OLIVIER
On Saturday night, Olly walked into the Bolt, Barclay’s club, and was assaulted by the loud music and flash of disco lights coming from the main club that were hitting the dim space of the front area.
He saw the girl at the glass counter that served as the membership check-in desk. Through the glass, the desk offered an array of condoms and tubes of lube, bottles of oil, and other sexual staples, most of these edible.
That was just what was available at the counter. There was a shop with a much larger selection inside the club.
The girl had on an outfit he could see all of, as she was perched on a high stool that cleared the top of the counter. It was made of that plastic-looking material, a black strapless dress with a short but wide skirt lifted up by a load of black netting, fishnets held up by garters. She had cat’s whiskers drawn around her nostrils, her nose had a black dot at the tip, her eyes were lined with a thick, black sweeping slash, and she wore a thin black collar with rhinestones around her neck and a band with cat’s ears on her head.
She was cute.
But not something you’d see at the Honey.
“Hey, gorgeous,” she greeted then said, “Clay’s waiting for you up in the office.”
He stopped at the counter and asked, “Do I know you?”
He’d been there a number of times and she was cute enough, he’d remember her.
“Nope,” she replied, grinning. “He just said if a big guy comes in who looks like he can rip my head off with his bare hands, send him up.”
Barclay. He was a wise-ass too.
Olly shook his head before he jerked his chin up and moved to the narrow doorway that led to narrow stairs that would take him to the club’s office.
Before he hit the doorway, she called, “Like my head where it is, but, sugar, you wanna rip something else off me, you just shout.”
“Raincheck,” he muttered and moved in the doorway, taking the first step.
“C’est la vie,” he heard her mumbled reply.
He knew it was a saying but he wished she hadn’t picked French.
His shoulders actually brushed the walls as he made his way up to an equally narrow landing at the top. A landing that had one door.
He knocked.
“Yo!” he heard Barclay shout from inside.
Olly moved in.
He shut the door behind him and the music from outside could still be heard but not nearly as loud.
Olly turned to his bud in the dimly lit room filled with a large cluttered desk and a lot of furniture in plush fabrics that you could easily lounge on, and fuck on, which he suspected was done. That meant any time he was in there, shooting the shit and sharing a beer with Barclay, he’d never actually sat down.
Barclay, a decent-looking guy, as far as Olly could tell, dark hair, kinda slight build (but it was evident he took care of himself), average height, was behind the desk, brown eyes on Olly.
“Oh fuck,” he muttered.
“I fucked up,” Olly announced.
“Okay, first, that look on your face, not to make this about me but gotta fuckin’ make it about me. Man, please tell me you did not get made at the Honey and right now I gotta gather all the cash I got on hand and get the fuck outta Phoenix ’cause Aryas Weathers is gonna hunt down my ass.”
Olly moved into the room, telling him, “I didn’t get made.”
“No offense, Olly, but I’m as surprised as I am impressed and that’s sayin’ a lot, brother.”
Feeling some guilt about the worry he’d caused his friend, not to mention feeling a lot of other things, nevertheless, since he had a dick, Olly turned to the smoky window that looked down at the club’s dance floor and muttered, “Fuck you.”
He heard a fridge open and looked Barclay’s way just in time to see he’d twisted back from a short, square refrigerator behind the desk and a bottle of beer was sailing through the air his way.
He caught it as Barclay invited, “Just use the edge of the desk to wedge the top off. We lost our bottle opener and none of us lazy fucks have bothered to get a new one. Desk cost us a fuckin’ shitload but my asshole partners have no class so now it’s ruined with that shit. Since I got absolutely no desire to fuck ’em, might as well join ’em.”
He then stood and used the heel of his palm against the cap set against the edge of the desk to open his own beer.
Olly followed suit and Barclay moved around the desk.
“Park your ass, man, and give whatever shit you’re carrying to me.”
“No offense back at you,” Olly started, eyeing furniture that looked like massive sculpted pillows, no legs, flush to the floor, slouchy and misshapen. “But maybe I should see a cleaning bill before I park my ass on any a’ that.”
He heard Barclay chuckle as he collapsed into a chair that could fit two (or three), falling into it, which was the only way to get into it. Another concern of Olly’s since he had farther to fall … and more bulk to pull up.
