Finally, I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer. I opened the envelope and pulled out the note inside. Rather than being on the thick cardstock of the notes that accompanied my date boxes, the note was written on plain paper as if it had been hastily torn from a notebook.
“Snow – I wanted to tell you that no matter what I’ve said, I understand why you came here and that you made the decision that you think is right for you. You did what you had to do and I hope that you found what you were looking for. I only wish that things could be different.”
The words were simple and there was nothing in them that expressed any form of anger or hurt, but I could feel it. I knew that Noah was struggling when he wrote the note, and that it was all that he could manage, all that he could do to express the last message that he could send to me. As soon as I got dressed, I would be leaving the retreat, and him, behind.
It was late when I got back home from my last night at the Enchanted Woods and even though I had been there only a few days before, I felt like I was walking into a strange place. It was like something had changed in me in the last few days, as though I had achieved what Fawn had promised and found something within myself that I didn’t know, and that it had somehow changed how I saw everything else around me. Even as I stepped into my living room and dropped my bags to the carpet, however, I couldn’t identify what it was that I had discovered about myself. I had found far more about myself sexually than I would have ever imagined that I would have, and even some things that I wouldn’t have believed I would have done or enjoyed if someone had told me about them only a few weeks before. That, however, didn’t seem like enough. There had to be something else. There had to be more to justify everything that I had gone through and how different I felt. My home used to be the place where I was most comfortable. It wasn’t elaborate or big, but it was mine. It represented everything that I had worked so hard for and the time, energy, and effort I had put into my career. As I was standing there, though, it didn’t feel like that anymore. Suddenly it felt like it represented everything I had done for everyone else. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my house. It was still the same place that I had slid around in in just my socks when I had first closed on it and it was still empty. It was the same place where I had pored for hours over carpet samples only to settle on oatmeal. I loved this house, but it was something that had come from exactly what Robin told me I did…worked to please others.
I walked over to the sliding glass door that led out onto the patio to the side of the house and pulled the curtains tighter, then glanced across the room to make sure that the blinds were closed. When I confirmed that they were, I kicked off my shoes and stripped down to my lingerie. This was one of the things about myself that was definitely different. Before visiting the Enchanted Woods, I would have been standing there in a pair of white panties and a matching boring bra. Maybe beige. Now I was wearing delicate confections of mint green lace that brushed my body and made me feel feminine and beautiful even standing alone in the living room. Taking a moment just to enjoy this feeling, I finally released the clasp on the back of my bra and released my breasts to the cool air of the living room and then peeled my panties down my hips and off.
I stood in the middle of my living room completely naked. It was something that I had never done and something that I never would have thought that I would have done. My nudity was generally restricted to my bedroom and the bathroom. Sometimes the short hallway in between. Now I was standing here in absolutely nothing, enjoying the sensation more than I probably should have. I took off running and did a few laps around the house, weaving in and out of the rooms. I didn’t bother to check the windows when I went into the guest room and temporarily flashed everything to the neighbor on that side of the house, but since it was so late and so dark, I felt fairly confident that I went unseen, and even if the 80-year-old woman who lived there had been peering out of her window at precisely that moment, she would have only seen a silhouette of me running through. With any luck, she would just assume a killer was after me and go for cover.
When I finished my nude jog through the house, I stopped back in the living room to get my luggage. It had been liberating to do that, as silly as it had seemed. I might not know exactly what walls I had broken down, but they were definitely breaking. I climbed into bed that night without bothering to get into pajamas. I thought that it would be relaxing, but almost as soon as my body slipped in between the chilly sheets of the bed, I felt the emptiness of my house and of the bed. My mind went back to the cottage and the last time I had seen Noah. He had surprised me at the end of my final date, but now that I was back at my house, I regretted the way that I had left things between us. I knew about the contract that he had signed, and I had made a similar agreement with Fawn. It didn’t matter what we felt, or what we thought we felt. What we had done had been completely against those agreements and I felt incredibly guilty about it. I had gone into this with the agreement that this was not about emotions and that I wasn’t to think of anything with these men beyond the end of the dates that I shared with them. Even the brief conversations that we had when he brought me my meals had been bordering on breach of contract, but having sex with him on the night of my date with Damien had severely crossed the line. Even if I had acknowledged the feelings that I had for Noah, I never should have allowed myself to act on them. I was, above all else, a professional, and my contract and the objectives of the time at The Enchanted Woods should have surpassed them. I had absolutely no guilt about the dates that followed my impromptu encounter with Noah. For once, I was thinking about myself and my own needs.
Perhaps if things had been different…
I stopped that thought pattern as quickly as it had started and pushed it out of my mind. Things weren’t different. They were exactly what they were, and there was nothing that I could do to change that. I agreed to the retreat for my own specific reasons and I accomplished what I went there to do.
I tried to convince myself that it was good that I even got to have these feelings. Before I agreed to the retreat at the Enchanted Woods I had convinced myself that I might never feel like this ever again. My breakup had nearly destroyed me and there were plenty of times when I felt like my heart had closed off completely. It was as though it was so afraid of being hurt again that it just refused to soften for anyone. Now, though, I knew that I was capable of having feelings for another person again. I wasn’t sure what those feelings were and it wasn’t as though I would ever be able to see Noah again, but just knowing that they were there, that there was a place of my heart that was willing to be vulnerable and to welcome someone else in. It was reassuring, though in that moment, no matter how hard I tried, it made me feel hollow and sad.
The next morning, I was still thinking about Noah when I pulled into the office parking lot for the first time since Hunter had sent me on my leave of absence. My stomach felt oddly nervous and I paused for a moment after pulling into my usual parking space. The tiny sign that had my name was gone from the front of the spot and I felt a clench of anger in my chest.
Lucille is a real piece of work.
I climbed angrily out of the car and was striding toward the front door of the office, ready to confront her about my spot, when my phone rang. I stopped and dug through my shoulder bag to find my phone. It was on the last ring when I finally found it and answered without looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
“Snow?”
The voice would have been a welcome surprise after so long, but Brandy sounded strained and upset, taking the happiness out of hearing from her for the first time since I left.
“Brandy? What’s wrong?”