The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Brooke Swanson got out of the car, and walked up the walkway that cut through the lawn she was facing to; she passed a hanging ‘For Sale’ sign that had been appended with a ‘Sold’ notice. Her husband Tyler was a real estate agent, and he’d told her he was closing a deal with a new male client that day; he was meeting with the man once more at the house, to sign all the paperwork and close the deal.

Tyler usually told Brooke what was going on at work, especially when it concerned his schedule. Brooke ran the house, organized the lives of her family— that meant her husband’s life, her children’s lives, and her own life. She was happy to do it, and Tyler not only accepted that was her desired role, he also appreciated her for fulfilling it, and understood she needed all the relevant information at hand to organize as she did.

She was dressed for the sunny, warm, south California day. She was wearing soft white capris pants which came only part of the way down her calves, and which left her sleek legs exposed to the California sun.

She had put on a t-shirt seafoam green in color, with sleeves that just capped her shoulders, and which would have been just at home in the stands of a soccer game as it was running errands around the town; this was lucky, as her kids all played soccer in leagues respective to their ages, and she often was in the stands at the soccer field, cheering them on. It was brisk enough outside that the breeze that day was almost chilly, but this was in a refreshing way, and Brooke did not at all regret the decision to forego a light jacket. She’d been working on her tan, outside in the sun, poolside all through the past few months, and it was nice that that tan could be displayed on her arms— and on her legs, everywhere her skin was showing.

Her white capris matched her white sneakers— and she was so meticulous a cleaner that even white clothing like that, despite giving it heavy use, still came out looking white and unfaded.

She’d dressed this way today because it was casual, and comfortable— in both the heat, and anywhere she might be running into air-conditioning for the duration of an errand. It wasn’t too chilly, not truly, now when she felt the sun beaming right to her, and heating what the breeze cooled— she did dress up sometimes, but only for special occasions, or when date nights came around. Otherwise she kept herself this way: low-key, no stress. She had enough in her life and the lives of her loved ones to manage and handle that stressing herself with elaborate outfits and dressings-up wasn’t worth the time or the effort. She managed to make simple look attractive, anyway.

Tyler had not invited Brooke here today; he’d just happened to mention the address of the sold house to her in passing, and Brooke was good at remembering those kinds of things. Tyler didn’t even know Brooke was coming, but it was just around five thirty in the evening, and Brooke thought that, after a long day of hard work, and the successful closing of a house sale, Tyler might enjoy getting a ride home from his wife.

He hadn’t taken the second car today because he’d been in a rush, and he hadn’t wanted to worry about parking. He’d just called for a car to pick him up and drop him off, planning to do the same for the trip home— but surprise, surprise, Brooke, as the incredible wife she knew she was, could intercept him before he did that and instead give him a pleasant drive home to a house where she’d left a delicious dinner warming in the oven.

Tyler worked hard; he deserved a little courtesy like that, a little reward. And it was just as important that she keep doing little considerate gestures like this for her husband— it breathed life’s air into their marriage, transfused life’s blood. They’d been married a long time, over seventeen years, and the way to keep it alive was to show care in such ways. Tyler did the same for her too; brought her home flowers, and the like.

She had just honestly wanted to do something nice for him today; to give him a quick ride home, save him from waiting for a pick-up from a car transportation service. And five thirty had seemed about the right time to arrive; leaving enough opportunity to make sure Tyler’s work was really done, and he was ready to come home. Brooke shrugged her shoulders up a little higher, towards her ears as she walked. She saw him every day, and she’d just seen him this morning: but even so, she was excited to see her husband again.

The house she was approaching was a two-story, having windows with decorative shutters on each side and it seemed four or five windows symmetrically placed within each visible wall. The windows on the second floor were parallel with the windows on the first; the door was closed, but there were lights on inside.

It was a typical family home really, maybe a little more traditional in build— it even had a porch; and its slat siding was simply gray. The front door was closed, and the steps of the porch creaked slightly under Brooke’s clean sneakers. She reached for the knob, was unsurprised at finding it unlocked, and opened the door to step inside.

