Page 34 of Claiming His Brat

She’d never had any close friends here; a combination of being too far from town to participate in activities and being younger than the kids in her grade was probably most of it. Though she did have to admit she wasn’t the easiest to get close to; she’d had trust issues all the way back.

There were plenty of friends from grad school, but they were the casual sort and not the type she’d try to dump this mess on. Besides, now that she was entering a new chapter of her life, she felt like she’d moved on from that crowd. They were off to new adventures and she was back home, sinking into her old life.

It was what she wanted. She loved the ranch and it had always been her dream to come home and work it, like her dad and her granddad had done. She didn’t think that the other students would have understood that. Most of them wanted degrees so they could go off and be successful in fancy careers.

She’d just wanted to get her dad off her back about wasting her intelligence. There were actually degrees she could have gotten that would be specifically useful on the ranch, but he’d been bound and determined she’d look elsewhere. In the end she’d gone with business management because he couldn’t argue it was a bad choice and it would still be useful here.

Of course, then he’d managed the final checkmate on that one by blocking her from having any say in running things. A sudden biting pain in her palms made her realize that her fists were clenched so tight her nails were starting to dig in. She sighed and forced her fingers to relax. The stress was really getting to her and a friend she could vent to would have been great right about now.

Then it hit her. Therewasone person she could talk to, or at least someone she could e-mail. She settled onto her bed cross-legged and pulled out her laptop for the first time since she’d been home. With everything going on, checking her email had been the last thing on her mind, but now she took the time to scroll through to see if there was anything important.

As she’d expected there wasn’t too much she needed to deal with. An email from the lawyer that she’d look at later, and a few school friends offering condolences on the death of her father; the rest was spam which she quickly got rid of before she opened a new window and started to type.

She hadn’t done this for a while, but her therapisthadtold her to check in now and then when the weekly sessions had stopped and had promised to be there if any problems came up. Well, some problems had definitely come up, and Charlie, who’d once hated the idea of therapy, had learned to appreciate Marilee’s smooth way of putting things into perspective.

Maybe it was the way the therapist listened without judging, or maybe it was just that getting the words out of her head made them easier to dissect. Both? Whatever it was she’d made great strides at improving her ability to cope with stress, and if anyone would be able to help her deal with the situation she currently found herself in, it would be Marilee Harmon.

Of course, she didn’t plan to discloseeverythingto the therapist. She’d definitely keep the Daddy Dom thing under wraps. Not that she thought Marilee would judge her for indulging in the lifestyle, but just because she’d be mortified to have to type all of that up.No, some editing is definitely in order there, she thought, but her fingers seemed to have other ideas.

It took her well over an hour to get it all out. She found that once she started typing it was actually hard to shut off the words, and she ended up saying a lot more than she’d planned. As she sat there, with her finger hovering over the send button, she debated trimming it down.

Marilee already knew about her love affair with Sam, including how and why it had ended, because it had come up so often in their sessions as an unresolved emotional situation that continued to bother her. She’d left out most of the D/s aspects of it because it was embarrassing to talk about buthadhinted that they’d explored more than the normal vanilla fun together.

Now she’d fleshed that out, just a little. It was necessary context for the rest of the e-mail. She’d mentioned her father’s death of course, how could she not? The terms of the will and how upsetting she’d found them couldn’t be avoided either, but the majority of the thoughts that spilled out onto the digital page were about what was happening with Sam now.

She wrote about how he was pursuing a relationship with her while she tried to avoid committing—of course, that wouldn’t be a shock to Marilee; they’d discussed Charlie’s struggle to trust in relationships more than once. It was a problem that went all the way back to her earliest childhood memories.

And her mother.

The night her mother had left, running off for a ‘better’ life, with less hard work and struggling. She’d abandoned not just her husband but her little girl as well, and begging her mother not to go was a scene that made recurring appearances in her nightmares. She could stillfeelthat heart-wrenching pain and loss.

Vicky had never been happy on the ranch, and even before she’d left Charlie could remember the fighting. Her mother didn’t like living so far from town. She didn’t like small town life at all. She hated that they couldn’t just up and go on vacation whenever they wanted. The ranch took too much from them, she’d said more than once.

She’d pushed hard for Jimmy to sell the spread and take them all off to the big city—but that was something Jimmy would never do. The ranch was in his heart and soul. In the end, she’d packed up the car with her clothes and left on a stormy night and Charlie…

Charlie was left behind.

Inside her head a lot of things had shifted that night. Her priorities became the ranch and her dad. Everything else was just temporary and couldn’t be counted on. She couldn’t even begin to recall how many times she’d hashed this through in therapy, but she was still stuck on it. Sam wanted a relationship and she wanted him, but actually agreeing to commit to it was a whole different level of difficulty.

The letter talked about all of that, and yes even his dominance had come up and her desire for him to take a more proactive role as someone who could punish her when she needed it. At least she’d left out the kinky Daddy Dom thing, but by the time she was through she hadn’t held back much at all.

One more second of hesitation and then she tapped send. There was a moment of panic, but then an odd sense of relief kicked in. Once sent, an e-mail couldn’t be recalled. Now it was all out there.

She didn’t know how long it would take for Marilee to reply. In the past she’d been fairly prompt, but it had been awhile. So, when she went off to shower and change into fresh clothes, she wasn’t expecting to have a response when she returned.

She’d only sat down in her towel to check, because the laptop was still sitting right there on the bed, but there it was—one new e-mail from a very familiar address. She took a deep breath and held off reading it for a few minutes while she got dressed. It was a delaying tactic and she was well aware, but she couldn’t help being nervous.

She didn’t need to be. Once she sat down to open it, she could feel a sense of calm flooding through her. Marilee had always had that effect on her, and even in text the reassurance came through. There were the expected condolences, and a few casual comments about what Charlie was going through, but the important part was short and simple:We should schedule a video session to discuss this. If you have time now, I’m available. Otherwise get back to me.

Charlie hesitated, eyes flicking to the old digital clock next to the bed as she considered whether she had the time for a session right then. She realized shedid…but she wasn’t sure she could handle the emotions that were bound to come up, and then skip off to get her ass whupped in the barn right after. It would probably be too much.

She saved the e-mail and then closed the laptop with a firm click. Later then; it would have been nice to get some perspective on the relationship thing before she gave Sam an answer, but she already had a feeling she knew what Marilee would say on that anyway.

Just the act of typing everything out had helped her put things together and there were certain hard facts she couldn’t avoid acknowledging. She couldn’t lose Sam. She needed him and she wanted him.

It wasn’t just a physical attraction; despite what he thought, he was more than a Dom booty-call to her. She loved him and had for as long as she could remember. The change from friend and adopted big brother to romance had been so subtle she hadn’t even noticed at first, but since the day she’d figured out she wasin lovewith him she’d never been able to picture any other man in her life.

She’d say yes to him because there was no other answer.

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