The Gilded Leash

I have always lived on the razor’s edge of insecurity, chained to an obsessive, suffocating need to possess the man I love.

For three years, Declan Mercer belonged to me in the most literal sense. Out of every twenty-four hours in a day, I demanded eighteen of them within my direct line of sight. I tracked his mileage. I cataloged every person who breathed his air. I treated his life like a ledger I had to audit before I could allow myself to sleep.

That evening, sitting on our velvet sofa in the Tribeca loft, I took his unlocked phone from the coffee table, ready to run my usual routine.