Page 105 of Lessons In Grey
I nodded. “I know. More important than it is to me. You know me better than I do. You know things I should already know about myself, but because of you, I am…I think I am on my way to happy.” I chewed on my lip, thinking over my words. “Is advice the same as telling me what to do?”
He shook his head, tracing circles into my hand. “No. If you want advice, I will give you advice. If you want me to tell you how to live, I will do that too.”
“What happens if I think I want you to tell me what to do and then I change my mind?”
“Then we will sit down and have a conversation about it. That safe word, swan, it’s not just for sex, Emily. I’m going to give you an extreme example, okay? Let’s say I tell you to give me a blowjob while I’m pointing a gun at Diamond.”
My eyes rounded, my lips parting.
He smiled. “I said extreme, and before your mind wanders, no, it is not something I am interested in doing.”
Oh, thank God because that would have been a hard no.
“You get down on your knees and go to unzip my pants and then you start second guessing yourself. Simply give me the safe word, you stand, I deal with Diamond, and then later that evening, we sit down and discuss it.”
Okay, I understood that. “Will you get angry?”
He shook his head, reaching for my face. “No, baby. No. You will have good days and you will have bad. What you want will always be in flux, okay? The key to that is communication. That’swhy we have conversations like this, and there will be a lot of them. I trust you to always tell me the truth because that is the only way this will work. Do you trust me?”
I nodded, my head spinning. “Yes,” I breathed out. “I trust you.”
“That’s where this starts. You don’t have to tell me everything right now, okay? That’s something you need to think over, but you have to be communicative. Always. Always.”
I leaned into his palm, breathing in all that was him. “I don’t want you telling me if I can talk to my friends or not, but you can tell me when they can come over.”
A soft smile touched his lips again as he nodded. “Okay.”
I lifted my chin as he leaned back. “Can I still have coffee?”
He thought about it. “You can have one coffee a day and two Redbulls.”
I frowned. “20oz?”
He laughed. “You’re an addict, Emily, of course you can have 20oz. I’m not unreasonable.”
I straightened, smug. “Okay.”
“But only if you drink 64oz of water every dayandyou eat at least two meals that fuel your body. Veggies, meat, fruit.”
I frowned again, slumping. “Hmm.”
He lifted my hand to his mouth, kissing my palm. “Negotiations are allowed. We can joke about it sometimes, but we have to come to a serious agreement, okay? Do you understand this? All of it?”
I nodded, in all seriousness. “Yes. Can I still have my gummy worms?”
“Oh, Snowflake, always,” he breathed.
25
Emily
November 5th, 2021
Are you ready?”
I inhaled deeply as I turned back to the school. “Are you? I feel Ash might not let you off the hook before class starts.”
He chuckled. “I can handle it. Stay there.”