Bound Hearts Read Free Page A

to count. Too many to remember. Too often ingrained to be anything but a fundamental part of her adult psyche.
    Her mother frowned equally on fruit. “Sugar is no friend to you, Calleigh, in any form. You’d do well to remember that regardless of what the USDA has to say. The feds can’t be trusted to know and understand your body type.” Fruit, baked goods, bread, and dessert all contained the same amount of sin and in Lauren’s mind, constituted the functional equivalent of crack or meth. Discipline in body, discipline in mind, and discipline in spirit were Lauren’s mantras, instilled in her only child from birth. Lauren didn’t recognize any such idea of “caving in,” or “giving in” at any time, particularly when said cravings related to food.
    “Craving is nothing but another word for want. There are wants and there are needs. You need vegetables. You want chocolate. Remember the difference and select your food choices accordingly.”
    Calleigh couldn’t consider any food without quantifying it as a want or a need and mentally calculating its calories and fat content. She would immediately follow up that thought with a mental calculation as to how many minutes she would have to put in on the elliptical machine in order to work it off. The hold it had on her defined her in many ways.
    Her food neuroses were as much a part of her as her physical characteristics. Maybe even more so.
    § § §
    Twenty miles south of Calleigh’s loft, in a nice one-bedroom condo in the satellite community of West Linn, David pulled his undershirt over his head and threw on his white button down over it. He reached for his sneakers at the foot of the bed and turned back to the woman who’d sold him his house when he moved to Portland, splayed out, her body flushed with excitement and release, limp and completely silent, not just because of the gag in her mouth, but entirely worn out by their last three hours.
    The night he’d closed on his house, he’d taken her to his bed. A year later and he still wasn’t completely sure why he was doing this. It wasn’t fair to Missy. He knew she didn’t date and suspected it was because of him. Because she harbored some fantasies of their relationship becoming more, something approaching normal regardless of how many times he told her he was solely interested in a physical relationship.
    Physical relationship was a fairly benign term for what they did. What she begged him to do to her every time they came together. What he needed as much as she did. What he promised and delivered to her every time. The release that only derived from the type of activities that involved hours, not minutes, ropes, not beds, clamps, not sheets, and indescribably dark, sophisticated pleasure.
    David wasn’t proud of it, but his life was the way it was. The way he’d designed it. The way he’d worked towards it since he left for college. He had no desire to live in suburbia, with the white picket fence, the dog, and the two point five kids. He’d grown up with it and knew the picture postcard was never destined to be his life.
    “I’ll call you,” he said to her as he let himself out of the bedroom.
    § § §
    David placed his three cans of wood stain for a dresser he was refinishing, and primer and paint for the upstairs bathroom in the truck’s cab, closed the door, fired up his truck, and roared out of Home Depot’s parking lot so he could put his purchases to good use. The morning’s acrobatics with Missy replayed themselves through his mind. Six months ago, he would have considered returning for a second round, a round she would have welcomed him with open arms for. But not anymore. It was becoming increasingly difficult to fuck her.
    The problems with being with her were all his own, problems that circled in his mind every time they came together. He didn’t ask anything of her she wasn’t prepared to give. Wasn’t dying to give. Wasn’t begging to give him. He’d never made any