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For example, I barely even noticed when Steven came back, not only with a beer, but also with a piece of cake for Nash. And I absolutely didn’t notice when he reached over and took a piece of food off Nash’s plate and popped it in his mouth for fuck’s sake, but when he said, “I haven’t tried that beer before,” and reached over and grabbed the bottle Nash was drinking out of and took a swallow, I was done.
I pushed my plate back and stood up. “You know, I think I’ve had enough.” I snatched up the plate—cause my grandmother would skin me alive for leaving my trash for someone else just ‘cause I was in a snit—and walked off.
I knew I was being childish and that this was an overreaction. But sitting there across from Nash and watching him with a different guy was just too much. I had no right to be jealous. After all, I was the one who shut him down. It wasn’t so much that as it was seeing exactly what I wanted right there in front of me and knowing I could never have it, and seeing him move on so quickly was just evidence that I never would.
Chapter 8
Nash
I sat there stunned and watched as Spencer stormed over to one of the trash cans and dumped his half-full plate of food into the trash.
“What was that about?” Cruz asked Nolan.
Nolan shook his head. “I’m not sure. He was in a good mood when he arrived, but he’s been off ever since we left the computer lab.” He made a move to stand up. “I’ll go check on him.”
“No,” I said. “You enjoy your meal. I’ll go.”
For a second, I thought Nolan was going to argue with me, but in the end, he just gave me a nod. “Okay, you go, and while you’re gone, we’ll use that amazing cake Frankie brought to bribe Steven here to tell us some fun and embarrassing stories from when you were a kid.”
Steven chuckled. “Oh, I’ve got the stories.”
I rolled my eyes and lightly smacked him in the back of the head. “Yeah, well, mind yourself ‘cause you’re not the only one who knows where the skeletons are buried.”
I got up from the table and headed in the direction Spencer had gone. He was fond of the horses, but I didn’t think that’s where I was going to find him tonight. I’d had my eye on him from the first time I saw him on the Double C, and I knew he had a soft spot for Nolan’s rabbit hutch. Like everything else Nolan did, he’d spared no expense on his rabbit habitat. Those fluffy little bunnies didn’t live in a cage. Oh no. They lived in what could only be described as a bunny condominium.
I opened the door and stepped inside, and sure enough, there he was, sitting on the cold ground with his arms full of the fluffy Angora rabbit. When he’d stormed off, I thought he was angry, but sitting here on the ground like this, cuddling a bunny, he just looked sad. I walked over and dropped to the ground beside him.
“You want to tell me what that was about?”
He shook his head no and kept stroking the bunny.
“Spencer,” I said in a soft but firm tone that let him know I wasn’t going to let it drop.
“It didn’t take you very long to find yourself a boy, did it?” he mumbled.
I let out a wry chuckle and shook my head. “You know, if you hadn’t made it very clear to me that you didn’t want a Daddy, I’d think you were jealous.”
He huffed out a breath. “I never said I didn’t want a Daddy. I said I wasn’t looking for one. Not the same thing.”
I thought back to the other day at the coffee shop, but I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. All my ego had heard was that he didn’t want me, but he wasn’t wrong; those two things weren’t the same.
“So, let me get this straight. It’s not that you don’t want a Daddy, but for some reason, you’re not trying to find one? Can you help me understand why that is?”
When he looked up at me, the pain and sorrow I saw in his eyes was devastating. “You know, if there’s one thing that life has taught me, it’s that what you want doesn’t really matter. I didn’t want my mom to die. I didn’t want my sperm donor to throw me out at fourteen because he found out I was gay. I didn’t want to live on the streets for a year. And I sure didn’t want to find out that I wasn’t the kind of boy a Daddy would want. So excuse me for thinking that what I want isn’t really relevant.”
Jesus. Spencer had been through the wringer. My fists clenched at my side, disgust filling me that a father could do such a thing to his kid. But railing against old hurts wouldn’t do anything to help Spencer. I had to focus on the here and now.
“Listen,” I said gently, as I sat down. “There isn’t anything I can do about most of that stuff. All I can do is tell you that it sounds like it really sucked. But what I want to know is why you think you aren’t the kind of boy a Daddy would want? Because from what I’ve seen, you seem pretty damn perfect.”
“Perfect,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “That’s not what Freddy said.”
“And who’s Freddy?”
“The one and only Daddy”—he made a quote motion around the word Daddy—“I had. He said no Daddy wanted a boy like me. That a Daddy wanted a boy that could meet his needs instead of being a stupid baby.”
“He sounds like an ass, but you’re going to have to be more specific for me, cutie. What did he mean by that?”
He hesitated, and I could tell that he didn’t want to continue, but I had no intention of letting it go. If there was some reason he thought he wouldn’t be a good boy, I wanted to hear it because I didn’t believe it for a minute. I wasn’t sure what to do to help him feel comfortable sharing whatever he was holding inside. If he was my boy, I knew what I would do. Maybe that was the key. Treating him exactly the way I would my boy.
