A/N: For those of you who've read Ripple Effects (this same story only from Ana's POV), this chapter begins the all-important seven-month separation that everyone always wondered about.
Chapter 9
This weekend I found my bliss, the majority of it in bed with Ana. Fucking her is the best tonic for me right now. Yes, I'd like to explore a power exchange with her, but even without the kink, I find the sex we have more than satisfying. Ana's beautiful—body and spirit. She appreciates my body and what I do to her to make her feel good, and she has a hot, tight pussy that grabs hold of my cock and takes it on a wild ride every time. I don't care to examine any other reasons why I feel content—I'm just allowing myself to be in the moment.
Brunch at my parents' house could be characterized as usual: concurrently enjoyable and massively irritating. The food perfect, the weather faultless, and I have Ana by my side. My mother enjoyed her birthday celebration and appreciated the gift I gave her—a week at the most exclusive spa in the country. When Grace retires, I plan to donate enough money to have a children's wing named after her at the hospital where she's worked so tirelessly; meantime, I want to pamper her, the woman who raised me to be the man I am—the better parts of me anyway. The lesser traits can be left directly at my biological mother's door.
That was all the enjoyable.
The irritating came in the underdressed form of Fiona Stewart who got her skimpy knickers gnarled up over Ana's presence and went for blood. I ignored her as I always do since the woman's existence is insignificant. Stupid of me to fuck her last year but I'm not one to dwell on my mistakes nor live in regret. Better to quickly learn from them, never repeat them, and move the fuck on. It's just too fucking bad that Fiona remains friendly with my sister so she is frequently in my face. I approach with a laissez-faire attitude and it usually works. Today it did not.
As payback Ana made me spill my guts about my past with women. I'm not a talker; I'm a doer. But Ana, like all women, always wants to endlessly mine my past and talk about my lovers—or conquests, as I like to think of them. I gave her some insight into my personality by sharing about Cassidy. Out of the many women I've been with, Cassidy approached the title of girlfriend more closely than any others. Still, I never let her quite have it.
That conversation wasn't the best way to end a satisfying weekend but it didn't completely spoil it either. Come Monday I found myself in a good mood. My staff noticed too. Everyone kept asking me why I looked different and I realized it was because I was often caught smiling. It got to the point where I was actually getting annoyed, first with them, then with Anastasia for trying to change me and possibly succeeding. It didn't last anyway, the good mood.
By Tuesday I realize I have to go out of town. It is unavoidable. I need to go to DC and meet with several people we've hired to lobby for our interests in imposing new tariffs on imports from China. Current policy is making it very difficult for American companies to compete. In years past, we adopted a passive approach and got exactly nowhere. A proactive, aggressive stance is what's required. Accordingly we're hiring more lobbyists to advocate for new legislation that addresses the inequity. I need to confer with our people over strategy. It just can't be done effectively long distance and it's easier if Roz and I go to them.
Physical separation from Ana at the moment is a good thing, I've decided. Since she returned from Italy we haven't been apart for more than a workday. Here's a chance to put some distance between us, literally and figuratively. I sense the emotional component of our relationship becoming too strong; I've come to depend on her company and that's just not acceptable.
John Flynn tells me I'm sending out mixed signals.
"Christian, you went to Milan, for Christ's sake, to make amends with Ana and get her back into your life. Now you're saying you want to put space between you. Do you see what you're doing?"
"Yes, I'm being sensibly cautious, John. What the hell is wrong with that?"
I watched him as he removed his eyeglasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. Reaching into his desk for his eyeglass case, he took out the cloth and began to clean the lenses. Stalling.
"Nothing is wrong with being cautious," he began. "But let me ask you this, Christian, and I want you to be brutally honest in your response: if someone with whom you were doing a business deal was vacillating as you are with Ana, would you continue to pursue the association?"
No matter the effort I made, I could not pull my gaze from my shoes to look at him. He always paints me into these fucking corners where I'm forced to admit I'm wrong. Nothing more I hate to do.
The session doesn't go well; we reach an impasse over my behavior with regard to Ana. I do reach a conclusion: John Flynn's judgment is flawed in this matter.
...
While I'm away, I don't take any of Ana's calls. I need time to process things and speaking to her muddies my thinking. Things are moving too fast for my comfort but my head is clear enough to recognize that I need to retreat. I know I've engineered the reconciliation but where Ana's concerned I seem to act irrationally. Not at all like my careful self. I fight hard for the right to be with her, to have a relationship with her, for her to be exclusive to me, and then when she acquiesces… I feel discomfited. I second-guess myself and ask myself why I did it? This isn't me. I don't want to be tied down.
