Chapter 10: Dungeon in the basement?

By the time I returned from dropping Charlie off with my parents, Cade's black BMW 6-series was waiting in front of my house. He stood against the fender, hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans. I'd hoped to catch a few minutes before he showed up. My neck and back were killing me, and he'd notice the tension immediately. I already knew what he'd suggest in the form of stress relief, and I'd been avoiding that conversation since I came back.

Hell, I'd been avoiding that conversation for a year.

According to Cade, Club Obsidian was a miracle cure for just about anything, and in the past, I would have agreed. But now, the thought of returning to the club only added another layer of complication to my stress.

Charlie. Mom.

Lena. There she was again. A woman who had no real place in my life and yet I couldn't shake her.

I parked next to his car and banged my head against the back of the seat as I jerked up the parking brake.

Cade lifted his head and straightened while I slid out of the SUV and slammed the door.

"I'm happy to hear you got a reprieve for a night, but if you wanted to hang out tonight, there are more entertaining places to do it."

It took him even less time than I'd expected. In lieu of an answer, I gave him a flat look. I knew that come seven o'clock sharp, he'd be at the Club, as he was most Friday and Saturday evenings. Last Friday had been a fluke since he'd had to cover at Diggers, but it was rare that he let anything get in the way of exploring how far he could push a submissive when the club doors were open. While it all sounded better than spending the evening weeding through boxes, I didn't have it in me.

Cade grabbed a cupholder from the hood of his car, twisted out a large white cup, and handed it to me as I passed by. "You sounded like you could use this."

"Appreciated," I mumbled.

I flung open the front door, dropped my keys, and if I hadn't been holding a hot cup of coffee, I would have collapsed onto the couch just as unceremoniously. I thought I'd experienced the entire spectrum of exhaustion before, but nothing else compared to the weariness that clouded my head and ached in my joints.

"How exactly did you talk your folks into taking Charlie?" Cade gave me a sour look, then quickly concealed it by taking a drink of his coffee as he sat across from me.

After all these years, he still hated even the mention of my parents. But what could I say? While Dad was City Engineer, they'd been fully supportive of a campaign to get Club Obsidian's licenses pulled. The whole thing was rooted in the assumption that anyone associated with the club was a deviant seeking an excuse to pursue perversion and abuse. In response, Obsidian launched a series of community educational programs, and since I'd volunteered to lead several of the classes, my involvement with the lifestyle didn't stay quiet for long. The situation quickly snowballed from awkward family dinners to borderline disownment. By the time I graduated college and got my first assignment to the navy, tensions had thawed into a strained truce reliant on mutual avoidance of the topic.

I crossed my ankle over my knee to fiddle with a loose string at the hem of my pants. "I didn't have to talk them into it. Dad insisted. And I regretted it as soon as Mom turned it into another opportunity to pitch her proposition that Charlie live with them, 'at least until things are settled.'"

Because I would obviously be a bad influence despite the fact that Ashley had made their wishes with the whole custody thing quite clear. Gerald's family lived in Maine where his brother juggled five kids with looking in on their aging mother. The other obvious choice would have been our parents, but Ashley had always struggled with their preoccupation with appearances, stressing constantly if she didn't have perfect grades, make the team, or land a promotion on schedule. She took their disappointment to heart, and sometimes I acted out and took the fall just to take the magnifying lens off her. Fortunately, Mom and Dad had mellowed since retirement or maybe Charlie softened them up, but so far, he hadn't been subjected to their impossible expectations.

Cade scoffed. "I can't imagine you actually considered it."

I rested my coffee on the arm of the couch while I rubbed the exhaustion from my eyes. "No, but I haven't even had him for a week and if Dad hadn't offered to take him tonight, I might've gone insane. He doesn't talk. He...."

I shook my head unable to find a suitable way to describe the emptiness I saw in him. As relieved as I was to hear that his injuries were minor, I almost felt like a physical injury I could deal with. Something I could see. Something I knew how to help with.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, realizing that I was sitting across from Cade, basically staring off and doing the same mental hoop-jumping I could have been doing all alone. "Sorry. I'm - "

"It'll take time. I assume I shouldn't ask how you're doing with moving back here?"

I shrugged. I'd come home just before summer, toying with the idea of moving back once my commission ended in December, until yet another disagreement with my brother-in-law led to the digging up of old skeletons. Once again, I'd been relieved to see the town shrinking in my rear-view mirror. Then again, new towns and fresh starts weren't all they were cracked up to be either. I'd had enough of that. "Everything is just complicated. Charlie hasn't spoken since the accident. No one is entirely certain what caused their van to go left of center. Mom is her usual critical self - "

"Critical doesn't even begin to describe your mother."

I didn't argue. If I tried, I'd get Cade's general argument that after knowing my family for going on two decades, he'd earned his right to be blunt. But in my opinion, he'd fully earned it in high school after dating Ashley for four whole weeks, during which he escorted her on homecoming night when she'd been the junior attendant on the court. They'd amicably split afterward, and I'd always wondered if the whole thing had been Ashley's moment of rebellion - making a full show of dating a senior who worked in his uncle's bar and rubbed our parents wrong in every single way.

"You've dealt with the brunt of her anger more than most people," I said.

"Oh, right. First, I dated their perfect daughter then corrupted their..." His face twisted, and he lifted his gaze to the ceiling for a minute. "What exactly were you before? A long shot from the perfect son."

I laughed and rubbed my hand over the days-old stubble along my jaw. "Yeah, but I think Mom believed I was redeemable until you came around."

Until then, I'd just been a rebellious teen who had a problem with authority - her words. When I was seventeen, I started working at Diggers, taking Cade's place as dishwasher while he took to bartending full-time. Eighteen months later, he introduced me to his other weekend interests at a club he frequented almost an hour away, and I discovered the control I craved in the emotional and physical outlet the BDSM lifestyle provided.

I sank into the couch, stretching out my legs and sipping the hot coffee. My eyes moved over each of the boxes within sight that I needed to deal with. I had traveled light, and only a few of the boxes here and there had come with me. The rest were packages that had been delivered following the funeral; appliances, toys, small furniture, and some essentials that had been packed up from Ashley and Gerald's house.

"Where do you want to start?" Cade asked, sitting forward and slapping his empty cup on the coffee table.

I shook my head and guzzled down the rest of my coffee as well. "Anywhere."

"Dungeon in the basement?" He cocked an eyebrow, but his face remained otherwise serious. "Come on, it would be perfect."

"You're nuts. I don't plan on staying in this house any longer than I have to. Besides, how the hell would I explain that with a kid running around?"

"Locks, my man." Cade grabbed a discarded wad of tape from the end of the couch and chucked it in my direction. "I talked to Adrienne. All you have to do is bring in your updated records and paperwork, and it'll be like you never left."

I grunted in response, hoping he'd drop it, climbed to my feet, and ripped open the nearest box, revealing a green throw Mom's knitting group had given Ashley at her baby shower. She hated green, and we'd had a long laugh about the color choice later that evening.

God damn. I rubbed the back of my neck and draped the throw over the couch. This was the real reason I hadn't touched the boxes all week. I'd never been a sentimental person, but everything I touched and every minute I spent back home brought with it a gust of memories, and that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach knowing I'd never share a laugh like that with my sister again.