The staircase to the second floor was centered in the lower floor; there were rooms to the left and right of it both; the whole house seemed to have a circular design, allowing one to walk completely around it. The floors were bare— there was no furniture. “Tyler?” Brooke called: empty walls and floors bounced the sound of it back to her.

There was a sound of muffled stepping; not the light tread of her own feet; not the clicking of a woman’s heels— but what sounded like it could be a man; coming up behind her from the room behind— she’d turned past the staircase to face the first room on its right; but the footsteps were coming from the room that had been the first on the left; so when she turned around it would have to be—

She startled; it was a man, but it wasn’t her husband after all; this was a blonde man— not tawny brown-haired, like her Tyler, and he was a bit taller than her; Tyler was just about at her same height, give or take maybe a single inch. This man was a stranger, and not who she’d been expecting.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling how out of place she was in the situation. “I’m Mrs. Swanson, is he still here?”

The man put out a large hand, intending a handshake. She took it, and shook it quickly. “I’m Leslie Edwin,” the man said. “I’ve just bought this house from him; we signed the papers just an hour ago, but then he was in a rush to leave. He told me I could stay and take the place in as long as I wanted, so long as I lock up after myself when I go.”

“Oh,” Brooke said, unable to hide her disappointment. “Thank you, then, Mr. Edwin. I should leave— Tyler must have beaten me home.”

Leslie was still holding her hand, and she only realized when she pulled to go, and his grip kept her held up. “Why don’t you stay for a little while,” Leslie said, and there was a look in his eye that made it seem he had just decided a split-second decision; chosen something he hadn’t been planning on, something he hadn’t known was an option.

Brooke couldn’t tell what that something was— she knew the man literally not at all, and she should be a little unnerved that he was holding her hand… she wasn’t finding she felt that way, though. His hand was rough against her palm in a pleasant way, and it was warm— she didn’t quite want to let go— and she was curious. Why would this stranger want her to stay? He didn’t know her any better than she knew him.

“Why do you want me to stay?” Brooke echoed— her voice sounded smaller; Leslie had the most blue eyes— she was staring into them.

“You’re looking into my eyes already,” Leslie noted. “That’s good— just look into my eyes— and just feel my hand.”

She was doing both; his eyes seemed to get bluer when she looked into them— his hand seemed to feel warmer when her hand kept resting against his. What was happening to her? She didn’t have a word for it, an explanation, an understanding.

“When you feel my hand against yours, you feel heat coming into your body through that point: moving all through it; that heat makes you want to relax, and then you find a deeper place in my eyes… it starts all over again.”

Brooke sucked in an uneven breath— just as he was saying it; the heat, from his hand; into her blood; moving through her body— pushing her, directing her to look deeper, and that blue so pure seemed to become just a wall she was looking at— she forgot it was the blue in a set of eyes; and the wall opened, and there was a deeper clearing further back; the wall had opened but it felt like it was Brooke’s mind that was opening up.

It was falling wide, and a quiet, soothing peace was moving through it. She was perfectly serene— she was not out of place here, she had been wrong about that. She should stay here— and stay feeling like this— she wanted to feel more of this, then more of it after that… another wall was opening… the wall of a concept; she wanted to feel more of this and see what might be done with the feeling… she liked things that felt nice; but usually nice things that felt nice came to her in contexts that she could handle; this was a foreign context, outside of all the expected routines of her life, she didn’t know what to do with it… but knew that it felt nice, and she wanted to keep feeling that nice way.

“You’re looking deeper,” Leslie noted. “You like how it feels, don’t you?” He sounded delighted by the discovery. “You like being hypnotized; I’m sure you never expected that.”

Hypnotized… the word drifted through her… the whole world felt different, felt like something that was warming her and calming her down; she couldn’t remember any time in her life that she had ever felt this way. But she was having the same realization as Leslie; she was enjoying being hypnotized, felt like she was light enough to be air. The concerns of her life were forgotten, the dozens of lists that constantly scrolled through her mind, all the things she needed to remember to keep life running smoothly. All of that had just stopped; it was a heavy burden off of her, and a true comfort.

