“The question is, why?” Sadie raised one curved eyebrow. “You’ve put up with his bullshit for a year, so what finally pushed you over the edge?”

“Sadie,” Rebecca hissed.

“What? It’s true.”

Olivia looked around at her friend’s faces. “Am I the only one who didn’t see it?”

“Well…” Rebecca hedged.

“It can be hard to see what’s wrong from inside a relationship…” Amanda began.

“Yes,” Sadie said baldly.

Olivia took a moment for that information to sink in. “Well, shit.”

“We didn’t know if anything was wrong,” Amanda rushed to say, shooting Sadie a quelling look from across the table. “It’s just…well, we could tell you weren’t happy.”

“I wasn’t,” Olivia said slowly. “I guess it just took something big for me to realize it.”

“Which was…” Sadie prompted.

In for a penny. “He gave me an ultimatum.”

“What kind of an ultimatum?”

“A Master/slave contract.”

For a moment, all three women stared at her, identical expressions of shock on their faces. Sadie was, predictably, the first to recover.

“Hold the fuck up.” She lifted a hand. “Had the two of you discussed entering into a Master/slave relationship?”

“No.”

“Had you ever indicated that such a relationship was something you might consider?”

Surprised to be enjoying herself, Olivia sipped her iced coffee. “No.”

“Had he ever said he wanted that kind of relationship?” Amanda asked.

“Not until he handed me the contract last night, and told me to either sign it or get out.”

“Well, fuck him.” Sadie leaned back, her look of surprise morphing into a grim glare. “I hope you set his shit on fire on your way out.”

Rebecca and Amanda wore similar looks, giving Olivia a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t know why she’d been dreading this—all this righteous anger on her behalf was just what she needed. “Nope. I just packed up what I could, left my broken collar on his ridiculous contract, and left.”

“Wow.” Rebecca leaned forward to lay a hand on Olivia’s. “And I thought I had a busy night.”

“Yours was probably a lot more fun,” Olivia allowed, and patted her hand.

“Yeah, yeah. You can get the details on that from her later.” Sadie waved Rebecca back with an impatient hand. “I want to hear the rest.”

“Wait.” Amanda aimed a finger at Sadie, then turned to Olivia. “Do you need to get the rest of your things from the apartment?”

Olivia shook her head. “I wrote out a list this morning, and Cade went to pick everything up.”

“Alone?”

“Jack went with him,” Olivia told Rebecca. “And there wasn’t much. I sold or gave away most of my big stuff when I moved in with Kyle.”

“Which brings me to the big question,” Sadie interrupted. “Are you living with Cade now?”