Page 15 of Balance

“It was no big deal.”

Janessa shrugged. “Maybe not to you, but I appreciate it a lot, so just say you’re welcome, Janessa.”

“You’re welcome, Janessa.” I bit back a smile and secretly wondered if she was related to Matthew. They had the same drive to make people accept things from them. Things like spankings and gratitude.

The plane took off without issue, and I watched Janessa from the corner of my eye. She stared out the window of the plane as the ground got smaller and smaller below us.

Taking off made me think of Matthew again because all my thoughts circled back to him now. I remembered how I’d felt when he put me over his knee. Like my perspective of the world had been altered, and instead of being excited to see it from a new point of view, I’d run.

It felt right in the moment, but I’d soon regretted it, and now I started to wonder if I always would.

CHAPTER 8

MATTHEW

The moment I woke up, even before I opened my eyes, I knew that he was gone. The room was too quiet, too still without him in it. His absence bothered me more than it probably should have. Had I crossed a line? Had I hurt him? I went over every moment in my head and tried to figure out if there was anything I did wrong.

And I hated that the answer was yes. I despised myself for not getting his contact information and for not talking to him more afterward about the things we’d done. He’d clearly never been spanked before, and maybe that’s why he’d left. Maybe he’d hated it. Yes, he’d found release, but sometimes our bodies did things without permission.

I jolted out of bed and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet at the thought that maybe I’d actually damaged him in some way. Maybe he’d run from me not because he didn’t want to face the awkward morning after but because I’d harmed him.

With no way to track him down, I resigned myself to cleaning up and getting on with my day. My flight didn’t leave until late afternoon, so I had an abundance of time to kill. I knew that Troye was supposed to be on that flight, but for some reason I doubted that I’d see him again if he had anything to say about it.

I tried to forgive myself. Troye could’ve said stop at any moment, and I would have. But I also could have checked in with him more than I had. The previous day was one long regret from the moment he’d plopped himself in my lap and I’d shoved him away, right to the way I held him when we’d fallen asleep.

Though that last part was only a regret in the sense that I wouldn’t be able to do that again. Because he’d run. After I cleaned myself up, I got dressed and repacked my suitcase, noting the lack of a certain pair of pajama pants. Troye had kept them. That was the only logical explanation for their absence. Realizing that he’d kept something of mine gave me a spark of hope that maybe he’d run away for an entirely different set of reasons.

Maybe I wasn’t a villain in his story. I was certain that if he’d left because I’d hurt him or harmed him, he wouldn’t have taken my pajama pants with him.

That didn’t solve the problem that I had no idea how to get in touch with him.

And then I remembered all the things he told me. His love of gaming. The following that he’d amassed. He’d been reluctant to admit that having millions of followers was something impressive. But I was sure Troye could’ve cured cancer and then found a reason to put himself down over it. He saw no value in anything he did. Even when he was told otherwise, he still had a hard time believing it.

I wondered who made him that way and how I could ruin them. Troye had kicked puppy syndrome. He just wanted affection but shied away from anything good like he’d been tricked before and didn’t trust anything good. I wanted to find whoever did that to him and put them through a wall.

Those were the thoughts I was having while I was heading to my gate. My anger must have shown on my face because people went out of their way to avoid me. Which suited me just fine.

I searched for Troye the whole way, glancing in shops and bars trying to catch sight of him. But the airport was a madhouse, and I was going to drive myself crazy looking for a needle in a haystack. If I really wanted to find him, there were better ways.

Troye was a gamer. A streamer. He had millions of followers. I knew the kinds of games he played for his fans and the kinds he played for himself. When I got to my departure gate, I sat down and pulled my laptop out of my carry-on and got to work.

I’d never tried to find someone online this way before, and it made me feel a little like a cyber stalker, but I was determined to not let him slip through my fingers. Even if he didn’t want anything to do with me, I still wanted him to consult on the development of the game for the foster program.

Logically, I knew that there were a lot of streamers out there, but I hadn’t realized the depth of the field until I waded into it looking for a specific person. Normally, I wasn’t the kind of person who was easily discouraged, but I felt like I was in a plane flying over a crowd of people who looked like ants, trying to pick out a particular one.

Having millions of followers, as it turned out, wasn’t that uncommon. That didn’t make it any less impressive, it just made my job finding him a little harder. My flight was set to leave soon. Boarding was about to begin, and I told myself that I could stop looking for now. That I could find him later. But something inside me said not to give up yet. To keep looking.

And then the page refreshed and there he was at the top, announcing that there had been a delay in his travel and he’d be back from hiatus tomorrow for a marathon stream starting first thing in the morning. The video was short and was filmed somewhere in the airport, but there was nothing in the background to help me identify where he was.

I sent the link to the video to myself in a message, and triumph unfurled inside of me. I found him. Troye was SilentHowl, and he had more than a few million followers. He had nearly fifteen million people following him on the platform. If I added up all the followers on all his socials, he had close to twenty-five million.

Twenty-five million followers and he acted like it was nothing. A monthly stream-a-thon for charity that he didn’t mention to me either, that he’d probably pretend wasn’t a big deal. Last August, he’d sponsored a school and had donated back-to-school supplies for more than thirty kids.

Troye was more than a gamer. He was a philanthropist. His followers loved him and not because he gave them shit. On camera, Troye’s energy was electric. He looked more himself than he had in the short time I’d known him. Except for when I’d cradled him against me and kissed him after his spanking. Except for when I’d laid him down and ground against him, kissing him because I couldn’t stop.

Troye had been himself then; he’d been too raw to be anything but. And so had I. There’d been no way to protect myself from the effect he had on me. It was primal, this urge to have him. Keep him. Protect him. I wanted to keep him close. I wanted to make him smile. I wanted to make him happy.

I tried to watch a video, but as my cursor slid toward the play button, they called my flight for boarding. Reluctantly, I put my laptop away and waited for it to be my turn to get on the plane.