Leslie had let go of her hand, at some point; he was holding her by the arm; she realized, to keep her steady… she felt disconnected from her legs, and it seemed like she was having difficulty preventing herself from collapse. He was steadying her with that grip around each of her arms— he was the thing that was really keeping her held up, but it felt good to be held that way, sagging further into gazing at that blue— she trusted the feeling, she could feel it more and it would still be alright— she could feel everything more, and it would be alright that way too. She felt so rested now, inside the feeling. It was wonderful.

“You’re having fun,” Leslie noted again. It didn’t occur to Brooke that hearing an emotional state described to her might in fact summon it forth while she was in a state so suggestible. It just felt like Leslie was realizing afresh each time some facet of Brooke’s emotional experience emerged. She did find she was having fun; he had only noticed, and enjoyed that for himself.

“Do you want to have even more fun than this?” She was still looking into his eyes; he was holding her up.

She understood he expected a response from her. Forming words seemed a bit of a challenge; instead, she gave a slow nod of her head. “It would be fun if we had sex right now; right here, on the clean hardwood floor. Don’t you think so?”

This was Brooke’s chance to decide; Brooke’s opening. She could tell him no; she could; she understood that. She could leave and never cheat on her husband, leave and never sleep with a man she wasn’t married to.

But somehow, this didn’t feel like anything that had to do with her marriage. This was about her, something just for her, like a reward, like a treat, and she very decidedly wanted it to happen. The feeling of Leslie touching her was nice; she wanted him to do it more. And all that peace and serenity built up inside her seemed to be tending towards a new direction. It was shifting towards sexual desire; and the feel of Leslie’s hand had been nice, too.

“That would be fun,” Brooke said, with deliberation, wanting Leslie to really understand she wanted this. “Let’s; let’s...”

She started kissing him and he was already kissing her. But she was kissing him with such force and pressure that he seemed to get overwhelmed. She was rucking his suit off of him, and he was getting her soft shirt off of her, getting down her capris; his clothes had formed a pile under them that they could lay on, and they’d already gotten low enough to be taking advantage of this.

Brooke’s own clothes had been kicked away, quite literally, and then she had kicked her sneakers off after that. She went back to kissing him, and he had broken a sweat. “Just... some nice, harmless fun,” he encouraged, and that hypnotized feeling was still with her, giving her perfect contentness about all of this; also a very earnest craving to please Leslie in the way she always wished to please her husband. She kissed off his mouth, down his neck, and he held to the back of her body with his hands as she squirmed against him, crawling a descent. “I saw your picture on Tyler’s desk,” Leslie confessed. “I thought you looked so beautiful; but I never would have guessed I’d get this chance; ah...”

She had found his cock between his legs, and she eyed it. She definitely wanted that inside of her, but she wanted to get it all dripping and wet first. She’d sealed her lips around it with a pop, and that had elicited the ‘ah’ which had cut off Leslie’s speech; she sucked, hollowing her cheeks and releasing them. She felt no shyness or shamedness at all; she felt like a queen exalted; having the power to elicit such responses from a lover as she was receiving right now; moaning, and panting, as she worked him harder, and added the twisting of her tongue around his cockhead.

She slurped him, sucked him deep, encased him in her hand and squeezed, moved her hand on his shaft as she kept her lips around his head, and then licked his comeslit to make him shiver. His cock was shaking but she knew she wanted him to come in her pussy, and not in her mouth. She was already on birth control for the sex she and her husband enjoyed; there was no danger of pregnancy. She sucked him one more time then lifted her head, aligning her entrance.

She had gotten Leslie all slick and wet, and he was hot in her hand when she lined him up to her; she had also nearly gotten him over the precipice of orgasm, but he had stayed just back of it. She sank herself onto him, and let her body sag around the place she was gripping him tightest; Leslie was quick to hammer up into her, and after a few minutes of him thrusting up to her, he flipped them over and started pinning his penetration down to her instead of sticking it up. Brooke was quick to wrap her legs around him, and pull him down closer to her.

