Chapter 55
Brett didn't answer right away.
He stood in the middle of Suite 401 at The Lodge, Richard Sullivan's hand still on his jaw, the five-million-dollar cashier's check face-up on the floor by his cheap sneakers, and felt the last piece of Brielle Sullivan — the bride in Chantilly lace, the girl in Mary Janes, the wife who'd whispered "my pleasure" on her wedding night — crack straight down the middle.
Richard saw it. His blue eyes, so like Lance's and yet nothing like Lance's, flicked over Brett's face, over the unwashed hair, the bare face, the navy sweater that hung loose over breasts Brett had started binding with sports bras because he couldn't stand to feel them move.
He let go of Brett's jaw like he'd touched something dirty.
"No," Richard said flatly, stepping back and picking up his scotch again. "Not like this."
Brett blinked, tears still wet on his lashes. "What?"
"I said one night, not a charity case," Richard said, his lip curling as he looked Brett up and down again. "Look at you. You're a mess. Your hair is greasy. Your nails are chipped. You're wearing a man's sweater and you smell like... what is that, cheap laundry detergent? My son may have lowered his standards, but I have not."
Shame burned hotter than the scotch in Richard's glass. Brett wrapped his arms around himself instinctively, trying to hide the soft swell of his chest under the sweater, the very "girl parts" he'd been hating for weeks.
"I didn't—" Brett started, his voice hoarse and low.
"I don't care," Richard cut him off. "The deal changes. Slightly."
He walked to the desk and pulled out a different folder, sliding it across the mahogany toward Brett.
"You will go home tonight," Richard said, each word crisp and businesslike. "You will tell Lance that you're staying with a girlfriend in Kalispell tomorrow night. Girls' night. Wine. Whatever lie you want. He trusts you, apparently."
Brett flinched at the word trusts.
"Then tomorrow, at 4 PM, not 8, you will come to Glacier Park International," Richard continued. "Private terminal. My plane. Tail number N1RS. You will come alone. You will come clean. Shower first, for God's sake."
Brett stared at the folder, his hands shaking.
"My team will be waiting," Richard said. "A stylist. Makeup. Hair. They will... fix you. They will wax you, they will tuck you properly, they will put you back in the lingerie you used to wear for my son. They will make you presentable. Sexy. The way you looked in Singapore."
Brett's throat closed. The thought of strangers' hands on his body — on the body he was already self-conscious about, the breasts he wanted to hide, the hips that were losing their curve — made his stomach turn over.
"And then?" Brett whispered.
"And then," Richard said, his voice dropping to that low, intimate tone that made Brett's skin crawl, "the twenty-four hours begin. From the moment you step onto my plane, cleaned up and made up and sexied up like the good little pet you are, you belong to me. For one full day and night. You will submit to my every desire. You will call me Sir. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will thank me for everything I give you."
Pet.
The word landed like a slap. Brett's eyes filled again, hot and furious and devastated.
"You will not contact Lance," Richard added, as if reading his mind. "Your phone stays with my pilot. If you try to leave, if you try to tell him, the money disappears and I send those photos to Page Six myself. Do you understand?"
Brett understood perfectly. He understood that he was selling the one thing Lance had said was not for sale — himself. He understood that he was about to lie to the only man who had ever looked at him and seen a wife, not a project.
He understood that without the hormones, his mind was already shifting back toward Brett, toward male, toward that flat, distant feeling where Lance wasn't magnetic anymore — and that maybe, in some sick way, that made this easier. If he didn't want Lance like that anymore, maybe betraying him wouldn't hurt as much.
The thought made him hate himself more than Richard ever could.
"Say it," Richard commanded. "Say 'Yes, Sir.'"
Brett's lips trembled. His platinum wedding band felt suddenly heavy on his left hand, like it was burning him.
He thought of Lance asleep on their secondhand couch, waiting up for him. He thought of the empty vial of estrogen in their bathroom trash. He thought of the way he'd started seeing his own breasts as foreign objects, "girl parts" that didn't belong on the body his brain was sliding back into.
He thought of five million dollars and a life where Lance didn't have to pour concrete.
"Yes," Brett whispered, his voice cracking, barely audible. "Yes, Sir."
Richard smiled, slow and satisfied and cruel.
"Good pet," he said, and the words sank into Brett's chest like hooks. "Go home. Lie to your husband. Be back tomorrow at four, ready to be remade."
Brett picked up the folder with numb fingers. Inside was a first-class hair appointment confirmation, a waxing appointment, a list of instructions: shower, shave everything, no lotion, bring nothing.
He walked to the door on legs that didn't feel like his own.
"Brett," Richard called after him, using his real name for the first time, deliberately.
Brett stopped, hand on the doorknob, not turning around.
"If you do this well," Richard said softly, "I'll make sure you get enough hormones to stay pretty for my son. Wouldn't want you turning back into a man completely, would we?"
Brett didn't answer. He couldn't. He opened the door and walked out of Suite 401, down the cedar-scented hallway, into the elevator, past the mirrored walls where he couldn't stand to look at himself.
He drove home to Kalispell in Lance's truck with the folder on the passenger seat and Richard's words echoing in his head: pet, submit, Sir.
Lance was asleep on the couch, the TV still on low, his work boots by the door, his big hand hanging off the edge of the cushion.
Brett stood in the doorway for a long time, just watching him, tears sliding silently down his face.
Then he slipped into their bedroom, took off the navy sweater, and stared at his reflection in the dark window — at the breasts he was ashamed of, at the soft hips, at the stranger he was becoming without estrogen.
Tomorrow at four, he would let Richard's team wax him and tuck him and paint him and dress him up like Brielle again.
Tomorrow at four, he would become Richard Sullivan's pet for twenty-four hours.
Tonight, he crawled into bed beside his sleeping husband, pressed his face into Lance's warm back, breathed in the smell of honest sweat and cheap soap, and whispered into the dark, so quietly Lance couldn't possibly hear:
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you."
Lance, half-asleep, reached back blindly and pulled Brett's hand to his chest, right over his heart, and murmured, "Love you too, baby."
Brett lay there for hours, awake, wearing his wedding ring, counting down the minutes until he had to lie…