“I know it looks like the lounge area of a low-rent porno company but we all agreed to no fucking up here. None of us wanna sit in someone else’s dried cum so I can promise, even with my partners, there’s been no fucking up here,” he assured.
Olly could believe that so he moved to a couch and found his way into it. It was comfortable, but his feet to the floor, his knees were nearly in line with his shoulders.
“Christ, Clay, serious should think of maybe getting a real couch.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.” There was humor on his face when he said that but suddenly, Olly saw him wipe it clean away before he invited, “Lay it on me, Olly.”
Olly took a pull of his beer. Then another.
After that and a deep breath, he laid it on Barclay. No detail, the basics, some of it uncomfortable, making him feel vulnerable, a feeling he did not like (unless Amélie was there), laying it out just because Barclay needed to know it so he could help him out.
Except his totally losing his cool with Amélie and stomping out. That last, he gave detail.
When he was done, he said, “And that’s it,” and took another pull of beer.
“Right, that isn’t it ’cause, see, you gave me all that and I don’t know what it is, I can only assume. And I’ll just go on here and say what I assume is that you came here to share all of that so I could give you a clue as to how to get back in there with your girl.”
His girl.
Shit.
Yes.
That was why he was there.
Because he’d spent days trying to convince himself that it was good that was done. It was an excuse it all could be done. He got what he got from her and she proved the way she handled him last that it was fucked up, so now he could put that part of his life behind him. Now Olly could finally close the channels to that shit that fucked with his head and finally move on with his life.
And this all came on the heels of him spending more days kicking his own ass for being weak. For making the decision he was not going back for a second time and then going. His mind screaming at him to back down, not get in his truck, not put his foot on the gas, not drive to the Honey, his body not listening to a fucking word it said.
And she took him there again, better than before, both times she’d made him come.
But she also gave him more that second time and then it became all about how she was, the second session, with him.
It was the play, fuck yeah, absolutely. Mind-blowing. The world expanding like he wasn’t on the same planet but in a different universe, even as it physically contracted, being only that room they were in. Even less, just the space the two of them occupied.
And it was more.
She was that miracle of miracles, sexy-as-fuck, gorgeous-as-hell, and still cute. She had a sense of humor. She had a beautiful laugh. She could be affectionate and sweet. Fuck, spread out on top of a vault with his dick and balls on show for the people at the windows, when they bantered, it was like they were on a date.
He wanted more. Of all of it. He couldn’t fight it and was beginning to wonder why he did.
Then he began to wonder if he had to. If he could just be who he was, fight that fight, but allow himself to go to her so she could take care of him. Take him where he needed to be. Make it all clear for him. Make it all right. Make it so he was safe to be in that room, which meant safe in his head for unbe-fucking-leivably amazing moments of respite, but only when he was with her.
Then she’d acted like he actually was her fucktoy, a cock, balls, and ass she could play with and put out of her mind.
And that shit stung.
He was not wrong in what he said. What she’d done wasn’t right. Both Barclay and Jenna taught him that and Jenna was like that when she’d worked him. Olly knew it and Amélie knew it. He saw it in her face.
It wasn’t about her taking his ass. Whitney had tried to shove a huge dildo up it and he’d bit out his safe word so fast, she’d blinked and asked him to repeat it. She’d also gotten pissed about it.
But she did not have near the finesse as Amélie.
He had to admit, he was not totally down with the fact he liked her fingers up his ass.
That did not negate the fact he fucking liked her fingers up his ass and the fact he blew almost instantly was evidence of that he couldn’t deny.
But as he could do ever since he could speak intelligible English, and do it big, he’d lost his mind and let loose. And after he cooled down and thought it through, struggled past the shit, he knew he might have been right to be pissed, but that didn’t mean he didn’t fuck up with the way he’d shared that.
And he’d fucked up huge.
Olly leveled his eyes on Barclay and confirmed his assumption, “That’s it. You got it. I fucked up and now I have no clue how to get back in there with her, I just know, somehow, I gotta find my way back in there.”
With a visible struggle which would be funny if Olly wasn’t there for the reasons he was, Barclay pushed up from his lounge to rest his forearms on his knees, the beer hanging from one hand.
“First, man, straight up, do not ever talk to a Domme that way. Not during a scene.”
It was voiced quietly, somberly, seriously.
“It was after the scene,” Olly corrected him.
Clay nodded. “I see you might think that and you might be right. She might see it another way and it’s up to her to end the scene.”
