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Wriggling a little, he groaned, “That’s different.”
“How the fuck is that different?”
“It is! I mean…how will you…do it? Dominate me? I won’t be spoken down to like some servant. I won’t take orders by jumping and running. I’m not…submissive.”
“Then what were you trying to tell me with the cuff on your right arm?”
“Maybe I was just tempting you! Maybe…I don’t know. I like you and want you to like me, but…it’s difficult for me, Hud. Nothing is ever easy for me, and I know how that sounds. I have a ton of money, and everyone has always bent over backward to do what pleased me because of that, but….”
I whispered as I moved close to his ear. “But me? I haven’t done that. Is that why you want me, Theo? Because I’m not jumping and running for you? I don’t give a fuck about your money?”
“If I lied and said no, it was no part of it, you’d be angry, but it is part of it. I can’t help that. I’m not…trusting!”
Sitting up, I brought him up with me, holding his hands as we faced each other. “Good. I don’t want your complete trust right off the bat, Theo. I don’t expect that, and if you like me partially because I’m not begging for your money, I get that. I’m okay with that.”
“You are?” he asked skeptically. “It’s a shitty reason.”
“Not really. Not for you. Theo, I know you had a rough childhood. From things you’ve said, things Javi told me?.”
“You were talking behind my back?”
“Yes,” I said, holding his hands tightly as he tried to pull them away. “I did because I knew I’d never get the truth from you!”
“Javi doesn’t know me,” he dismissed, but he calmed, letting me keep his hands in mine. He’d paled, though, and Theo’s face showed more of his emotion than I’m sure he’d like. His eyes alone told stories, but the way his skin paled when confronted with things he’d rather not talk about, was so telling.
“He knew enough, okay? I don’t talk to him all the time about you or anything. I just wanted to know what made you think that people only wanted to be around you because they were getting something from it. Your mother told you that, didn’t she?”
It took a while for him to answer, and I saw tears welling in his eyes, but when he did speak, Theo’s voice was cracked and distant. “I was angry at her one day. She’d just returned home from a trip and was packing for another. I screamed at her that my nanny, Maria, was more of a mother to me than she’d ever been. My mother laughed in my face. She told me that the only reason Maria was there was because she was being paid to be, and she further said no one in my life would want me that wasn’t being paid to want me.”
My heart broke open, and I pulled him to me, holding him as his tears fell on my bare arm. “Baby, that’s not me. I promise it’s not me.”
“I hope not. If you are…you might as well just take the money and leave me. I can’t take it if you’re lying.”
I laid him on the bed and spooned him, holding him tightly as he cried. I didn’t sleep for hours, unwilling to let him go, even in my sleep.
There were a million things to work out and two million to discuss, but that could all wait. Right then, whether Theo knew he was my boy or not, my boy needed me. I wouldn’t be one of the others who had let him down. I vowed to fight through all his insecurities and worries to make him know I was different.
I got up and left him sleeping, figuring the emotions had taken a lot. I made turkey bacon, eggs, and coffee and took them to him on a tray. Theo was just waking when I set the tray on the desk.
“Hey, Monster,” he said, yawned, then corrected, “Sorry. Hud.”
“I don’t mind the nickname.”
“As long as you don’t keep calling me a pain in the ass.”
I kissed him tenderly, holding his face with both hands before he so much as raised his head from his pillow. “But…you are a pain in the ass.”
“And you’re a monster.”
“There ya go.”
As Theo sat up against the old wood headboard, he asked, “Breakfast in bed?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Am I not supposed to serve you now?”
“I’ve seen you cook. No thanks.”
