Page 15 of Follow Me
While the facility she’d been at was great for eating disorders, their staff specialized in that focus, and Niall and the others suspected they’d missed deeper triggers in the process.
They were going to use a variety of approaches with her. Niall would focus on using hypnotherapy and try to teach her to learn to come to peace with what she could and couldn’t control in her life and to finally deal with past issues.
Doug would focus on CBT methods with her and addressing the aspects of her OCD that had led to her eating disorder so she could better process triggers and reconfigure her habits, as well as help her work on new, healthy coping mechanisms to deal with her fresh and ancient grief.
Doyle, who spent quite a bit of time out of town on the road with his rock-star husband, ironically the other Mal in their group, would mostly be working with her over the phone and approaching it from a codependency and addiction treatment angle.
But through all of it, one of her jobs was to approach this as if she now had three Doms to deal with, despite the fact that Douglas was actually his husband’s slave.
That was something none of them had told Kel about, and was another reason she’d uncollared herself this morning. Because she knew at this point in the process she couldn’t bring herself to do any of it if she still wore his collar. It would feel too much like cheating in some ways. Mal the wife could rationalize it was for her survival, but Mal the slave was too intrinsically woven into that identity to give up her devotion to Kel.
Something that could possibly literally kill her if she didn’t get a handle on it.
Closing her eyes, she ran her left thumb over her engagement and wedding rings. For now, they would be her silent reminder of who she was, of who Kel was to her, with regaining her collar from Kel as her second-most important goal.
Beating her anorexia and not dying was her first goal.
Once she knew if this was actually helping her or not, then she’d tell Kel about that aspect of it. Because if itdidhelp her, she knew he’d be okay with it.
It would also mean she’d be better able to deal with the guilt she’d no doubt feel over his reaction to it.
He wasn’t a failure, and he’d feel like one. She needed to be able to deal with that—and the fact that his reactions weren’t something she could control.
Right now, she had another mission. Doug would take her grocery shopping on their way home from her appointment—another reason he was driving her home—but she needed to eat something for lunch, or she’d need to drink another of the pre-packaged shakes she’d brought with her. She had to keep her calorie count up through meals and snacking to maintain her steady weight gain.
She opened the fridge, her heart aching when she realized that Kel was basically subsisting on crappy frozen meals.
I should be cooking for him. Forus.
But he had eggs in the fridge, and cans of soup in the pantry.
She selected a can of chicken noodle soup and put one of the eggs in a small pot of water to hard-boil it. Once her lunch was ready, she took a picture of it, noted it in her new fitness tracker app on her phone, and then texted the picture to the group thread, along with a text.
Lunch.
She also added the picture to her tracking log, but for now the men wanted her physically texting the picture to them, as well.
Once she finished eating, she texted them a picture of what was left—about a quarter cup of the soup, which she saved in the fridge for later. Then she adjusted her food log accordingly so it accurately reflected her portions and calories.
Her new fitness tracker, which she’d received at the facility on Friday from Amazon, and had put on its charger there at the house once Kel left, was now fully charged.
She fastened it around her wrist, shocked that she had to adjust the strap to the tightest hole and it was still loose. But she synced it to her phone app—which all three men had login access to for monitoring her—and took a picture of it on her wrist to text to them.
If she took it off to charge it, she had to notify them immediately by text, and then notify them again when she put it back on.
They would use it to make sure she wasn’t resorting to unhealthy exercise patterns. It also had a GPS tracker feature, through the phone app. So if she tried running to burn calories, she wouldn’t be able to lie about it.
It would be yet another way to keep her accountable.
This had been one of Doyle’s prerequisites. That it would be her full-time “sober companion,” in a way. Something he was experienced with, because he’d made a living being a professional sober companion to celebrities, which was how he’d met his husband.
Doyle had pointed out that when she had doubts about herself and her progress, she’d be able to review all the logs and counter the disordered thinking that would try to sabotage her—and which had sabotaged her in the past.
That she had to learn to lean first on herself and understand everything she was capable of, and to be accountable to herself first and foremost, and to trust what she saw with her eyes in terms of results and logs versus listening to disordered thinking.
It had all been delivered with a firm tone from all three men, a no-nonsense vocabulary, and while respectful, she had been made well aware that they wouldn’t coddle her. She’d seen first-hand how sadistic Niall and Doyle could be in their Dom modes. She had no doubts all three men would give no ground and call her out immediately if she slipped in unacceptable ways.
All of this resonated with her in a way nothing had before.
Another reason she was desperate to follow through with it.
Another reason she was desperate to risk it.
And another reason she was willing to risk hurting Kel now, because she knew if she could really persevere this time, he’d readily forgive her.
Then, and only then, they’d be able to move forward with their lives.
She hoped.