She was kissing him at the same time, and then Leslie pumped his entire body against her, each part of him dipping and coming back up in sequence. She went with him when he moved; and he was filling her up full.

She felt more of that exalting feeling. It was really like power— or it was bestowing power to her, crowning her with it; she loved Tyler, but the sex between them only felt like love; the familiar, the known. This was the opposite of that, and completely foreign; she wasn’t filling the typical role she always occupied; this was the chance to move into a completely unexplored area, since she was effectively fucking a stranger. She knew his name, and what she’d been able to learn from taking in his appearance, but that was all she knew. It was more liberating this way; not knowing Leslie, and having him not know her meant she and he could be anyone to each other; they could do anything together.

It felt dreamlike, like it was something Brooke was only imagining; being hypnotized was different than being fully awake. It felt more special. It seemed to consume all of her focus and it pulled her into a forced inhabiting of her body where she was aware of each moment, each heartbeat. Sometimes in her life she was so busy that she barely felt like a physically embodied being, but now, she could be nothing but. Along with being so many other things, it was like a forced slowing down, and she liked that too.

But she loved the dreamlike quality of hypnosis, too, because it meant she could believe that this was something happening in a completely different sphere from her normal life. Which meant that all of this was something that had nothing to do with that— so she didn’t have to feel guilty, or worried, or afraid. She could just enjoy— it was just a dream, a very pleasant dream, that she would soon waken from; and then the memory of it would disperse as quickly as the memory of any dream faded into forgottenness.

Or maybe it was just the hypnosis that was making her feel so relaxed about all of this. She didn’t care right then; being made to embody her body fully while she was being pleasurably fucked was a great idea, and it felt great, as well. Brooke smiled.

Now when they made their bodies come together, it was more like a slamming into each other; Leslie slammed down, Brooke slammed up, and when their bodies knocked together, it knocked Brooke back down to the floor, and it jarred her whole world.

Everything she saw stuttered, but there was so much enjoyment contained inside. She felt it all through her body, like muscle after muscle, nerve after nerve was singing; it was like physically manifested joy; harmless fun it had started out, but now it was almost transcendent. She was just enjoying sex so much as an end in itself; was happy to be having it divorced from all other contexts.

She didn’t miss her husband; she didn’t long for him; she wanted this man who meant nothing to her; she wanted this sex that was inconsequential, this sex that could crown her carnal queen, exalt her up, bestow her with power. She wanted it so much that it was fun to imagine finding other men, men she didn’t know or knew barely, and fucking in this same way— teasing out more of this side of herself.

But it was only a fantasy imagined in the impending moments before orgasm; it was the feeling of getting her body slammed, the feeling of every pore sweating, the feeling of streaking against hardwood. All those things created the environment to envision the fantasy in. It was only something the hypnosis inspired. Fun for the moment, but it would pass like a wisp; all of this was just a wisp. A temporary indiscretion— a one-time indulgence which would never be repeated and so would never become a problem.

She and Leslie were bringing their bodies together faster than ever; she was squeezing him involuntarily, and their bodies streaked against each other in sweat as they tried to move ever faster. Brooke could feel how close she was to the point of coming; and from the trembling in each of Leslie’s muscles that she could feel, she knew he was in a similar position; a few seconds more, and he was spurting into her; but it took a few thrusts past the last pulsing of his sperm for Brooke to fall from her cliff. The wait had been well worth it; and for a moment her vision blanked before all settled again.

He was the one to pull back from her, and he offered her a hand to help her up, which she took. She could feel the last of her hypnotized state clearing away, until Leslie said, “go back to the state you were in before— everything inside you is so calm, and peaceful— and your mind is open.”

This time, Brooke hadn’t wanted to be hypnotized, but as far as she could tell, her mind was more vulnerable now after already being put under hypnosis once— and especially after she’d been fucked in this state. She’d been done with Leslie, and all of this, ready to go back to her life, and think back on this as just a sweet anomaly. But apparently Leslie wasn’t done with her. And she didn’t seem in any position to enact a response, or a counter-balancing.