So I decide to take this time away to sort it out. It is my unwavering belief that emotion makes one weak and tends to cloud issues that would otherwise be crystal clear. The few days I'm away don't help though. The only result it nets me is more confusion because I miss her terribly. At night I reach for her in bed and find only cool, empty sheets. I'm cold without her; I'm lonely without her. I miss her sparkle, the scent of her body, the silkiness of her hair, the warmth in my chest that her company brings me.
No. I only miss fucking her. That's all it is. That's all it fucking is and John Flynn can go to hell if he says otherwise.
As soon as I set foot on Seattle soil I make a beeline for her apartment. Anxiety flutters in my gut like a swarm of bees. She opens the door and gives me an enchanting smile. My breath starts to come easier, so I smile back.
It's all downhill from there. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I admit to her that I took some time away from her to think while on the business trip. I'm just not any good at this kind of thing and it sinks me to see the change in her eyes, in her body too, and I know the admission hurt her. Why must people always invest sexual relationships with emotion? And am I becoming one of them? The idea is anathema to me.
In retaliation for the insult, she demands that I share with her some of my background—she wants to know about my biological mother. It's steep revenge. When I speak about Catherine, it never fails to slam me down into a black slimy pit that's hard to climb out of without professional help.
Regardless, I do it.
"All right," I begin, "so… Grace is not my biological mother. Before my father married her, he was married to the woman who gave birth to me."
"What was your mother's name?"
"Catherine. At least that was her given name. After she and my father divorced, she changed her name to Renee and moved out of the country."
I take a moment to breathe, trying to chase away the demon feelings that talking about this always invites. I don't think anyone can understand what it's like to be rejected by one's own mother. Horrendous.
John's voice reverberates in my head: Try not to take it personally.
Not take it personally? How can I not?
I tell her how my mother hated me. The shame scalds my skin and I wonder how I won't hold it against Ana for forcing me to say it.
I tell her how my father divorced her because of it, found me a new mother. A good mother… for his pathetic son.
But it took him five years. Five fucking damaging years enduring this wretched excuse for a mother.
The scars are indelible.
That's as much I can take, as far as I can go. She looks a little shell-shocked. When the silence grows too long, she speaks up.
"So you didn't take my calls or call me while you were away because you wanted to back off? This after you traveled all the way to Milan to get me? How does that make any sense, Christian?"
Her voice is shriller than normal so I know she's still upset. Maybe even more than when I first walked in. Is it because of what I told her? That now she finds me wanting?
I want to get the hell out of this apartment as much as I wanted to come here earlier. Instead, I stay put and answer her. If I flee now I could never return, never look her in the eye again.
"That's just it, Ana. None of it makes sense. I'm trying to figure it all out. And just to clarify: I didn't want to back off, as you say. I just thought it was a good time—since my business trip had forced us apart—to think, without the distraction of our… growing connection."
"A distraction, huh?"
Her voice hit a new high pitch and I know she's furious. Still, I'm unprepared for what comes next. "Ana, what? What's the matter?"
"What's the matter, you ask? Why don't you just leave now and you can have all the time you need to think? Get out, Christian. Now."
What? How dare she speak to me this way? She can't be serious. "Is that what you want?"
The look on her face is paralyzing. Just like the time I sent her away, I realize I fucked up too badly, beyond salvaging. I try anyway. "Ana, I'm sorry if I said something to upset you. It wasn't my intention…"
"Christian, everything you've said since you called me has upset me. Now I'm done listening. I'm sorry you feel uncertain or whatever it is you feel about getting involved with me… or maybe that's not even it. Maybe it's something else entirely. I don't know. Either way, no one, even the most confident person on earth, wants to be continually rejected and I'm definitely no exception.
"I want you to leave and I don't think I want you to contact me again. You're not good for me, Christian… I'm not going to keep bleeding for you, do you hear?"
No, I have to fix this. I didn't like it without her; it was difficult to get her back. I must regain control. "Ana, you're overreacting. Please calm down."
"Grrrrr!" She stalks to the door, angrier than I've ever seen her, ever imagined she could be. I don't like it. She's holding the door open."Out. Now."
She's throwing me out. Me. Christian Grey. No one is permitted to treat me so disrespectfully. I'm an important man. I can ruin people with a single phone call.
I'll never see her again. This cannot happen. What do I do? I'm in the middle of the ocean and I don't know how to swim. I look at her again. The look on her face turns my blood to ice.
Futile. It's done. Without another word I walk out. The door slams behind me.
On the way home I refuse to think. I detour and head instead to the gym, hoping that Claude is around and can make time for me. Distraction is what I need, nothing more.
For the next two hours I endure a grueling regimen. Kickbox, run, punch a bag, end with a punishing swim and a hot shower. I feel moderately better but it's imperative that I keep my mind clear. Do not think about Ana, I instruct my brain. Focus on work to the exclusion of all else. Total shut out.
I go straight to my home office from the gym, tell Gail to serve me dinner at my desk, and I dive into paperwork awaiting my attention.
