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Communication. That’s what relationships were really about. The attraction and sex were all great, but it would all fall apart without talking about expectations—both reasonable and unreasonable. I knew that.
I had this nervous habit of biting my lip, but my mouth was so raw from our sessions, I stopped myself in time.
“I don’t want you to come to the club anymore,” he blurted.
My first instinct was to think that it was because he wanted to hide something from me. “Why?”
“Because I’ve seen the guys who let their girlfriends come to the club.”
“I didn’t freak out on Brant.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t in love with him, right?”
I processed that. I wasn’t in love with Brant, but I’d thought of him as mine, after a fashion.
“Right?” he asked again.
“Right.” I nodded. “But I know it’s your job. I have to say, it makes me uncomfortable to be told you don’t want me to go.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I think that goes both ways. I have to trust you’re not going to cheat on me and you have to trust that I understand what your job entails. If I can’t watch you work, we shouldn’t be in a relationship.”
“I know that.” His voice was quiet.
“Then, what—” I braced my hands on the counter. “I see. You don’t think this is going to work.”
“I want it to.”
“It can’t if we don’t trust each other.”
“I certainly don’t want to see you with your hands all over some other man. I know it’s backwards as fuck that I expect you to tolerate it, but I just can’t.”
That shouldn’t have pleased me, but I did. I should have called him on the double-standard, but it didn’t bother me.
“Okay.”
“Really? Just… okay?”
I shrugged. “Why not? It’s not a big deal to me. I don’t need to punish you because of your job or hold my breath for something that’s not important to me just to prove a point.”
“So what is important to you?”
“That you come home after work. I don’t want to be staring at the clock at five in the morning wondering where you’re at or who you’re with. If you change your mind about being with me, that you tell me.”
“I can do that. What else? I know there’s something that you’re holding back.”
There was, but I looked away from him. “I don’t want you to take any more hotel calls. I know they’re more than private dances, strip-o-grams or whatever you want to call them. And I know it’ll eat into your money, but I also know you fuck most of them.”
I’d just said to myself that I wouldn’t ruin Chubbalicious for him, that I didn’t expect him to give up his work for me, but that was a hard limit. I guessed it was my turn to have a double-standard.
“Claire, it was really hard to set that up. If I ever need that income back…”
“Are you telling me no?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head. “I’m asking you to wait until you make sure I’m what you really want, that we’re forever.”
“So it’s supposed to be okay for you to fuck other people?”
“Finn, not me.”
I nodded slowly. “But you told me the other day that Finn was you. You can’t have it both ways. Make up your mind.”
“They don’t mean anything but a zero on a check.”
“Then why would it be so hard for you to just stop?”
He didn’t have an answer for me.
“That’s a hard limit, Kieran.”
“Are you kidding me?”
I could ask him the same. “Really? What about if I put an ad in the paper and started taking money for “erotic massage” or “dancing”? Would that be okay?”
“No,” he growled.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Why, Kieran?” I’d raised my voice. “Answer me.”
“They wouldn’t hire you anyway.”
I don’t know if he’d meant to kill me, but he did. There was something in me that withered and died when he said that, but I refused to break in front of him. Instead, I lifted my chin and stared at him until he could meet my eyes.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said.
“You don’t have to apologize for speaking the truth. You’re right. A traditional service wouldn’t hire me, but there are plenty of men who like thick women. Maybe I’ll start my own service right out of the house. Yeah, I think I will.”
“Claire, I just… Christ.” He pushed his fingers through his hair and the look on his face mirrored what I felt inside. “I shouldn’t have—I was defending myself.”