“You’re ready to take in the next thing I say to you very deeply; you’ll accept it as a directive you must follow. You’ll run on it like it’s the program that operates you.”

Brooke was perfectly aware as she heard this— and it gave her a chill of fear— but she could only stand stiff and hear his next words.

“You want to have more encounters of casual sex,” Leslie said, simply. “And then every week, at the same time, you want to come back and give me a report on what you’ve experienced; and let me hypnotize you again, if I want.”

She had a feeling the hypnotizing would get easier and easier for him, and more and more irresistible for her.

From the way Leslie spoke the end of his sentence, Brooke knew he’d closed off the directive; that was the only thing he was putting in her head for now; and then he snapped his fingers, and she felt clearheadedly herself.

She dressed in a hurry and didn’t so much as say goodbye. She left him standing in his house, and stumbled out to her car, climbed in.

Brooke drove down roads without even really seeing where she was going; there were no illusions in her mind, she could see everything, but she couldn’t face it.

She was functioning in a very delayed manner, moving herself entirely on automatic as she navigated; she made it through traffic lights, and did everything else safely— but it took her a while to realize she wasn’t driving in the direction of home but instead seemed to be moving herself around and around in circles. She needed to get her head on straight. She pulled off the road into a gas station parking lot, and went into the single-use women’s bathroom, and locked the door behind her.

She stood in front of the mirror and gripped the sink; she was breathing fast and her heartrate felt faster. She just watched herself for a minute; waiting to see what would come up out of the internal fog, to see what would become clear. She was glad, at least, that she could stay in here as long as she needed. The gas station attendant hadn’t even seemed to care what she was doing, and the place had been completely deserted from what she’d seen.

No one else would be vying with her to get in here and use the single toilet the establishment provided its female customers. And if there was an emergency anyway the man’s single-use bathroom was still open and a woman in the midst of disaster could borrow it for a few minutes. Either way Brooke had this small room to herself; that helped her to feel like she could calm down a bit, let at least some of the stress go.

She was still leaning all of her weight forward onto the palm of her hands against the porcelain, looking at her self intensely.

Brooke looked at herself in the mirror; today she’d left her light blonde hair loose and down; it was all sex-tousled now; she’d need to pull a comb through it a few times to make herself presentable before she went back home to face her husband and her kids. Her hair was generally straight, and it came down past her shoulders— it was messier than she generally left it to be.

She wore her hair in a band at the front that slanted down right over her forehead; and she took special care to groom her eyebrows so they were two well-kept lines of medium thickness. Her eyes were more of a gray-blue. She looked into them, and thought of Leslie. His eyes had been more of a cerulean blue; they’d had that piercing, pure quality. Hers were muted.

She experimentally tried a smile; it was a little forced, given the way she was feeling about what had happened. She kept looking at herself, waiting to see if smiling would improve her mood. When she smiled, the corners of her mouth pulled back far enough that it made her face crease diagonally toward her nose and then down her chin; and her cheeks creased on both sides, the inner line where her mouth was pulling, but also an outer line in response to that inner one so it was more like a fold pulled back on each side.

She had a wide smile, but when she smiled wide enough, her mouth sort of lifted up and to the left. Her right half of her upper lip was always naturally tilted a little down; and her bottom lip tended to perk out unevenly as well, one side of it coming out further, quirking down more; also on the left side. It wasn’t in any kind of unattractive way— just in a way that was very idiosyncratic.

Her chin was pleasantly rounded— and her cheeks had that same roundedness, her cheekbones rounding down low— she was inspecting her face closely as if she could somehow find herself in it; her left nostril was just a little wider than her right one— and she was still smiling that sunny smile that made her eyes light up— her search had yielded her nothing, she felt no more connected to herself than before.

She let the features of her face fall.

Who was she? Did she even know herself anymore? She was very disturbed by the events of just a few minutes ago, now that she could think them all through properly. What did they say about her? What did they mean?

Her reflection provided no obvious clue to the answers.