“Not entirely, Clay,” Olly said quietly. “And not with where we were at. It was definitely the end of the scene.”
Barclay gave him that one with another nod.
“And anyway, it wasn’t about the play,” Olly reminded him.
“No. You’re right. It wasn’t. You had a beef, man, totally. But in that scene, that club, definitely the playrooms, in the majority of cases, that kind of reaction is out. There’s ways to tell her where you’re at. That was not the way and, bro, bein’ cool here so you don’t think I’m an asshole, what I’m sayin’ is, blowin’ your stack like that and not lettin’ her get a word in is not the way to deal with any woman at any time.”
Olly felt his mouth get tight, his turn to give the point because Barclay was right.
The reason Olly was fucked.
“You entered the game, Olly, you play it the way it’s played,” Barclay went on. “It cannot surprise you that, especially in the way that’s your nature, you can’t bend it to your will. And you find a Domme who’s good with you not constantly offering verbal subservience or formality of address, ride that, man,” he advised. “It isn’t rare but that’s somethin’ I think will suit you so you go with that, but you don’t push it. And as I told you, in social places, you gotta dig in and give it. Downcast eyes. Mistress. Master. Speak when spoken to. Come when called. Ask if you even need to take a piss. You with me?”
Olly struggled to take the tight out of his voice when he confirmed, “I’m with you.”
Barclay lounged back, legs wide, one straight, the other thrown over the side of the chair, his casual position a trick to catch Olly unprepared for his next.
“You ever had a Domme take your ass?”
Olly drew in breath through his nose, took another pull of his beer, and shared, “Whitney tried unsuccessfully.”
“Yeah, not buildin’ you up to that, I’m sure. Bitch is nasty.” He tipped his head to the window. “If a number of souls down there didn’t like the way she played so damned much, I’d find a reason to bounce her.”
Olly couldn’t imagine anyone liking her nasty but Olly had seen, and now done, a shit-ton of things he couldn’t imagine liking so he said nothing.
“Right, bro, clinically speaking, the ass is an erogenous zone,” Barclay told him.
Olly shifted in his seat. “Clay—”
“No joke. Straight up. And not just for gays. Seriously, Olly,” he said. “Studies, and not one, but a bunch, where they interviewed people, guys state they like it. It’s part of their play, even in the vanilla world. A lot more than you think, a lot, and I’m talkin’ hetero. I get some don’t like it but some don’t like eating a woman’s pussy and you’d think that was whacked, but they don’t. It’s just a thing like anything. You like it, you go for it because you’re alive and you’re breathing and you should suck all the good outta life that you can while you got it.”
“Not sure why we’re talking about this,” Olly said it straight.
“Okay, then, first, we’ll get back to the earlier shit and I’ll say, your Domme is a woman. You made your point to her in a way she couldn’t miss, not that she could miss it, that you’re a man. But you gotta get she’s a woman. And you fuck up with a woman, any woman, you got a couple of choices. You stand your ground like a moron and maybe lose her, or you find a way to communicate with her and get back in there.”
“It’s not that easy in this situation, Clay,” Olly pointed out.
“It’s just that easy,” Barclay shot back. “You might have to wait until she calls you to her, but if she’s into you, she will. You obviously have been communicating with her during your scenes. Find a way to work it out.”
That was the rub.
If he went to the club and she blanked him, that sting would become a nettle he couldn’t get out.
But the bottom line was, he couldn’t make magic. Wipe it all away. Go to the club and make them be just as they were before.
He had to do what he had to do, make the point he knew she’d read that he wanted them to find a way back, and just hope like fuck she wanted that too.
“Right,” he murmured.
“And, you know, bro,” Barclay started, a big smile on his face, “you instigate that, you might wanna do it on a night you got the next day off. She’ll let you back in but she’ll whip your ass and you might not be able to sit easy for a while.”
He felt his balls draw up in an automatic reaction to Barclay’s words, but he ignored that and grinned at his friend, muttering, “Whatever.”
Barclay got serious again. “She’s gonna take your ass, Olly.”
Olly straightened. “Bud, why don’t we—”
“You’re my bro in a way a lot of men aren’t so let me do this for you, Olly, please, fuck, trust me. You want me to do this for you.” Relentlessly, he went on without Olly even getting the chance to open his mouth. “She’s gonna take your ass and I’m tellin’ you, you’re gonna love it. You just gotta be there mentally and let her take care of you. You gotta be prepared in more ways than one. And if you’re smart and you let me, I’ll give you what you need to be ready for her before and after.”
