She almost said it, back in the CSU stadium when I crossed her line and let her know I saw through her walls. She admitted to having feelings for me. But then she said I’d ruin her.
That’s what she thinks. That I’d suffocate her, take away all the parts I love. All the parts that make her so desirable. Because she sees me as some sick and twisted f**k who gets off on submissive woman and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I like the power, yes, because I need the control, because I cannot stand to be touched by anyone. I like to be the one who does the touching during sex, so I bind them. Hands off only. I take them from behind, I blindfold them so they can’t look at me.
But I do this because it’s the only way I know how to cope with the intimacy I want, but cannot allow myself to accept.
And Rook missed the point I was trying to make last summer. I’m not interested in a submissive woman. They’re interested in me because I require this control. Why deny them? I like what they offer, but only as a diversion. Why does she think I never get their names? Because I could give a f**k about those women.
I want a strong one.
I want one who will keep up, challenge me, help me reach my full potential.
And yes, I’d like to tie her up and slap her ass during sex, make her beg for me, have her submit herself fully—let me own her in private.
But Rook misunderstood me completely. Because I want a woman to touch me. So very, very badly. And she is the only one I’ve ever considered giving that privilege to. Ever.
The highway dips again and then gets twisty as I pass by Idaho Springs. They have a good pizza place there. Whenever we’d come home from skiing in Vail when I was a kid my dad would pull the car over in Idaho Springs and we’d get a mountain pie from Beau Jo’s before heading down the mountain.
It brings back memories of being tired from a weekend of strenuous activity, sore muscles, and an overwhelming feeling of being well-loved by my family, even though I was the epitome of a parent’s nightmare.
My childhood couldn’t be more different than Rook’s. Yes, I’m odd. I’ve got a lot of emotional issues that I’ve been working on my entire life. I refused to communicate with my parents in anything other than sign language until I was four. Then I started speaking Russian instead of English and that threw them for a while. But my dad—I have to stop and smile at his memory. Well, let’s just say I got my intellect from him. He caught onto me and learned Russian to spite me.
We sparred in four other languages before I settled on English at age six.
And by seven they had a diagnosis. Asperger’s syndrome with some savant tendencies. Mostly numbers and math, but spatial things as well because of my photographic memory.
I rebelled against that label—defective, the books said. Defective in communication and emotion. I read everything I could find on it in my dad’s psychiatry books in his office, but the information was sadly inadequate. So I started secretly taking the bus to the public library when I was eight to do research.
And finally, after months of reading, I decided I did not have this syndrome and I did everything I could to prove it to myself, and others, that I was normal.
I stopped doing well on my tests. It was too late, of course. My IQ was firmly established to be in the neighborhood of 190 by the time I started speaking English. But my parents, even though they knew I was a full-fledged freak, treated me like just another kid.
They used that phrase often whenever I started getting weird. ‘Ford,’ my mom would say in that mom voice when I was about to blow a blood vessel over the rule against reading under my covers past midnight. Or when I got a little older, researching any of the hundreds of obsessions I had as a teen on the internet. I only require a few hours of sleep a night, why should I have to go to bed at midnight? It never made sense. But she’d never give in. ‘Ford,’ she’d say. ‘You are just another kid. And kids have rules. So you will follow the kid rules, or else.’
‘Or else what?’ I’d ask with my chin tipped up in defiance.
‘Or else I’ll kiss you. And not only that, I’ll kiss you in public.’
I’d recoil every time at the horror. Because even though I love my parents, and they love me and I know they love me, they were not allowed to touch me. Not when I was a toddler, not now that I am a man. And I’m sure this is what ticked me off as a baby. The fact that they were constantly touching me. I suspect it’s the reason I refused to talk to them.
Ronin might have a penchant for gambling, but I have a penchant for holding grudges. Even as an infant, apparently.
I laugh at this. I know I’m odd. I do, I admit it. I understand this, I own it. What can I say. I was just born this way. But Rook never seemed to mind. She barely noticed—in fact, she said she didn’t believe that I was incapable of emotion. And I guess she was right. I love her. I had feelings for Mardee. I have strong attachments to Ronin and Spencer. Strong enough to stop me from pursuing the only woman I’ve ever wanted so bad I had to run away from her to control myself.
So I guess I was right after all. I’m not defective. I want to be touched. I’ve denied myself this most basic of human comforts my whole life and I’m ready to move on.
But the only woman I want to move on with is the only one I can’t have.
Chapter Three
The transmission whines as I climb up out of the canyon and hit the curve that takes me into Georgetown. The signs on the highway are flashing the winter storm warning and I only hope the Eisenhower Tunnel is open, or else all this driving will be fruitless. If they close the tunnel, and they do this often in the winter when there are accidents, then there’s nothing to do but go back. It’s pointless to spend the night up here in the mountains. Pointless, unless I can make a clean escape. Otherwise I might as well just go home and suck it up until my flight tomorrow.