out on your ass.”

Adra would be pissed he got violent, but at least he could tell her he pulled his punch. And then he would tell her that she had her club back, because Ford was done with this nonsense.

Now he just had to figure out what to do about Adra.

A lot of things happened then, all at once.

Adra found herself thinking seriously about her feelings for Ford, and, most importantly, somehow not having an anxiety attack about the whole thing. He let her skirt around it, so they were spending time together, sleeping in the same bed, but not saying the words. The words were still too much.

But they were getting closer, those words. They were definitely getting closer.

And she didn’t even have too much time to freak out about that, because the movie was in the final, whirlwind stages of production. And that was because Ford had laid down the freaking law. He’d banned Derrick from Volare and told Santos the director to just figure it out, and that if he had any complaints he could bitch about it in his deposition for the lawsuit Volare would file for multiple breaches of contract.

The end result was that the film crews were leaving. They’d frantically gotten in all the shots they could in the meantime, but today was the last day, and the relief from everyone was palpable. Adra would miss Olivia, and much of the crew, but she was happy to have her club back.

Everyone
was happy to have their club back.

So happy, in fact, that they were going to throw a giant, informal wrap party just to show there were no hard feelings—with the one obvious exception—and to welcome all the members back to the club they loved. Adra figured this was also an excuse to introduce some new people to the real Volare life, but hey, that was a good thing. She liked Olivia. It would be good to see her stick around and figure out what submission meant to her.

The world was mostly right again.

She sighed.

So why did she feel so ill at ease?

“Adra, honey, where’s your head?”

Adra looked at Lola, who was busy going over a caterer’s menu. The wrap party would be last minute, by their standards, but Lola wasn’t about to scrimp on the food.

“Never mind,” Lola said lightly. “I’m pretty sure I know where your head was.”

“You’re wrong, for once,” Adra said. “My thoughts were perfectly innocent.”

“Then Ford’s not doing his job.”

Adra threw a napkin at her.

“Ford is
excellent
at his job,” she said, which only made Lola burst out laughing.

“Oh, please, tell me you’ve figured it out,” Lola said. “Does he actually have a job title yet?”

“No,” Adra said, sitting back in…well…confusion. “I don’t know. It’s still too...”

“Unsettled?”

“Unsettled.”

Really, though, the word she was thinking of was “disoriented.” Disoriented, and nauseous.

Adra had never been a roller coaster person. Her brother, Charlie, though? Loved roller coasters. Had been on every roller coaster in California, even the old, rickety wooden ones that looked like they were particularly effective methods of tempting fate. To Adra, they just looked like overly elaborate nausea machines.

And Ford was a freaking roller coaster. The man had no idea what he did to her brain. Since he’d made her realize that submission was the only way she felt comfortable letting another person take care of her, the only time she felt ok needing anybody, the whole notion of needing him in particular had…crept into the rest of her life.

Oh, who was she kidding? She already needed him. She couldn’t begin to imagine her life without him, or the world without him in it. She was a mess. But the weird part was that she hadn’t lost her mind over it yet. For the first time in recent memory, there was a part of her that wanted this. That wanted to be able to open up outside of a scene, to…

No, not just to “open up” in general, indiscriminately, to whoever would have her. It was to Ford. It was always just Ford.

“Oh God, I can’t think about this,” Adra said.

“Then don’t,” Lola said. “It’ll come. In the meantime, help me plan a party.”

“Easy for you to say,” Adra said.

Because the flip side of reveling in the wonder of sort of, sometimes, letting Ford take care of her was feeling like she wanted to take care of him, too. In her defense, that was her natural state. She was a nurturer. She couldn’t help it; it was who she was. But with Ford, it was different. She wanted Ford to be hers. She wanted to know he was ok, she wanted him to be happy.

And she didn’t know what was bothering him.

“Adra, your head went missing again,” Lola said.

Adra looked up.

Fuck it.

“Give me a time line of what happened with his ex-wife,” she said.

Lola put down her menu.

“Why aren’t you asking Ford that question?”

Oh, damn.

“Can we just pretend I have a good answer to that and move on to the part where you tell me everything you know?” Adra asked.

Lola raised an eyebrow.

“Ok, let me ask you something,” Adra said, knowing she was doing something crappy, and not being able to stop herself. “If you thought something was bothering Roman, or hurting him, or whatever, but for some reason he hadn’t told you…”

“Adra.”

“You’d do whatever you had to in order to help him, wouldn’t you?”

Lola picked her menu back up and looked at Adra over the edge. The woman had a flair for drama.

“That doesn’t mean it would be a good idea,” Lola said. “In fact, prying might be a freaking
terrible
idea. Think about how upset you’d be.”

“I know, I just…” Adra sat back, defeated. If Lola hadn’t convinced her, her own conscience would have. “I just hate feeling so powerless.”

“You sure about that?” Lola asked. “You sure you’re just not freaked out by being on the other side of that whole taking-care-of arrangement?”

Adra looked for another napkin and realized she was all out of ammo. Besides, throwing things at Lola never seemed to work—she’d tried it with a number of things.

It did usually indicate that Lola had a point, though.

Adra hated the idea.

It
hurt
to think about Ford being hurt. To think she might have already lost her chance to be there for him.

“I just want to help him,” Adra said.

“Assuming there’s anything actually wrong with him,” Lola said, putting down her menu, “I’m pretty sure the only thing that will make Ford feel better is you.”

“Now you get your mind out of the gutter,” Adra said ruefully.

“I don’t mean it like that,” Lola said. Then she smiled. “Though that can’t hurt.”

Adra laughed it off, but she couldn’t shake the self-doubt that had wormed its way into her head, ever since she’d confided in Ford and seen that he couldn’t trust her back. It wasn’t a big thing, not to normal people. But Adra couldn’t help but notice it.

And she decided not to care. Because even if Ford didn’t trust her because she’d already proven herself to be a screw up, or because he was trying to protect her, or even if it was because he wasn’t really over his ex-wife, it didn’t matter. She wanted to help him however she could.

And she was about to get the chance.

***

The wrap party was magnificent.

It wasn’t even the planning, which was bare bones, or the preparation, which was scatterbrained, but just the sheer enthusiasm. People were so, so happy to have Volare back, to be able to unwind and relax without the pressure of a film shoot, to just be able to enjoy each other’s company. You could see it in the faces of the movie people who were there for the first time as guests, and you could definitely see it in the faces of the members who were just happy to have their playrooms back.