The easiest and most comforting response would have been to imagine that all of it had been beyond her control; that none of it had been her doing, that all the responsibility had been with Leslie. She was still the same old Brooke, loving wife, devoted mother— so her tombstone would read in case of her untimely death— and she had simply been forced, by hypnosis, into doing whatever Leslie wanted, with no ability to resist, and none of it had come from inside her at all. All of it had just been Leslie putting things onto her, and she’d had to wear them until he’d let her out of his control again.

That was the easiest answer. That was the answer that gave her comfort. But under the bright fluorescent lights of the bathroom, Brooke didn’t think it was the answer which was true, and that was what disturbed her the most of all.

She hadn’t understood what Leslie was doing to her, but in the moment, she had very much enjoyed it. She’d only known what was going on once he had given brief explanation to her, but even before she’d had the terms for what was taking place, she still could have fought back against it. She hadn’t fought back against it at all, because she’d genuinely been enjoying herself. It had felt satisfying, felt pleasing, and she hadn’t wanted to stop the experience.

She’d been greedy, she’d just wanted a greater amount of it, had wanted to keep it going and hadn’t cared about the consequences. That had been before Leslie put any formal program into her brain— he’d just found a latent streak of hedonism, of selfishness that had never come to the surface before. But that something belonged to her, it was a part of her that had lain dormant however long, and when given the chance, it emerged.

Brooke didn’t want to think of this new side of herself; didn’t want to face the idea, either, that next week she’d be going right back to Leslie’s house again, that she’d be visiting him again and possibly going through the entire experience a second time. Or a third time, the week after— or a fourth time, the week after that— what did Leslie want? Why was he doing this? None of her questions had any answers.

While she’d been under hypnosis, it had been easy to be someone else. To be carefree, to be reckless, because it was enjoyable. She’d told herself none of it had anything to do with her marriage, and it could all just be set aside. But the fact was she’d cheated on her husband. Tyler, her beloved husband who she spent all her life supporting and taking care of— she’d been married to him for fifteen years— she was forty-one years old, and so was he. They had been married when they were both a pair of twenty-six-year-olds; they’d been together for a decade and a half, and she’d betrayed him. If he caught her, it would break his heart, and potentially end their marriage; and that was the last thing she wanted to have happen.

Frankly, it didn’t seem like it was exactly something that Leslie wanted to have happen either. He could have given her specific directives that were hostile to her marriage; he could have told her to pick fights with her husband, or tell him that she’d been unfaithful. Or he could have even told her to start a separation with Tyler; but Leslie hadn’t done any of that. Maybe he would let her marriage be, for the most part— she hoped so, since for now she couldn’t see any way of getting out of the programming he’d installed in her head.

It didn’t change the fact that Brooke had still been unfaithful.

And not only had she been unfaithful, and jeopardized her marriage. In jeopardizing her marriage, she had also jeopardized the home of her children, the home she had worked so hard with her husband to build. They had three kids together. Peyton, their oldest girl, was sixteen. She’d been born a year before Brooke and Tyler had gotten around to saying their vows and joining in matrimony, and she’d been conceived longer ago than that; Brooke and Tyler had gotten serious fast and known they were headed towards marriage, but they’d been so sure of this that they hadn’t been in a rush to get down the aisle, and conceiving and birthing a daughter first had been fine for them. They’d been in no great rush.

Their middlemost was a daughter also; Emma, who was thirteen. Their youngest, and only boy, was Max, who was eleven.

Their three children had a settled life; but risking getting caught, and risking the end of her marriage meant risking their home, meant possibly creating a broken-home, a two-household parenting set-up; she put her children’s well-being first always, but she’d been completely uncaring, had thought their wellbeing was irrelevant— hadn’t even thought of them, or what the cost to their lives might be, given her own indiscretion.

She tried to breathe more evenly to get her heartrate to calm down. The panic had been easy to go into; she had to remind herself that nothing had actually happened to her family life yet; Tyler didn’t know, and there was no way it would get back to him. It didn’t seem like Leslie wanted to expose her— and for now, she and Leslie were the only two people who knew. She wasn’t planning a confessional reveal.