“What?” Olly asked, confused.
“I’ll just get the shit for you from downstairs and it’ll be self-explanatory,” he mumbled.
Fuck.
“It’s good, man,” Barclay said in a voice that made Olly focus more closely on him. “You got someone who gives it good, it’s gonna rock your fuckin’ world.”
Fuck.
Barclay wasn’t done.
“I’ll say this to you and no one but me and the people I let play with me know it, Olly, so this is me trusting you, but I’ve even taken cock. A real one. Once, from a Dom whose talents are extreme. It was a miracle he picked me to play, everyone feels that way. He usually does chicks. I normally take Dommes. I always play with female subs. He picked me. Due to his reputation and watching him work, I went with it and he fucked me up the ass and it far from sucked. Had Dommes give me that, drew a line with taking a man, just a boundary I got. But he blew my mind. Wouldn’t go for it again, not with anyone but him just ’cause I gave that trust to him and he seriously took me there. So listen to the voice of experience. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Olly grunted, surprised at getting this knowledge but not about to judge and not just because he was not in the position to do so. He was also honored in getting it. It said a lot when someone shared shit that deep.
Suddenly lightening the mood, Barclay again smiled big and said, “Mistress Amélie.”
Shit.
“Figure she’s also got a reputation,” Olly noted.
“Never seen her, but yeah. What I heard, she’s the motherlode, brother.”
He was right but Olly wasn’t super-hip on the idea that she’d been in the game for so long that she had that rep.
“Expel that shit,” Barclay stated, obviously reading Olly’s thoughts on his face. “You cannot hold her to the same standards as you would your prom date.”
“I want her to be mine,” Olly admitted through tight lips, something he hadn’t even admitted to himself.
“And she is yours when she has you. Roll with that.”
He had to because it was his only choice.
“It sucks you had this blip but I’m pleased as fuck for you that you pulled it off and got yourself someone who can give good.” Barclay lifted his beer in a salute. “Pleased as fuck for you, bro.”
Olly dipped his chin, lifted the butt of his bottle Barclay’s way, and took a sip with his friend.
Barclay spoke again.
“She’s got a brain in her head, and I don’t know anything about the woman except she’s good at what she does, but I still reckon she’s got her shit seriously together, she’s gonna smooth things out with you. So just get her to the place she can do it. She’ll take it from there,” Barclay encouraged.
“I hope so, bud,” Olly replied.
“Me too,” Barclay agreed, nodding. “Me too.”
AMÉLIE
That same Saturday night, with her book club in her living room deeply discussing the many finer points of a novel they’d revisited (now thrice, for obvious reasons), Joey W. Hill’s marvelous Natural Law, Amélie was in her kitchen, renewing the water crackers, chopped red onion, and cornichons around the pâté.
She was dallying.
This, she knew, was why Felicia walked into her kitchen, which was fully open to the living room, but due to the large extent of space was also removed from their friends who were lounging before a lovely fire on Amélie’s modern, but comfortable, furniture.
Felicia was Mistress Felicia at the Bee’s Honey.
Outside the club, she was not just a member of Amélie’s book club but a trusted friend.
Amélie did not have as close of a relationship with Felicia as she did with Mira, who she talked to and saw frequently, in and out of the club. Felicia owned her own mortgage brokerage firm, a successful one, so she worked long hours. She also played often at the club to alleviate the stress of those hours.
But the kind of friends they were, the expansiveness of the relationship that took them out of each other’s spheres due to life circumstances contracted in times like these.
Times of togetherness.
And, from the look Amélie saw on Felicia’s face, times Felicia saw as times of need.
Though, it being Felicia moving into her kitchen, it was more.
During her turns hosting book club, Felicia put on a spread that rivaled any Amélie had ever had the pleasure of encountering, and it was safe to say with her expansive range of friends and her equally expansive travels, she’d encountered a great many, some of them sublime.
None, however, as sublime as Felicia’s.
Further, she wouldn’t allow any of them to touch anything, except a plate, a napkin, a utensil, or a bottle of wine for a refill.
No cleanup. No help. It was Felicia’s thing and she gave with gusto.
