in my eyes as tiny blood vessels were bursting, because squeezing someone’s throat does that. It’s been four months since I woke up in the hospital, and was told that I had died, that I had been killed, that I had been brought back.

Our life is a long thread. The days that pass is a hand that wraps around the metal thread and squeezes to cut the hands that holds it. The biggest drop of blood is saved for the end of the thread in a blossom for both of us.

Last night the hand found the end of the thread.

Greg’s teacher knew what happened four months ago. Greg went to him last night to learn to do better, to pay for disgracing what he was taught, to be taught all over again, all of his lessons all those years of lessons in the span of hours.

We both knew that this was coming. He could have avoided last night altogether if we never stopped in Vegas on our way back home. He wouldn’t be wrapping the white strip of ribbon around parts of himself if he hadn’t gone.

You might not think that he has no honor, because he’s done what he’s done, but Greg does have honor, and he took that back to his teacher last night, ready and willing to do what he had to do to save himself from ever losing grip on our thread again.

I don’t know exactly what happened, because I wasn’t there. I have an idea of what happened as I saw Greg being brought back by Javey, who had to hold him up; Javey who had to carry him into the room, and who had to set him in a chair because Greg couldn’t walk on his own.

Last night Greg was never allowed to curl up into that ball. He was taken to the doorway and pushed through; many times he was pushed through, and never brought back. He never blacked out and he never gave in because he knew that it was his duty to come back to me, as he did last night.

In the back of his mind there was this hopeful wellspring that I would balm him and lay on him like silk and take him into sleep. I will admit since I am not a Dom, that it was hard, so very hard to watch him being carried into the room. It was very hard to see him trembling, his hands and his arms shaking. The small spots of blood blemishing his dark blue silk shirt and his voice an absent instrument because he couldn’t speak.

Javey ignored the fact that I was totally nude and lying on the bed. After he sat Greg down in the large leather chair across from the bed, he left the suite, and locked the door.

A wish in me wanted to me made and to become true, to run to him and protect him, like he was needing and pleading me too. But all I have to remember is the note that waited for me when we checked into the hotel in LasVegas.

“Four months ago you died.”

The note was from his teacher. It was something to make my stomach steel, lest I forget and sink back into the cycle of losing what kind of pain, what kind of hurt I went through that night, all because of Greg.

It was to remind me that we were the only ones to give