It's no use. After an hour of browbeating myself into not dwelling on Ana, that's all I'm doing.
She told me to leave. Rejected me. No one's ever said no to me before; no one's ever rejected me since…
My biological mother rejected me. She carried me for forty weeks, gave birth to me… and then hated me on sight. Rejected me. It was personal, very personal.
Now Ana has done the same. I won't forgive her. I'm walking away and I won't look back.
I don't need her—I have women conniving to get face time with me; I have submissives dropping to their knees in my path. Why should I accept Ana's cruel, even abominable behavior?
She didn't even allow me to defend myself.
I've never felt like this before. Empty. Grief-stricken. As if my reasons to live evaporated and blew away like dandelion fuzz. How do I vanquish these feelings? They cut too deep.
I need John Flynn. Now.
John devoted almost three hours to pulling me back from the edge of the black abyss. The next day I went to work and scheduled back-to-back meetings for the rest of the day into tomorrow. Tomorrow night dinner at Irina's—I need to review her architect's blueprints for her remodel of the north wing of her house—she never hires the contractor until I vet the blueprints. Wednesday I'm leaving for another business trip. I need to do some serious damage control at our East Coast office. Fortunately for me, business is commandeering my undivided attention.
It takes me over a week in New York to put things back on the right track. I am so pissed that it took me to have to travel to NY to have those fools do their jobs right. I have Frank by my side but had to leave Roz in Seattle to attend two important meetings that couldn't be rescheduled.
All activity stops when I step out of the elevator onto the 32nd floor. Our New York office is small, comprising two floors of a high-rise office building, floors 32 and 33.
I have to fire six people, hire two, and instill the fear of losing their jobs into the rest. The NY office is integral to the company at large since it handles all of GH's contractual business. Most of the GH attorneys are based here—it's why Frank as the head of legal usually accompanies me—and because of that we maintain a back office facility for data processing, in the main backing up hard copies digitally and either shredding or managing the paper flow, always with the aim of reducing our carbon footprint. What brought me here this week were documents handled through this office that never made it into the digital record. Not only do I need to find these files since they are part of a current merger, but I need to identify why this is the second time this problem has occurred. There is a breakdown in the process and I have to set it all straight before I could go back to Seattle. What that means is we need to review each step of the operation. Tedious and time consuming and not at all a productive use of my time since this is not a task for the CEO.
Every night I'm so exhausted I drop into a coma, only waking for the alarm clock the next morning. I get through the next week and a half in this manner. One of the admins, a woman named Sasha, comes after me with all her guns blazing. I briefly consider taking her to my hotel suite to fuck.
Instead I fire her. The woman pissed me off by making me uncomfortable in my own offices.
...
When I return to Seattle, I go straight to Irina's. It's Friday evening.
"Christian," she says, greeting me at the front door in a scandalous peignoir. "We're in full-swing BDSM mode downstairs. Your timing is absolute perfection.
"It wasn't an accident. Lead the way, Madame."
The dark energy invigorates me. I wonder if Tamani is among the submissives here tonight. Odds are excellent that she long ago landed with a Dominant—a lucky one at that—but if not, I'm taking her on a long and bumpy ride. Ana who?
I will not think of Anastasia tonight. Instead I will find a hot, willing submissive and I will bind her, flog her, whip her, fuck her, and wish her a goodnight. That's it. There's no Anastasia in the world anymore. The girl I knew ceased to exist once she rejected me.
The moment I enter the room, the throbbing bass of the music synchronizes with my heartbeat and I feel my blood heat up. The scent of perfume mixes and alchemizes with sweat, sex, even the musky notes of anxiety. The snap of whips on naked flesh accompanies the pounding beat. I feel my body begin to respond to the call of the wild. My blood thickens and my cock grows hard. My pulse quickens and respiration picks up.
As I move deeper into the room, I begin the hunt.
...
A small rock lies in my path on my way out and I kick it viciously. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" I say the words aloud first and only afterward worry that someone may have heard me. Casting a furtive glance around, I'm relieved that no one is about.
All it took was one sighting of her friend to ruin my evening. I found a girl, not Tamani, but another exotic beauty, one who Irina happily informed me happens to be a masochist. She is what I needed. As I watched another Dom trying to negotiate a scene with her, she caught my interested glance and was in the process of diplomatically extricating herself when Minx happened by.
That was all it took.
I knew immediately that Ana would be informed of my presence here tonight. If I scened with the submissive, she would hear of that too. I want Ana to know nothing of me, nothing of my life. I left shortly thereafter despite Irina's best efforts to keep me there.
I spend the night with a different mistress, one that is aged to perfection. Unfortunately generously indulging in this one gives me a hell of a hangover the next morning.
And I didn't fucking get laid.
