Submit and Surrender

chapter 19


Ford came awake slowly. Truth be told, he thought he was still dreaming.

Adra was asleep on his chest.

Adra, who usually fled to her own bed each night like some modern-day Cinderella who was afraid of intimacy instead of…what the hell was Cinderella worried about? Pumpkins?

Yeah, he woke up slowly.

His brain wasn’t doing much anyway. Everything he had was focused on the woman in his arms.

He’d known it was something big when she showed up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. He’d had to stand there and watch while she shook where she stood, while she tore herself up on the inside trying to tell him something.

The goddamn self-control that had taken, not to just sweep her up. She would never know. But she had obviously needed whatever it was she was doing, so that meant it was going to happen. Whatever she needed, he’d make sure she got it.

And then he had done exactly that.

It had been so raw. So naked and honest. If Ford had had any doubts about the way Adra really felt about him, they were gone now. They hadn’t f*cked—they’d made love. That’s what she come into his bed to do. Ford hadn’t needed to hold back; he’d been able to show her exactly how he felt, too. He’d loved her like he’d always wanted to and then held her while she clung to him, listening to her breathing as it slowed, as her body relaxed, as she finally let herself fall asleep. He’d laid awake for a long time after that, just to listen to her, to feel her. And while they were both old enough to know that sometimes love wasn’t always enough, he figured at least they’d have that night.

At least they’d given each other that.

Now he was awake, and trying to figure out how he could give her more. Because he knew this woman, and he knew she was due to be stressed about the whole thing. And he also knew exactly what he wanted.

Her.

“How long you been awake?” he said.

Adra curled her fingers on his chest. Her breathing had gotten shallower.

“A little bit,” she said. “Thinking.”

Ford couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I figured.”

Adra propped her chin up on his chest and narrowed her eyes.


“Are you making fun of my tendency towards anxiety? Implying that I perhaps, sometimes, on occasion, overthink things?”

“Of course I am.”

She blew her hair out of her face, and smiled slightly. “Well, I suppose that’s fair.”

“Don’t think I don’t like it,” he said, smoothing his hand over her hair. “You start freaking out, it gives a Dom something to do.”

Adra laughed softly. “I…had not thought of it that way.”

“So you going to tell me?” he said.

“What I’m freaking out about now?”

“Of course,” he said again.

She was silent for a while. Almost long enough for Ford to push her, because this time, now, he was going to push her. She was too close to give up now, and if she needed his help, so be it.

But instead Adra pushed herself off his chest, wrapped the sheet around her, and gave him the most earnest, vulnerable look he’d ever seen.

“I’m just going to talk for a while, and I need you to be quiet, because there are things I have to say and I don’t know why they’re so hard to say to you, but…”

She stopped, and managed to breathe. Good. He wouldn’t have to remind her.

“But that’s already a lie,” Adra said. “Already I’m lying. Jesus Christ.”

Ford sat up, leaned against his abused headboard, and pulled Adra closer to him.

“Be nicer to yourself than that,” he ordered gently.

“But I do know why it’s so hard to say things to you,” she said. “It’s because you’re real, and telling you things makes them real. You matter, Ford. You’re…”

Ford kissed her forehead. He’d never seen her like this, not since they’d had sex. No, not since ever. If he could have taken away every painful thing she felt, every fear she had, every little thing that was screwing with her head, and put it all on himself, he would have done it. It was worse to see her hurt.

“You’re my best friend,” she said, looking away. “And you deserve better than a coward, even for just a no-strings-attached sub.”

“Hey,” Ford said. “What did I say about being nice to yourself?”

Adra finally looked at him again, hitting him square in the goddamn heart with those big doe eyes.

“Please just listen,” she said softly.

And then she told him all about her brother, Charlie.

What was weirdest about the whole thing was that Ford could tell, even as she was telling him about her brother’s tendency to do a runner, even as she kind of glossed over her family history and her dad in a way that made it clear that that whole part of her life was way more relevant than she let on, it was clear that she was skirting around something else. It was clear that the reason she was scared to tell Ford this stuff wasn’t because it made her fears about her brother real. That situation was what it was, no matter who she told.

It was because it made her fears about Ford real. Because now they were close again. Because now they talked about personal things, in bed, naked. They made love. They cared about each other.

That’s what she was afraid of.

But that was nothing new, not really. It just put a name to some of it. What struck him the most, while she sat in his bed, a sheet wrapped around her beautiful body, her fingers worrying the fabric while she tried to keep herself calm—what struck him the most was how much she freaking apologized for being upset.

Adra didn’t even believe she had good reasons to feel the way she did. But a while ago Ford had reason to read up on child psychology and child-rearing and every other child-related thing like it was his damn job, and he knew that habitual neglect or repeated trauma was often worse than a single painful event. That kind of thing never made for a good story or an easy personal narrative, but it would leave its imprint on a person just the same, and they’d have no idea why. Until years later, when they found it so hard to do anything different, so hard to snap out of a groove they’d worn down over the years of learning the same dumb thing, over and over again…

Watching Adra, the most beautiful heart he’d ever met, talk her way through exactly that while she f*cking apologized for it, damn near broke his own heart.

What he wanted to do was fix everything. He wanted to love her until she forgot about anything that had ever hurt her. He wanted to go knock some sense into Charlie, give him some money, just do something. And years ago, when he was younger, he might have tried that.

Now he knew it wouldn’t work, because people don’t work like that.

So he just had to sit there, against every instinct he had. He listened. And he planned ways to take care of the woman who was prepared for everyone she cared about to screw her over at all times.

“Anyway, that’s what’s been upsetting me so much,” Adra was saying. She was over the worst of it. “I really believed Charlie could make it. That of the two of us… I don’t know, maybe that’s a lie, too. Maybe I just really wanted to believe, you know?”