She felt badly about ignoring the damage her infidelity might have caused towards her children— still, even once she was calmer. There was a new instability coming onto the horizon of their lives, in the not-so distant future. Or at least that had been the plan before, but now Brooke wasn’t sure. She’d been a homemaker for years and years, practically all her marriage, and before— ever since Peyton was born, but she’d been thinking of going back into business— it was her degree, and she’d been a successful business woman once.

She’d wanted to get back into the business world, and she’d slowly been trying to help her family transition into a new phase of their lives where she wasn’t around all the time; where she was gone all day, so she couldn’t quickly drive something to school if they forgot it, or pick them up in the middle of the day for appointments; or stay home with them if they were sick; transitioning them into a phase where they all had to be more self-sufficient, and where she might not be home until late in the evening sometimes, even multiple nights in a row— so dinner wouldn’t be on the table when they got home— she hadn’t taken any job interviews at businesses yet but she’d been starting the transition— making herself unavailable for chunks of time which would mimic her future schedule, using the time to work on her resume and research available openings; and of course her family knew what she was doing and supported her.

But it was still a big change— a disruption to the way they’d all lived, from her children’s perspective, for literally their entire lives. She was already asking them to make such a huge change for her, and they were really trying— the last thing they needed was their home breaking up. Things had been set-up one way in the design of their lives: she was at home, to support all of them: but now she kept herself away and left them on their own.

It really was disruptive to the family schedule as a whole, and everyone had been doing the best with it they could, but it had been enough change, and she’d noticed Peyton, Emma and Max struggling with the change at times; even Tyler had struggled too, and now she’d done something that had the potential to completely blow up all of their lives, even when she’d seen how they were already struggling with a smaller change. How could she think of herself as a good wife or mother, now?

When she made mistakes in her life, she was used to the feeling of being able to bring them to her husband and share; they had been dating for three years before they’d unexpectedly conceived their first daughter, and it had put down a foundation of trust and mutual support that had served them all this time; but Brooke couldn’t take this to Tyler. She needed to shield him from it, she needed to make sure he never learned anything about it.

Brooke didn’t have much of a support system outside of her husband, either— most people would have turned to their extended families, and while Brooke loved them, they weren’t the kind of people she could bring her problems to— they loved Tyler as much as they loved her, so she couldn’t count on their loyalty to her alone. They were loyal to her and Tyler’s marriage as an entity, and she was the one who had been disloyal to that. And her extended family had drama of its own, problems of its own that didn’t leave much space for hers. Still, she had to equally make sure none of them learned what had happened today either, because they’d relay it to Tyler.

Her family, beyond Tyler and her kids, was her father, and her mother. Her father, Beau, was the true patriarch of the family, with the big house that came complete with huge backyard swimming pool, very wellmade quality; he was well-respected in the community, and Brooke had been proud to be a Packard before she had ever become a Swanson— she’d liked to think, back when she had still been a business woman, that she accredited her family name with respect, improved on its legacy. She hoped she could do the same when— if— she went back to work. Could she do it now, after throwing the rest of everything into such disarray?

Beau, and Brooke’s mother, Shelley, were divorced, and there was still a lot of bad feeling there; her father had gotten past the stage of wanting to bitch about his ex-wife, but Brooke’s mother still liked to bitch about him and the way he’d disgraced her. Shelley was still single; but Beau had remarried, a much younger and much more attractive woman— it was likely that he had been having an affair with her before the end of his marriage; that this affair had actually caused that end, but nothing had ever been explicitly confirmed.

Brooke’s stepmother— if she could be called that, when she wasn’t at all older than Brooke, and certainly not old enough to have given birth to her, was Gabriella Lopez Packard— she’d been a Ramirez first, then she’d married Benjamin Lopez— and had a son, Carlos— so her supposed-affair with Beau had actually broken up two homes, because Gabriella had also divorced Benjamin; she had immigrated originally from Spain, but that had been years ago, before she’d even been in her first marriage.

Brooke liked Gabriella alright; but Gabriella could be stubborn, and insist on her own way— Brooke could be that way too, if the way she was insisting on was for the good of her immediate family, so they’d had their share of butting heads.

