Free Submit and Surrender by Chloe Cox Page B

confusion.
    Too bad Adra felt anything but peaceful.
    He had absolutely wrecked her. She spent the first hour at least just dipping her toes in the koi pond, playing chicken with those huge, hungry fish, waiting for her heart rate to go down. Part of her was angry with him, though she knew he wasn’t at fault—he’d checked the safeword; she’d consented. She wasn’t angry with him for what he’d done; she was angry with him for what he’d revealed.
    What he’d revealed about her.
    About them.
    She wasn’t going to be able to run from this. From what she felt. The physical need she felt for Ford Colson was so strong it had become a deafening chorus, drowning out all other rational thoughts, making it impossible to tell what she actual wanted, thought, felt. It all got subsumed to this want . It reduced her to nothing more than a physical need she knew she couldn’t meet.
    Oh God, if she let it go… if she let herself want him… need him…
    That would be the end. She was so, so scared that that would be the end of her. It felt like letting herself fall into the gravitational pull into the sun: inevitable, and ending in fiery death. Everyone would get burned.
    Hours of lying out in the sun, breathing, meditating, stretching—nothing worked. She was a goddamn mess no matter what she did. So she was more than just relieved when her brother Charlie finally called her back. She was grateful.
    “You’re a jerk, Charlie, but I am so glad to hear from you,” she said.
    “Well, I love you, too,” he said.
    Adra sighed, and dipped her toe back in the koi pond. There was one fish that seemed really, really hungry for some toe, and she just could not leave well enough alone.
    “Charlie, what are you doing?” she asked.
    He was silent until he sighed.
    “I don’t know, exactly.”
    “I don’t need to tell you what it does to Nicole.”
    “No.”
    “So what… Charlie, just why?”
    “I wasn’t actually gone that long, you know. I was just out late. I came back right after she talked to you.”
    “Yeah, I know, she texted me,” Adra said, getting annoyed. “And you know that’s not the goddamn point.”
    “I just needed some time to think, Adra,” Charlie said. “I know how shitty that sounds, but you don’t know what it’s like. I get so overwhelmed, with the kids and everything, and I just need like…I need to get it out of my system. Like a safety valve, you know?”
    Adra could feel herself starting to freak out, could feel the tears welling up inside her, and willed it away. That was her own reaction, not Charlie’s, and she wasn’t going to put it on him.
    She would, however, tell him the truth.
    “You sound like Dad, Charlie.”
    “I’m not like Dad,” he said vehemently. “I’m sober, Adra. And I come home. I’ve always come home. You know, you have no idea what it’s like, having a family that depends on you for everything. You have no idea.”
    “No, I don’t,” she admitted.
    “Everyone needs a safety valve,” Charlie went on. “It’s not just me. I’m just… I just suck at it, that’s all.”
    Adra thought about her own situation, and how wonderful it would be to have a freaking safety valve. And then she laughed. “You really, really do suck at it, big brother.”
    “I know.”
    “I mean, disappearing like that?”
    “I know.”
    “Is this sustainable, Charlie?” Adra asked softly. She didn’t really want to hear the answer. She already knew the answer. Of course it wasn’t sustainable; the only question was how it would end, and whether Charlie could find a way to make it work before he flamed out.
    They both knew how it had ended for their father.
    “I don’t just mean for Nicole, Charlie. I mean for the boys, you know? They know something’s up. You know what it does to them.”
    “I don’t know what to do,” he said finally.
    “You know I’ll help however I can,” Adra said. “I can pay for a nanny, or—”
    “I’m not taking any more money from