Alternately, having earned it, she barely moved from her seat when the club was hosted at another’s home. She might get up to visit the loo, or, if pressed, reach an arm long to grab a bottle of wine.
But Felicia was the host with the most.
She was also that treasured guest who allowed you the space to be the same.
So her appearing in Amélie’s kitchen meant she came to talk even if her extraordinary green eyes were aimed at the plate of pâté.
“Do you need some help?” she asked, swinging her half-full wineglass to the side in a deceptively casual stance as she leaned her hip against the counter just down from Amélie.
“I’m putting out crackers, chérie, this hardly requires assistance,” Amélie answered.
Felicia turned those green eyes that were set in a pixie face with flawless rose and cream skin to Amélie. Felicia’s face was one that could get quite stern in a playroom, but in most other times it was kindly, often playful, and always exceptionally pretty.
“Right, then, do you need someone to talk to about why, in sessions that should be filmed to demonstrate the elegance of perfection that can be found in the connection between a Dominatrix and her submissive, the entire club on high alert, hoping you’ll reserve a playroom, then word flies the stallion you’re breaking stalks through the hunting ground like he’d rip the heart out of anyone who got in his way, possibly doing this with his teeth?”
Amélie felt her muscles tighten.
“Felicia—” Amélie started softly in an effort to shut this down.
This effort she was expending because she had to.
She’d made a grave mistake.
And then, not surprisingly, but wretchedly, Olivier had stood her up.
It was the first time that had ever happened to her.
And it was an incident that was painful, Amélie suspected, not because it happened.
But because Olivier had done it.
Even as early as it was in what they had, even with the strict boundaries of what they had, Amélie could not stop the nagging hurt that plagued her heart that her mistake had ended something not only promising, but in the few times they’d had it, so very beautiful.
“Every one of us out there is worried,” Felicia stated, interrupting Amélie and doing it swinging her wineglass beside her to indicate the living room beyond the long island. A room Amélie’s gaze studiously avoided, even knowing they were all too well mannered to listen in (or, more to the point, be obvious about it). “You left us and took an hour to arrange crackers, so they nominated me to come talk to you about it.”
“I haven’t been arranging crackers for an hour,” Amélie retorted.
Felicia shifted, sliding along the counter toward Amélie.
“Babe, you haven’t even given it all to Mira, and you two are tight,” she returned. “She’s totally upset. Thinks her shit got yours in a bind.”
It was time to talk to Mira (again) and allay her fears.
But at that moment, Amélie held Felicia’s eyes.
Then she whispered, “I like him.”
Her friend’s eyes sparkled. “I like him too. Don’t even know him, just gotta look at him to like him, and I’m not into big boys.”
“No, Felicia, I like him very much.”
Felicia’s gaze grew intense as she murmured, “And thus the elegance of perfection of your connection when you work him.”
That made the pain in her heart stop nagging and start thumping.
“I really don’t wish to talk about this,” Amélie declared.
“Did you two exchange numbers?” Felicia asked.
Amélie shook her head.
Felicia got closer. “Aryas will give you his number. Call him. Talk to him. Whatever happened…” She suddenly shook her head. “I watched. Both sessions you had with him. I had to take care of my slave so we missed the end of the work you did with him on the vault, but Leigh, I watched. I did it closely and I did that for more than one reason. And honey, seriously, he’s into you.”
Of course he was.
The operative word being was.
“I would have liked to think that but I lost focus during our last session, which was a private one, fortunately. I believe I hurt his feelings and—”
Felicia reached out and took her hand. “No, Leigh, I don’t think you get me.” She gave Amélie’s hand a squeeze and stated, “I finished Domme training, what, three, four years ago?”
Amélie nodded even though she replied, “You would know better than I, but yes. It seems it’s been that long, though,” she gave Felicia a soft smile on a light tease, “it still seems like just yesterday you were a green newbie with a penchant for biting off more than you can chew, even not being into the big boys.”
And this was true. Felicia almost exclusively took male subs. But she liked multiple-partner play, and in the beginning, they thought she was trying to build a harem.
Felicia ignored the tease and the subtle effort to change the subject.
“Well, now I’m not a newbie, and honest to God, never seen a sub so focused on his Domme as that man is with you.”
Amélie felt her breath catch in her throat.
Felicia wasn’t done, and spoke again on a gentle tug of Amélie’s hand.