It was a rhetorical question they both knew the answer to. They both knew the answer to the implied follow up, too: Adra didn’t believe in love for herself or her brother. For other people? Sure. But not for herself.

Ford shook his head, slowly, and pulled Adra to him, knowing he couldn’t do anything other than hold her tight at the moment. What he wanted to do, beyond fixing everything, was find every lowlife a*shole who had hurt her, who had made her believe that there were no happy endings, and put their heads through the same wall he imagined putting Derrick’s head through.

It was so much easier to feel angry, and it didn’t do her any damn good.

“That’s not all that’s been upsetting you,” Ford said.

Adra stiffened in his arms. He felt her stop breathing, start again.

“But let that go for now,” he went on. “Just know that I’m not going anywhere. Anywhere. You got that?”

Adra was too quiet.

“Adra,” he said.

“That’s not necessarily true,” she said quietly. “People have hurt you. They’ve lost you.”

Ford blinked.

“You’re talking about Claudia?”

Adra sighed softly. “Yeah.”

What in the actual f*ck? Ford wasn’t usually stumped about what was going on inside Adra’s head, but this was like be smacked in the face with a freaking mackerel. Comparing herself to Claudia made no goddamn sense.

“You are not a cheater,” Ford said.

“And we don’t have that kind of relationship,” Adra added, sitting up to look at him. “But it’s just…I know it’s complicated, but…”

She looked down for a second, and he missed her brown eyes. And when she looked back up, Ford could tell that she knew there was more.

She knew there was something he wasn’t telling her.

He felt that pang of grief he always felt when he thought about Andrew, only this time, it was different. This time it felt, for a second, like a thing that kept him from Adra. He hated that. Hated it.

And he couldn’t f*cking tell her.

He looked at Adra’s sweet face, thought about how hard this had all been for her, to be this vulnerable and come this far, and how she still didn’t want to talk about what they really were…and all he could think was how much more freaked out she would be if he told her about the child he almost had.

~ * ~ * ~

Well, this was unexpected.

She’d done it. Somehow she’d pushed ahead and jumped off a cliff—ok, a mini-cliff, the smallest cliff she could find—and she’d told Ford about Charlie, and the world hadn’t ended.

It hadn’t ended, but it had confirmed one thing: she felt immeasurably better having confided in Ford about Charlie. Like she’d stopped wearing the wrong size shoes or something. He was her best friend, after all.

And it wasn’t like she’d gone ahead and confessed everything that had been stressing her out, because wow, that would be crazy. She hadn’t just casually dropped bombs about maybe, possibly already being in love with him and how that would ruin everything. Or about how deathly afraid she was of losing him. Or about how no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of a way that this situation ended well, because in the end, Ford deserved to be happy, and if Adra couldn’t give him what he deserved because she was such a mess…

But Adra was kicking all those habitual, worrisome thoughts aside now that she was looking at Ford while he very clearly kept some worries of his own to himself.

Part of her wanted to laugh. She wondered if it was this obvious when she kept stuff from him, and if so, how they’d both managed to avoid being main characters in a comedy of manners so far. It was ridiculous. She could see it in his eyes.

What a terrible liar. Call that a quality, though.

And, bonus: This gave her something else to think about. She wasn’t panicking about how making love with Ford had been the most honest experience of her life, or about how the rules she’d so carefully insisted upon had pretty much gone out the window, or about anything else.

She was thinking about what had really happened with Ford’s marriage.

And while part of her wanted to laugh at how ridiculous they both were, another part of her managed to be both simultaneously hurt and relieved for the exact same reasons. Namely: here he was being all distant again, and that sucked, but wasn’t it safer? If she was never pressed, if he didn’t push her into admitting what she really felt, maybe she really could do this best friends thing. Right?


Best friends who had amazing, perception-altering sex. She could totally do that, right?

What was it they said—‘fake it ’til you make it?’

“You don’t have to tell me about what happened,” Adra finally said, and still couldn’t tell if she was hoping he would or if she was hoping he wouldn’t. “Boundaries are good.”

On the plus side, she was getting pretty used to feeling like a total nutcase, so she had that going for her.

“Adra…” Ford said, and she let herself savor that deep, low rumble, because she looked at him and knew he was far away.

She didn’t have to suffer that long, though. When Ford’s phone rang at the side of the bed, Adra practically leaped for it.

“It’s for you,” she said, smiling up at him as she handed him the receiver. She’d actually sprawled across his hard, muscled body to get at the phone. She didn’t plan to move.

Ford grinned, took the phone, and then pulled away her sheet.

She was naked from the waist up again, and he was going to take full advantage of it. Adra sighed as his hands played lightly with her breasts. What was it about being fondled by a man who was otherwise occupied? She didn’t know, but whatever it was, it was magic.

So she noticed when it stopped.

Adra looked up. Ford’s expression had changed. It had gone dark. Medieval. Like the expression he’d had that first day of shooting, when he’d gone after Derrick…

“You’ve confirmed this?” Ford said into the phone. “I’ll need to meet you at the club in an hour. Bring whatever materials you have.”

Adra watched him carefully as he cradled her in one arm, and leaned over to hang up the phone with the other. She’d almost never seen him so upset.

“Ford, what happened?” she asked.

“That was the private investigator I hired,” Ford said, gently covering her with the sheet, bringing her closer before tucking her into the bed as he got out. He quickly pulled on some jeans and a t-shirt, his face serious.

“Private investigator?” Adra asked. What the hell was he talking about?

Ford looked at her like she was a very precious, very breakable thing.

“He knows who’s responsible for all the security leaks,” he said.