Page 91 of His to Teach
“It scared me to death,” he mutters, and I’m surprised to hear his voice shake. If I remember correctly, I had only been lost for a few moments before he found me. I only had enough time to get scared before my big brother was there, taking my hand.
“You had this look on your face,” he murmurs, miles away in his head. “This terrified expression, like you were sure I wouldn’t come back for you. I can still remember exactly how you looked.”
“But you did come back for me,” I remind him. “And then we played eye-spy for ages until you’d cheered me up.” A sharp pain lodges in my chest. It hurts to think about these things, about the way we used to be friends, even though he was so much older. I always looked up to my big brother. Hell, I hero worshiped the guy. But he never treated me like an annoying baby sister. He always included me.
How had it all changed so much?
“When Mom died,” he whispers, voice ragged, “you had that exact same look on your face. Like you had turned back into that terrified six-year-old, convinced she’d been left behind.”
I swallow past a lump in my throat. “Mason?—”
“I was so angry with them for dying,” he goes on in that same rough voice. “Especially Mom. She could have stayed with us longer. Stayed with you longer.” His hands clench on his thighs. “She should have fought for you, Harper. I’m so goddamn sorry she didn’t.”
I try to blink back the tears, but it’s no use. I can’t speak, I can only stare at my brother. We never talk about this.
“That whole week of the funeral, that’s all I could think about. How scared you looked. How you deserved better. And it wrecked me, Harper. I wish I could have been stronger but…” his voice cracks and I reach for his hand without thinking. I’ve never seen him like this—regretful and broken. It’s not my confident, strong, always-composed, take-charge big brother.
He squeezes my hand then straightens a little, like he’s trying to get it together. “I had no idea if I could take care of you. I felt totally inadequate. But I knew I was going to do my best. Because you were my baby sister, and I loved you so much.”
My breath catches in my throat but Mason isn’t done. He turns to face me. “I put up a wall between us, Harper, and I’m so sorry. I was hard on myself. I felt like I needed to be a certain way, to take care of you. To provide what you needed. To be a parent. But now it’s starting to dawn on me that the thing you really needed was a brother.”
I wipe at the tears now steadily dripping down my face, shocked to see tears in his eyes too. “You were never a burden,” he says firmly. “Not ever. Being there to watch you grow up is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
“Mason,” I whisper, and then he pulls me into his arms, hugging me tight, and I can feel in the way his chest shakes that he’s crying too.
“I love you, Harpy. I should have said it more.”
“I love you, too,” I manage to croak out around tears. “Thank you so much for everything you did?—”
He pulls back, his eyes blazing. “No. No thank yous. It was my pleasure. Myhonor. Seriously.” He wipes a tear from my cheek. “You look like shit, Harpy.”
I snort out a laugh that kind of turns into a sob. “So do you.”
He grins, holding up the bakery bag. “Maybe muffins will help?”
We munch on our blueberry muffins in silence for a few minutes. It feels like a massive weight has lifted from my shoulders. At the same time, I know there’s more to say.
“On a scale of one to ten, how disappointed in me are you right now?”
He sighs, face closing over. “You’re not the one I’m disappointed in.”
“Nate didn’t do anything wrong.” Until he left me.
“He was my best friend, Harper.” Mason’s voice is as bitter as I’ve ever heard it. “He took advantage of you.”
“No,” I say firmly, but my brother is shaking his head.
“I went to see him, you know.” I straighten at the mere mention.You’re supposed to be mad at him,I remind myself.
Mason is still talking and I force my thoughts from missing Nate to focus on his words. “We talked about some of this—about the way you saw our relationship.” He looks more bitter than ever. “He knew you were having these issues. And then he swept in like some fairytale prince to save you. How am I supposed to see him as anything but an asshole for that?”
The idea of Nate as a fairytale prince makes me grin. Somehow, I don’t think there are many Disney movies featuring riding crop- wielding sex doms. “Okay, first of all,” I begin, “he didn’t know any of that stuff until long after we started seeing each other. So it’s not like he used it to get close to me.” I swallow. The next part is harder for me. “Secondly, I wasn’tattracted to Nate because he filled some missing caretaker role for me.”
For so long I had assumed that my sexual desires for dominance were exactly that—a desperate attempt to find someone to take care of me. But I had finally come to the realization that it just wasn’t true.
I like domination and submission in the bedroom because it’s what I like. Simple as that. Just like millions of other people like those things. My sexual desires don’t hurt anyone else and I don’t need to be ashamed of them. There doesn’t have to be some deep, tortured meaning behind any of it.
Yeah, maybe feeling unloved in my life had something to do with the way I initially clung to Nate. But our relationship grew so far beyond that. I love Nate because he always knew exactly what I needed, and he took great pains to make sure I got it. I love Nate because he was passionate about his work. Because he made me grilled cheese sandwiches in the middle of the night. Because he took me to the beach and showed me his nerdy comic book collection.