“We don’t find this often. We don’t find that connection. Many of us aren’t searching for it. We’re looking for a different kind of connection that’s important, but it’s not that. All that. All I saw you have with him. We get what we need through the play. But some of us…”
She let that trail off, also knowing what Amélie was searching for, not needing to tell her something she already knew.
But she didn’t stop speaking.
“Talk to Aryas. He’d do anything for you. Even break that rule, giving you your stallion’s number,” she urged.
“It’s not only inappropriate, but a breach of trust not only with Aryas to ask him for that, but with Olivier to get it,” Amélie said quietly, hoping her words held no rebuke.
“This is a special circumstance,” Felicia returned.
“In our world, that special circumstance doesn’t exist. Not with the intimacy we share. Not with the trust we need to establish. If you were angry or hurt, putting distance between yourself and a sub, you wouldn’t feel it was a special circumstance. You’d be angry your privacy was invaded. Because, if that were to happen, it would be.”
“Leigh—”
Amélie lifted her free hand, palm out, but tightened her hold on Felicia with her other before letting her go, doing all of this talking.
“Felicia, I’m grateful, your concern is very sweet.” She dropped her raised hand. “But Olivier and I had three times together. They were lovely. They were…” She tried to find the words but failed as there were none. Therefore she had to go on lamely, “More than lovely. But he’s a man, very much a man, no matter how he likes his play, and if he’s to forgive me for my lapse, he’s the one who has to take that first step so I know he’s forgiven me. Then I can take the rest.”
“I hope he does,” Felicia replied.
So did Amélie.
But after his extremely heated yet justified outburst, and as time passed and she neither saw him nor heard word he was at the club, she knew she’d be foolish to hold her breath.
“While we were waiting for those crackers,” Felicia went on, her full pouty lips in that pixie face quirking (she could honestly be described as a living doll, but if a sub did such, they’d feel her switch), “we all made a pact. Because we all know, after you having him, he’s not gonna come back if he’s not coming back for you. So if we see him at the Honey, we’ll text you so fast, our fingers might catch fire. And if you’re down with it, we’ll spread that word.”
Amélie hoped she was right, that should Olivier return to the Honey, he would be doing so to mend things between them, rather than to attempt to find another Mistress to see to his needs.
She even so far as prayed to the fates she was.
So she was definitely down with their plan.
It was not normal operating procedure for Mistress Amélie, entirely because she’d never been in this situation.
But if Olivier returned to the Honey there was hope he did so to find her.
It was good she cared very little about what people thought of her, she was what she was, did what she did, wanted what she wanted.
And she wanted Olivier.
Therefore, she didn’t care if that word was spread.
So yes, she was down with it.
Amélie smiled. “That would be most appreciated.”
Felicia reached out and touched the back of Amélie’s hand before she removed her own and asked quietly, “No word from Evangeline?”
Amélie shook her head.
Felicia sighed before murmuring, “What are we going to do with that girl?”
Amélie had no idea and this was troubling her more and more.
Felicia said nothing further on that subject, took hold of the finished platter of pâté, and declared, “Now it’s time to feed that starving horde, not like we haven’t hoovered through all the goodies you’ve got out there. Seriously, I don’t know where you get this pâté, Leigh, but my mouth starts salivating for it days before we hit your house for book club. If you ever hosted our meeting and didn’t serve this stuff, I might go on a hunger strike until you produced it.”
Amélie had it flown in from a bistro with a particularly talented chef in New York City.
She didn’t tell Felicia that.
She said, “It’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.”
As Felicia made her way toward the door, she opened the drawer that hid the trash and recycle bins and pointed inside.
“It’s on the box, babe. If I was into digging through trash, I’d find it. Since I’m way not into digging through trash, I won’t. Just don’t think we don’t appreciate your relationship with Federal Express.”
She shoved the drawer to, tossed a wink over her shoulder, this wink stating plainly she knew exactly where that pâté was from, and sauntered around the island in her best Mistress stroll.
Which meant Amélie walked to the living room to see relieved faces.
This was because she walked there laughing.
Her friends cared about her deeply.
They were worried.
Now, they felt some ease.
Amélie just wished she could, too, deep down.
But she couldn’t.
Not until Olivier came back to the Honey.
If he did.
Oh, but she hoped he did.
But that nag of pain was still there because she knew with the depth of his anger, the session he had missed, the time that had passed …
She shouldn’t hold her breath.