“Your needs are important, too,” Rosa says.
I sigh. “I get that. I do. And in my heart I know I’m not a selfish person. But this desire I have to take charge of everything makes me want to know everything. Knowledge is power, right?”
“True.”
“But he’s not ready to tell me about some parts of his past, and I have to accept that.”
She pauses for a second. “Are you willing to accept that he may never be ready?”
I draw in a breath. “I think I have to be, whether I want to or not.”
“Good for you,” she says. “I know it’s hard.”
“You have no idea how hard. Last night, I met Addison’s sister, and she was ready to tell me everything about Addie and Braden. I stopped her.”
“Really? That took some willpower.”
“You’re not kidding. I had all the answers right in my back pocket, and I told her not to tell me.”
“I’m proud of you, and I’d like you to look at your decision in a different way.”
“How?”
“It took a lot of control not to listen to what she had to say.”
Rosa isn’t wrong. “You’re telling me.”
“So there you are. Control. The only difference is you put someone else’s needs ahead of your own. By letting the information go, you were exercising the control you crave, just in a different way. And you did it because you care for another person more than you need the information.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“You’re young, Skye. We both are.” She laughs. “I may understand psychology, but I still have a lot of growing up to do. The more I know, the more I realize what I don’t know.”
I laugh along with her. “If that isn’t the truth.”
“So tell me. Yesterday we left with the question of why submitting to Braden’s punishment pleases you. Or rather, what we’re calling punishment for lack of a better word, since to him, you don’t feel it’s punishment.”
“Right. His idea of punishment is to deny me an orgasm.”
“Yes. So the spanking, the flogging, the tying up… All those things. You gain a lot of pleasure from that.”
I swallow. “Yes. Especially the bondage.”
“Perhaps you’re just a natural submissive.”
“Maybe, though it goes against everything I know about myself.”
“Sometimes that’s the key,” Rosa says. “We think we know ourselves, but we don’t always. Sometimes our subconscious comes into play, as I think it may have with your repressed memory of your mother in bed with another man.”
“Braden says he doesn’t think I’m a true master of control.”
“Why does he think that?”
“He says I only control myself, and that a true master of control will desire to control others.”
“Do you feel you control others?”
“No. He’s right about that. I only control myself, and apparently I’m not even good at that anymore.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I gave him my control in the bedroom.”
“And what was the result?”
I sigh. “The most amazing and passionate experiences of my life.”
“So you have no regrets.”
“Not a one.”
“Then we come back to the question. Why do you gain so much pleasure from what you see as punishment?”
I take a moment to think. “It probably stems from my insecurity. I feel like I’m only getting into influencing because of Braden.”
“Exactly. On a conscious level. How about on a subconscious level?”
I sigh again. “My parents’ separation. They fought about me a lot. Wow. They did. I haven’t thought about that in ages.”
“The repressed memory will start to bring back other memories. Memories that weren’t repressed but seemed insignificant until now. What did they fight over that was about you?”
I chuckle. “My stubbornness. I’m a lot like my father, and it was too much for Mom to handle, having two of us. I fought her on everything. The example she gave me is Frosted Flakes versus Cornflakes with sugar sprinkled on top. Regular Cornflakes were cheaper, and we didn’t have a lot of money back then, so that’s what she bought. But there were other things. I fought her on everything, from getting my homework done to cleaning my room to gathering eggs from the hens we used to keep. Which is really weird, because I loved those hens and I loved gathering eggs, so why did I fight her? Even now, it seems so inconsequential to me, but apparently to her it was a huge deal. Enough so that she didn’t want any more children. Or chickens, for that matter. We kept the hens until they died, but we never replaced them.”
“You may have been stubborn and obstinate, but what you’re describing is still in the range of normal for a child. It’s not like you did anything super horrible.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Have you considered that being a mother was difficult for her?”
“No.” I shake my head against the phone.
“I can’t speak from experience yet, but from everything I’ve studied, parenting is quite difficult for some people. That doesn’t mean they don’t love their children.”
“I’m starting to understand that. It seemed easier for my father.”
She pauses. “Your father worked all day.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He wasn’t home all day with his stubborn daughter. If, as you say, he’s as stubborn as you are, the two of you would have butted heads, but he would have won, because he’s the parent.”
Interesting, but I feel Rosa isn’t being fair to my mom. “My mother’s a strong woman.”
“I’m not saying she isn’t. I’m only remarking that parenting you was difficult for her. That’s not a slight to her or to you, and that’s what you need to understand.”
“My father said it was both of their faults. My mother wasn’t honest with him, and he wasn’t making sure her needs were met.”
“That’s usually the case. Relationships are almost never a one-way street.”
“They both say none of it was my fault, though.”
“It wasn’t. You were a child. You need to believe them.”