Page 19 of Surrender to Me

“You said that you scared her, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” I asked.

He stared out the window. “It’s a long story,” he finally said.

“I’ve got time.”

He was as still as a statue, eyes glazed over looking in front of him as if he could stare into his past from the outside. I swear I could hear our heartbeats pulsing, waiting for us.

“It started with my mother’s antibiotics. We found empty bottles in the trash twice. Poppy said she must’ve misplaced them. It was a coincidence that Poppy was taking care of my mother those days.” He glanced back at me, then looked out the window again.

“She put bleach in my sister’s contact solution. And when my sister said I should leave Poppy, I hated my sister. Poppy had tutored her for the SATs. Poppy convinced me my sister was trying to sabotage us. I’m only now talking to her again.

“There was rubbing alcohol at Josh’s bar. The brake line cut in my father’s car. My parents stopped asking us to bring any side dishes over for dinner, then they stopped inviting us over entirely. Each of these things could have been an accident, a coincidence, something completely separate from Poppy. And whenever I questioned her about it, she made me feel stupid for thinking it could be her.” Dark clouds cooled the buildings, making the silver windows look like double-sided mirrors, like ghosts were judging us. Owen leaned his palm on the window. His expression looked like he felt that way too, like he was trying to face his demons for the first time. “And then she was all I had.” I was speechless. No wonder he had his guard up; the woman he had wanted to spend his life with had been a nightmare.

“One night,” he said, “she begged me to choke her. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, except there was this gleam in her eyes. She knew something I didn’t. So I stopped. And when I refused to do it again, it was like a switch went off. She was hysterical, screaming that I wasn’t a man, then she’d fall sobbing on the floor, saying I scared her, that she was afraid of me. I left her that night.”

I imagined Poppy following Owen around as he packed his bags, hitting his shoulders, trying to stop him, screaming at him the entire time. I didn’t ask for details.

“I changed my number, but that didn’t do anything. I don’t know how many numbers I blocked before she finally stopped calling me. That’s when Poppy disappeared, and everyone thought it was me.” If I hadn’t been in shock already, my jaw would’ve dropped. It was hard to imagine Owen as a murderer. I had seen moments of anger flicker in his eyes, and I knew first hand how he could bruise a body—my thighs were proof of it. But Owen, a killer? That seemed strange. “When she surfaced in Europe,” he continued, “she told everyone she had left me. Implied that I abused her. The truth was complicated, and there wasn’t any benefit to fighting for it.”

It made me think of us: a complicated truth. But we didn’t have the baggage Poppy came with.

“It’s hard to remember why I fell in love with her,” he paused. He dragged his fingers across the glass, watching the smear of his fingers tarnishing the clean window. “But she was my first in many ways. My first submissive. But I know now that it wasn’t that kind of a relationship.”

I stood and put my hand on his back. He turned towards me, looking down. Those green emeralds looked weak like he couldn’t see me there anymore, blinded by the pain. This man had more than a wall built around his heart; he had a stone fortress. And I could see why. He had fallen for a woman who had isolated him, controlled his life until it was work and her, and she had still harassed him after it was over. Of course he was skittish of romance, and it was no wonder he wanted to control everything in the bedroom. He didn’t want to fall into the same trap again. After all, if he could control his encounters, he could avoid heartbreak. I reached up, holding his cheek in my hand.

“I rarely see anyone more than once. You know that,” he said.

“To protect yourself?”

“To protect others.” He searched my eyes. “To protect you.”

My mind raced over the past few months: Poppy’s name on his phone, the declined calls, his sudden mood change in Monterey, how he said he wasn’t capable of loving me. Had it all been to keep me safe?

“You’re afraid,” I said. It was nearly a gasp. I forced a smile, trying to show him that I wasn’t afraid, even though I knew I should be. If Owen was cautious of someone, I knew it was bad, but that didn’t change how I felt about him. “I don’t care about your ex. She doesn’t scare me.” Owen’s eyebrows raised, but I quickly changed the subject. I wanted to cheer him up, to make him think of something other than his evil ex-fiance. “I want to be there for you.”

“I want to be there for you too, Riley.”

“I am here for you. Even if we’re outside of Surrender.”

A small smile slipped onto his lips, and that warmed us both. I decided I couldn’t end the relationship, not when he was like this. Was it an excuse to keep us going when I knew I shouldn’t? Maybe. But I knew I could stop going to Surrender. It was like ghosting him, but only one part of him. We could still be friends outside of the club.

“I’m here for you too,” he said.

“Speaking of which,” I said, “I know there’s a party at Surrender on Valentine’s Day but—”

“But?”

“But I’m working,” I said.

“I’ll be in New York that week anyway.”

“Right,” I said. My shoulders sagged. I had wanted to see if he wanted to meet afterward, not for a date, but for a Singles Awareness bash between friends. I don’t know why I cared that he was busy during the holiday of romance. My mind and my heart couldn’t agree on anything these days. My heart was screaming at me, Hang out with him! You know you want to! Ask if he’ll take you to New York! And my brain lectured me, talking over my heart, saying, Now, now, Riley, you know better than to give in. Don’t you want to be an artist? Isn’t this heartbreak a good experience for your art? You might be alone in the end, but you’ll be more successful, and that’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

“You know how Bobby is,” I said. “I’ll end up working a double over the holiday for him. I always do.” Though I used to choose to work a double willingly, and now, I was doing it to pretend like I didn’t want to be with anyone specific, and definitely not Owen, on the greeting card holiday.

Owen had the same reluctant smile that I did, hanging on his face like the last crisp leaf on a tree. Neither of us said what we wanted to say out loud, and in our minds, we knew it was better this way. We told ourselves we believed our lies, even if we didn’t want to.