Page 39 of Regal Feather
I didn’t realize he should’ve been there today. He had said it was a weekly thing, and he’d gone to the next ones without me, but he hadn’t left his room all day. I knew because I’d knocked on his door to ask if he wanted something special for breakfast, and he’d just said he wasn’t hungry.
I truly didn’t know what had gone wrong, but he’d been like this for most of the week. I wasn’t even staying in his room at night to give him space, but it was starting to feel like anotherfailure on my shoulders. Another person I was disappointing by not being able to carry what had made him this withdrawn.
“Hey.” I grimaced as I opened the door to them once they were close enough. I had freshened up in the bathroom when I thought it would be Ever’s parents, but what looked good to bougie upper-class people in their fifties wasn’t the same as what looked like normal clothes to regular people. “Come in. Sorry, I didn’t know Ever had invited anyone.”
He had mentioned something about it the other day, before I retreated to my room like a fucking coward. I didn’t think he’d go through with it. Up until a couple months ago, none of his friends even knew where he lived.
“It’s a sneak visit,” Sergio, the one with the shaved slit in his left eyebrow, said. He was bouncing on his feet. “Well, I cracked and texted him, but I don’t think he’s seen it? Or maybe he blocked me. I didn’t try calling him. Did he block me? You’d know, right?”
“Eh…” Why would he have blocked one of his friends? I could see him blocking Danny—temporarily—out of being embarrassed, or maybe because Danny was pushing him more with the idea that Sir Ismael hadn’t been a good Dom. And why did the guy speak so fast, anyway? For a second, I was transported back to fourth grade when I was pretending I wasn’t lagging behind in a school that wanted all of us to be full polyglots before the end of the year. “No? Why would he?—”
“Oh, good.” Sergio was clearly the spokesperson then. Erika had her arms crossed as she subtly inspected the hall. León was doing much of the same, but his body language was more relaxed. It was a fabricated posture, though, which had me on edge, my body quickly mirroring his. “I mean, we were confused because Ev wrote in the chat about leaving Plumas, and first I thought he was upset about breaking it off with his Dom, and then I thought maybe it’s about the membership because hisparents cut him off, because rich people do that, and that’s why I reached out to Erika, but you’re still here, so I’m assuming that wasn’t it, either?”
“Sergio.” León quirked an eyebrow, glancing at him while keeping another eye on me. Yeah, game recognized game. “You realize you don’t even know if Ev is home, right?”
“Where else would he be?” Sergio blinked. “He’s said multiple times he’s a homebody, and he hates driving to the point where he gets groceries delivered. If I don’t drag him out places, he’s here.”
He gave me a pointed look as if daring me to deny the logic.
“He’s up in his room,” I said.
Maybe I should be covering up for him, but shouldn’t he have given me a heads up if he wanted me to? I was still processing the guy’s rambling about Ever leaving the BDSM club. And pretending it wasn’t like a punch to the gut that I’d found out today, through a third party, and I had nothing to contribute to their theories.
“We just wanted to check on him.” Erika sighed. “Sergio roped me in, and I was talking with León about something else, so he just swung by to help me wrangle the little one.”
The little one. Right, because Sergio was one of the people into age play, and he was a very hyperactive Little. Ever had mentioned it. It was just hard to keep track of all the faces, and the names, and the kinks associated with each one.
“Sure, yeah, that’s fine.” I moved more out of the way so they could walk in. “It’s the second door to the right. If you want something to eat, I was going to make lunch.”
“It’s fine.” Erika gave me a smile that somehow felt like a rarity in her. “I have a chef waiting at home.”
Was that Eli?
Getting used to all the new people was going to take forever.
“Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
“I can help out, if you want,” León said. It was weird. I could tell he wasn’t that alike with Danny, but between the similar hairstyles and the amount of tattoos and body mods, they were similar. Danny didn’t have a neck tattoo, León didn’t have lip piercings, and Ev had mentioned only the latter was trans. “These two are closer with Ev. I just came because Dan is this close to climbing up the walls.”
I nodded.
That made sense. I would be too, if I had participated and then read that Ever was leaving their group.
Why was he leaving Plumas? He hadn’t said a word. It wasn’t like he’d been fully avoiding me.
No, he wasn’t sleeping with me, and he was waking up later than usual, and not talking as much, but none of that was that worrying. He’d been helping me catch up on shows and movies and stuff. He’d told me that he cleared the air a bit with his Dom, and he’d hinted that he was taking a break from it, but…
Fuck. He’d said it in such a nonchalant, practiced way, and I’d believed it.
Like a fucking newbie to all things Ever.
“So how are you holding up?”
Of course. Right for the jugular as soon as it was just the two of us in the professional-grade kitchen. I almost felt bad using it for the basic as fuck dishes I was cooking. Almost as bad as having another man here to watch me make fried rice with the few veggies leftover in the fridge.
“It’s fine.” I shrugged. Everyone here had such an open communication policy, from what I’d gathered from Ever and at the munch. I liked it. I liked the idea of expanding the way I acted around Ever with more people. It was just going to take some time. “Y’know. Things are…different.”
León leaned his hip against one of the counter islands. “Because of civilian life or Ev?”