Apart from her parents, and their associated connections, in Brooke’s extended family there was also her brother Ethan, who had married his husband Clark West, some years before, and then since adopted one daughter, Hope West Packard, who was of Mexican descent.

Ethan brought glory to their family too— he was a well-respected lawyer, and that reflected positively on the Packard name; he tended to get along with Gabriella better even than Brooke herself did. As a lawyer he was very diplomatic, and could smooth conflicts over; if he happened to be there when Brooke and Gabriella were fighting, he always made sure to smooth their conflicts over, also.

That was Brooke’s family— and she loved them all a lot, but none of them were candidates for keeping her confidence on this screw-up. She had to deal with it alone, and keep it to herself. Her problems before making this mistake had been much smaller; much easier to handle alone, but even this one could and would be handled.

She thought of her family again to think of her betrayal; despite their differences, it was always nice to have so many people around, to be connected to them all and moving through life together.

Their family makeup was strange, certainly, but it didn’t make the love contained within it any less real. Though sometimes when she explained to other people, more distant friends and acquaintances, how it worked— her divorced parents, her stepmother, and stepbrother— her brother, his husband and their daughter— she was occasionally met with surprise or confusion. But, at the end of the day, they were all based in southern California. Strange, unconventional family makeups weren’t completely unheard of there, so usually, even if people thought it was bizarre that the Packard family looked the way it did, they were polite about it.

Brooke still wasn’t feeling any better about what had just happened to her— and she felt very much like she needed to see her family just then. She’d brought her purse with her into the bathroom, and she took her wallet out of it. She always kept a family picture in her wallet pocket, behind her cash. She liked spying it there when she was leafing through her bills. She had other pictures of just her immediate family with Tyler, but she liked to carry around the picture she had of everyone together. Just as her family sometimes vacationed all together, they often took group family photos together, like this one.

At least every year, if not more often, and when they did, everyone was included; excepting of course, Brooke and Ethan’s mother, who had become something of an exile from the group at large when Gabriella had replaced her. Brooke made it a special point to have her mother pose in her immediate family photos to help make up for this; Ethan did the same, and both of their families took as many pictures with Shelley as she wanted, and she plastered the interior walls of her house with them.

Brooke looked; there was Beau, and Gabriella, and Carlos— then Tyler, herself, Peyton, Emma and Max: and finally Ethan, Clark, and hope. It warmed her heart to see them all, standing happily together, beaming, bonded in love, despite any interpersonal difficulties.

They were bonded in love many times over— through the relationships they’d all formed with each other over the years. Everything was settled into its permanent form, and everyone kept growing closer all the time. If Brooke told anyone what she’d done that day, it might tear her extended family apart, too, as lines in the sand were drawn, in support of her or against her.

This was a family she loved, this was her family, and she would do anything for them, even when they annoyed her— she gripped the picture tighter by the edges. She’d handled it so much that they were fading and wearing a bit. She liked to take it out to look at sometimes when held up in the middle of errands. She did things for everyone in her family— as soon as anyone needed help, she was there; and she was terrified again when she thought about the consequences of her family, immediate and external, finding out.

But… why should anyone have to find out? Why should anyone’s life be disrupted, why should any relationship be tested? She still loved everyone as much as she ever had— still loved Tyler as much, still loved her children as much, still loved her relatives as much— she would still behave towards them as she always had, the amazing mother, the wonderful wife, the incredible sister and daughter.

She would still be all those things; if Leslie was going to force her to keep on having the kinds of experiences she’d had today, she’d just have to be careful— she’d have to hide what she was doing. The only downside to having such a large family was that running into family members around town was a frequent occurrence, and they all gossiped with each other.

She’d just be beyond circumspect— she’d protect her family, her love for them by being secretive. If she clung to that new side of herself… the side that had felt powerful, that had believed she deserved an indulgence, something just for her, she could almost square it in her mind.

But when she looked back into the mirror she found the same problem. She didn’t know who she was, didn’t know who was looking back at her— if she could be the woman she’d always been while simultaneously betraying everyone she loved, she didn’t know what that meant.