“She will be. We both will be. She wasn’t at the time. Miranda hurt her and scared the shit out of her and she snapped back and broke some of my rules. I punished her for breaking them and brought us back to where we should be, but we’re both pretty bruised.”
“Bruised?” I keep myself from recoiling only because of the obvious distress on Logan’s face.
“Internally. I’m more than a little beat up on the inside. Emily’s bruised on the outside, too. We’re both kind of a mess. So, we’re taking this week to reconnect and heal. You’re welcome to come over any time but we’re not going to be seeing much of anyone else.”
“I don’t want to intrude?—”
“You’re not intruding. I wouldn’t have asked you over if I didn’t want you here. You’re my friend. You’re Emily’s friend. We’re both glad you’re here. But we’re taking a break from everything else. We’re not going to the club this week. We’re not going out anywhere. We’re just going to be us, together.”
I’ve pulled back from the world plenty of times, but never with someone. I’ve never even wanted to invite someone into my cave. But as Logan says it, it’s something I realize I desperately want. Someone to get under the covers with and hide from the world.
“I—that seems like a good idea,” I offer.
Logan nods. “Something to keep in mind if things get fucked up between you and your little. It’s okay to pull back and justbetogether.”
“Are you still, you know, daddy and little while you’re just being together?”
“Yeah, because Emily finds a lot of mental and emotional relaxation in being little all the time. But every little is different. If you and your little need to just be together, they might not want to be daddy and little during that time. Taking a break isn’t always the worst thing.”
“Have you—has this happened before?” I ask.
Logan shakes his head. “And that’s all on me. It probably should have happened before, but I never got deeply invested enough in my subs to know we needed this type of retreat.”
“Lo, look, I barely understand the first thing about this, but you’re beating yourself down, and that’s not like you. I can see stuff happening with Miranda. Hell, I’d have been surprised if stuffdidn’thappen with Miranda. I know you didn’t see it, but she’s always struck me as a venomous bitch.”
Logan pulls his knees up, rests his elbows on them, and sinks his head into his hands. “I did see it. I never liked what she did to my other subs but I just passed it off as cattiness. When we negotiated our contract, Emmy told me she wanted to be a better person. The rules are designed to get her to rise above cattiness. To walk away from confrontation. And she did it perfectly once, but Miranda was too much and I should have anticipated that. I should have prevented it ... when it’s your little, when it’s Emmy, it’s not just cattiness. It’s a killing offense. It’s DefCon One. It’s me bringing the nuclear fucking arsenal. You have no idea how badly I want to retaliate, to hurt Miranda a thousand times worse than she ever eventhoughtof hurting my baby doll. I’ve been holding back because I know I’ll lose control if I start. Nothing will stop me, not the law, not my morals, nothing. And believe me, I want to. I want to strip her down to her fucking bones.”
“Jesus, take a deep breath, buddy.”
Logan flexes his fingers vaguely, but I see him take a breath and let it out on a slow hiss.
“I get how you feel about Emmy. I know how I’d feel if anyone threatened her and she’s not even mine. But you can’t go down that road. If you go after Miranda like that and end up in jail, what happens to Em?”
Logan raises his head, fixing his bloodshot eyes on mine. “Why do you think I haven’t started?”
“Okay, I get it. And I get why you’re beating yourself up. But it’s time to let it go. I haven’t seen you like this before, man, but I can tell you, it’s not healthy.” I regurgitate all the spew the Navy’s therapists fed to me. “Emily’s clearly not holding it against you. You have to let this go or it’s going to eat you up.”
“I know.” Logan sighs. “I’m trying to process it, but I can’t get past the fact that I invited Miranda here. I left them alone together. I opened the door to this.”
“And you picked up the pieces when it went fubar. Emily’s okay. You’re okay. Miranda’s not dead. You’re not in jail. Things could be a lot worse. Yeah, maybe it was a mistake leaving Emily with Miranda, but what were you just telling me about littles being independent adults outside their relationship with their daddy?”
“Not Emmy. She wants to be little twenty-four-seven and I promised her I’d make that happen. I put the rules she broke in place to make it safe for her to always be little, and then I let athreatinto her safe space. I failed her, Max. There’s no other way to see it.”
“So, every other little in the world is an independent adult outside their relationship with their daddy but Emmy’s not?”
Logan groans and drops his head back into his hands. “You wouldn’t think I’m overreacting if you’d seen her. She panicked. She ran away from me. Fromme. I’m supposed to be her safe place. She’s always supposed to be safe with her daddy and she wasn’t.”
“Easy, buddy, I didn’t say you were overreacting. But you can’t take something that big on yourself. You can’t protect her from the whole world.”
Logan pulls his hair into rumpled peaks. “Yes, I can. That’s what being a daddy is to a full-time little. That’s why I made the rules. They’re extensive. They’re complex. And they’re designed to make the world safe for her. Not fair maybe, but safe. And I failed even at that.”
I watch him for a long moment as he wrestles with something inhuman, impossible. We both know how short life is. How uncertain. We were both on the boat when one of our unit got his head blown open by a Somalian pirate’s bullet. Logan was looking right at the guy. I was looking at Logan. We both got spattered with Ernie’s brains. We were all in full gear. There was no way the pirate was that good a shot; you can’t hit a guy’s earhole on a bouncing boat from another bouncing boat a hundred yards away. It was that one in a billion and Ernie died because he turned around to yell something at Logan.
“Ernie,” I say quietly.
Logan groans again. “I know.”
“If that’s the standard you’re holding yourself to, Lo, you’re going to fail. You can’t protect Emily from everything. The world doesn’t work that way. It’s not fair and it’s not safe. You’ve made it safer. You’ve given her space to turn into that wondrous person dancing around in your kitchen. But that’s all you’re gonna be able to do. You need to settle it with yourself. What’d you just tell me? You need to give yourself space to make mistakes and forgive yourself for them.”
