Daddy Issues Read online

  The knock soun­ded again. I threw down the knife and, leav­ing the half fin­ished car­rots and cel­ery on the cut­ting board, went to an­swer the door.

  Salt was stand­ing there look­ing very tall and grim with the flash drive curled in one large fist. He has his own key to my place so he could have just let him­self in but clearly he wanted to keep things formal. Well, fine—I could do that too.

  “Good even­ing, De­tect­ive Saltanov,” I said evenly.

  Salt didn’t look happy but he re­turned my greet­ing in kind.

  “De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker,” he rumbled, in­clin­ing his head.

  “Won’t you come in?” I stepped aside to let him enter. Nor­mally when we went to each other’s houses we made ourselves at home. Salt al­ways went right to my re­fri­ger­ator to see what I had to eat. But now he stepped in­side and then just stood there. It was a re­minder to me that things weren’t “nor­mal” between us and never would be again.

  “This way,” I said shortly, and led him to my liv­ing room as though he didn’t know the way.

  Salt fol­lowed me si­lently and had a seat on the couch when we got there.

  “The flash drive?” I asked.

  Word­lessly, he dropped it into my hand.

  I went over to my laptop and plugged in the flash drive. Thanks to Salt, who had found a way to hook my com­puter to my tele­vi­sion, I was able to bring the im­ages up on my large flat-screen.

  I grabbed the re­mote and, since Salt was sit­ting on the couch, I took the love­seat which sat per­pen­dic­u­lar to it.

  It hurt my heart to do that—to sit away from him. I couldn’t help re­mem­ber­ing all the times we had sat to­gether on my couch to watch movies. Salt had never ac­tu­ally put his arms around me or cuddled me—we hadn’t got­ten that phys­ical un­til our time at the In­sti­tute—but we al­ways sat close, our thighs touch­ing. And some­times when the movie was long or I was tired, I would lean my head on his broad shoulder and just rest there. Once or twice I even fell asleep and only woke up when Salt was tuck­ing an afghan around me to keep me warm.

  I would never be able to do that again, I real­ized. Never be able to draw com­fort from hav­ing his big, warm body so close to mine. We were never go­ing to have an­other movie night and I was never go­ing to fall asleep with my head against his shoulder. We would never— Get over it, I ad­vised my­self roughly. He doesn’t want you any­more. And can you blame him? Look how needy you let your­self get at the In­sti­tute. Look at all the weird things you did to­gether. Salt was prob­ably just act­ing but not you, Sug­ar­baker—no, you got into it. Deep into it. You liked be­ing a Little—play­ing the Baby­girl to Salt’s Papa. He prob­ably knows that and it dis­gusts him. You drove him away your­self by be­ing too damn needy and strange so don’t start moon­ing over him now. Just be­cause he’s sit­ting on your couch right now doesn’t mean he’ll ever want you back as a part­ner or any­thing else. He’s already gone.

  My lec­ture to my­self didn’t make me feel any bet­ter but it did make me feel a little stronger. I poin­ted the re­mote at the screen and clicked it on, ready to watch.

  “Wait,” Salt said, as a scene of the two of us en­ter­ing the room at the In­sti­tute came on the screen.

  “What?” I paused the im­age for a mo­ment and looked at him.

  “I think it would be mis­take to erase all im­ages of the two of us.” He ges­tured at the screen. “Would be bet­ter to keep some of the less…em­bar­rass­ing ones.”

  “Right. Makes sense to avoid sus­pi­cion,” I ac­know­ledged. “So I think we can agree that this one stays?” It was just the two of us get­ting com­fort­able in the room and look­ing around. It must have been the first night we were there.

  “Yes.” Salt nod­ded.

  I picked up a yel­low legal pad and pen I’d placed on the arm of the love­seat earlier for just this pur­pose and made a note.

  “All right. Mov­ing on.” I fast for­war­ded the im­age and saw the two of us sit­ting on the couch to­gether. Then I saw Salt pulling my feet into his lap and tak­ing off my shoes and socks. I couldn’t help re­mem­ber how won­der­ful his big warm hands felt when he mas­saged me.

  “Do you wish to leave this part or not?” Salt asked me.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, it is kind of awk­ward but not, you know, ob­scene.”

  “Noth­ing we did was ob­scene,” he said quietly.

  “Oh no? You pre­tend­ing to be my ‘Papa’ and me pre­tend­ing to be your ‘Baby­girl’ wasn’t ob­scene?” I snapped.

  “No,” he said simply.

  “Right.” I didn’t be­lieve him a bit. I had heard how he really felt about what went on in the In­sti­tute loud and clear when he’d told Berkley that it was sick and he was dis­gus­ted by it. Dis­gus­ted by you, don’t you mean, Andi? whispered a little voice in my head. Yes—that was ex­actly what I meant. I forced my­self to look at the TV again and tried not to think about it.

  On screen, the foot mas­sage was fi­nally over. There was vid feed from the bath­room too but the cam­era in there had been fo­cused on the tub so you couldn’t see either Salt or I shower­ing or do­ing any­thing else—for which I was grate­ful.

  Salt and I went about our nightly routine—well ex­cept for the part where I ex­amined his back which made me un­com­fort­able to watch be­cause I re­membered the past pain he had re­vealed to me. At last, I went to bed. The cam­era angle switched to the bed­room—did they have some kind of mo­tion sensors so the cam­eras only clicked on when someone was in the room? Or did who­ever was watch­ing just as­sume the ac­tion would be wherever I was?

  I thought the scene would be nor­mal but I had for­got­ten about my night­mare that first night. There was no sound and only min­imal light but I saw my small shape huddled un­der the cov­ers and watched as I sat up, clearly agit­ated. Then the bed­room door burst open and Salt’s tall frame was sil­hou­et­ted by the light shin­ing be­hind him. He came to the bed and gathered me into his arms. Ten­derly, he cradled me to his chest and sat down in the large rock­ing chair to rock me like a child.

  I felt a wave of long­ing as I watched the scene and then an equal wave of shame raced over me. I was a grown wo­man, for God’s sake—why was I wish­ing to be rocked and com­for­ted like a little girl? It was stu­pid and weak and it made me angry with my­self and with Salt too for act­ing the way he had.

  “Look at this,” I com­plained, point­ing at the TV. “Why did you have to do that in­stead of just wak­ing me up and telling me I was hav­ing a bad dream? Now we don’t have any­thing even re­motely nor­mal to leave in the video.”

  “I wanted to take care of you,” Salt said in a low voice.

  “Oh, you took care of me all right,” I muttered. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Andi—”

  “No. Don’t start.” I held up a hand to stop him. “You do not get to feel bet­ter about be­ing a com­plete shit by try­ing to ex­plain it away. Just keep your mouth shut and let’s get through this.”

  “How am I be­ing ‘com­plete shit?’” he asked, his voice a low, angry growl. “I am giv­ing you what you should want.”

  “I should want to be be­trayed and deser­ted by my part­ner?” I de­man­ded. “No, stop—don’t an­swer that. Let’s just go on.”

  Be­fore he could protest I fast for­war­ded the video, which was just a nor­mal one of us sleep­ing, to the next night.

  “Oh boy,” I muttered as I watched Salt bathing me in the big tub. “This has to go for sure.” I star­ted to fast for­ward it but he said, “Wait.”

  “What are we wait­ing for?” I de­man­ded, frown­ing at him.

  “I just…want to see it.” His deep voice held a note of wist­ful­ness.

  “What—you want to watch us be­ing per­ver­ted to­gether?” I said roughly, fast for­ward­ing.

  “How is this per­ver­ted?” he ask