Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
CALVIN
I was an asshole. Some days, it was better hidden, but today wasn’t one of them. First, who asked someone about being their Daddy in the aisle at Target? It was rude and poorly timed. Second, my gut tightened when the man said it. I was meant to claim Micah. I intended to give him time to consider it, but then the guy had the audacity to hit on him and fuck that. It could be sorted out later.
What I said about the personal assistant part was correct. That part of my previous plan was dumb and wouldn’t work. Ultimately, it wouldn’t solve my buffer problem either because Micah would merely be an obstacle to maneuver around. And if Pop found out, he’d murder me.
I wanted to date Micah. His life was a fucking mess, but he hadn’t left my mind since I saw him yesterday. He may have thought those breathy sounds were well hidden. They were not. He might not share my new obsession, but this attraction wasn’t one-sided. I didn’t mind being patient, but I wanted him near me.
Everything about him intrigued me. His mouth was a gift with full lips that begged me to sample them. His wild dark hair curled with abandon, and the sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose was beyond cute. I’d never been into cute. My companions usually ran toward sleek beauty and, well, women, but my self-awareness was obviously lacking. Whatever sexuality got me closer to Micah was how I identified. That I wasn’t completely freaked or mildly concerned pointed to an always bisexual but mostly straight situation.
“Micah, you still haven’t decided. Boxers, briefs, or boxer briefs?”
“Boxer briefs, I guess.”
I tossed them in the cart along with socks, sleep pants, and a few T-shirts. We headed to the men’s section next. He needed to hang out at the house in clothes because, as curious as I was about his body, asking him to go around naked would, unfortunately, sound creepy and weird.
“Cal, I don’t need more than a T-shirt or two.”
“Are you going to do laundry every other day?”
Micah fell silent, but I recognized it was probably fear guiding him. If I were to hazard a guess, he was so used to not getting anything it didn’t occur to him that making do with the absolute bare minimum wasn’t the only option. It was likely the only option he’d experienced.
“I can afford it. Put some stuff in the cart.” Fuck . My goddamn mouth was going to be the end of me. “Sorry,” I said gruffly. I needed to figure out what about him made me lose all control.
“It’s okay. Not thinking about money is so strange to me,” Micah said quietly. “I’m not doing it to be annoying or anything. I appreciate it though,” Micah included with a soft smile.
“Casual clothes are fine for around the house, but you’ll need other clothes for some events. We have more stops to make and not all day for them.”
Micah dallied over two T-shirts like he was deciding what to name his dog. It was too much, so I plucked both from his hands and tossed them into the cart. His response was, “Oh,” but he actually seemed less stressed than at any point of the shopping trip. Interesting.
“Okay, any colors you hate?”
“Red?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“I hate the color red.”
“Any you love?”
“Burgundy?”
“Isn’t that red?” The prettiest blush stained Micah’s cheeks at my question.
“No, it’s a totally and completely different color. Just like pink is separate.”
“You like pink?” The blush had gone from flushed to bright red. “Me too.”
“You do?” Micah’s tone was suspicious.
“Yeah, I like it on other people.”
“People? Aren’t you straight? I assumed you were straight.”
“So did I.”
Micah stared at me without a word. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure either. The more the idea of dating Micah rattled around in my brain, the more it settled with me. This shopping trip was enlightening. When the pushy asshole in underwear hit on my boy— fuck, I liked the sound of that —it wasn’t platonic jealousy pushing to the surface.
We rounded out our Target run with slacks and jeans before heading for the checkout kiosk. Micah turned green when he saw the final tally. I wasn’t so cut off from reality I didn’t recognize it wasn’t a chunk of money, but I couldn’t have him turning green every time I pulled out my wallet. It was Target, not Tiffany’s. Right now, the best course was to ignore it until we discussed money. Room and board were abso-fucking-lutely part of the package. Nix, my house manager, was going to have a goddamn field day.
The drive to Mercer City wasn’t long enough. The thirty minutes, give or take, didn’t let me pay attention to Micah as I wanted. Lunch was a drive-through that helped keep our hands occupied. He’d tried to hedge on food, but I shut it down. He hadn’t been eating regularly, and skipping meals wasn’t happening if I could prevent it.
Micah sat quietly and listened to the radio but didn’t speak beyond thanking me for getting his door and the food. I’d offered to change the station from the business talk radio I had it on, but he’d emphatically said it was fine. It was the only time he’d spoken forcefully about anything today. Every time I glanced over to the passenger seat, he was listening intently.
We pulled up to the parking area, and he was out of the car before I had a chance to come around for the door. Old habits die hard. As I’d expected, his backpack was slung over his shoulders.
“Oh shoot,” Micah huffed when he took a few steps forward. I glanced down and realized we’d forgotten to buy new shoes to replace the ones on their last days.
“What’s the matter?”
“I wasn’t watching where I went and stepped in a puddle.”
“And?”
“The stitching is broken, so my socks are wet, and no one likes that.” He tried to make light of it, but his laugh was brittle. He may have been forced onto the streets by circumstances, but he wasn’t made for them.
“Shoes will be our first stop, then,” I answered.
Before he could object or stop me, I took him by the hand and pulled him to the pedestrian zone of the shopping center. I loathed and detested shopping and tried to rush through as fast as possible, but Micah was in gawk mode. Fair enough.
The center’s brick design and old-world charm were engaging. Given his circumstances, he probably hadn’t been out here. I headed over to a shoe store to replace his current pair. Once inside, the salesperson happily provided every option I requested to look at.
Micah turned physically pale when he saw the price tags. “Cal, holy crap, this is too much. Did you see the prices? We can go back to Target. It’s fine.”
“What did I say about the cost?”
“That was at Target, and it was too much. This? This is way too much.”
“Look, I don’t want to be a dick, but I’m going to be. I can’t take you where I need you to go with the clothes we bought. Those are for around the house. People will expect more.”
“Is anyone seriously going to pay attention to me?” Micah’s voice had taken on a panicked edge.
“I don’t follow.”
“Most are going to think you’ve lost your mind or you’re playing a game or trying to get revenge on an ex or something. I don’t think anyone will believe you’ve started dating me out of the blue.”
“We are dating.”
Micah rolled his eyes at that comment, but a growl ended their movement.
“We. Are. Dating,” I repeated more firmly. “And this conversation is over.”
With that, I turned back to the salesperson to check on a few other styles. At the end of the visit, Micah walked out with dry socks, shoes on his feet that weren’t leaking, and several more in bags.
I captured his hand on the way and gently squeezed his fingers. Micah glanced down at our entwined hands and then up at my face. “I find this all confusing.”
“Same.”
Fuck. As much as I wanted Micah to simply accept what I wanted, it was absolutely not fair to expect him to go along with it. My mom always accused me of steamrolling people, and she wasn’t wrong. It served me well in business, but even I knew I needed to slow my roll with Micah. Even though I wanted this to be an I licked him, so he’s mine situation, I needed Micah to agree we were dating on a visceral level I was no closer to understanding. My gut wasn’t ever wrong. It said Micah was the one I needed to explore this with, and I was too damn selfish to share.
“I need a cup of coffee. Want one? My treat,” I added with a small grin down at Micah. He took the bait and gave me a tentative smile back.
“Thank you, Cal. Do you think I could have some hot chocolate instead?”
“Yeah, of course.”
The line moved at a brisk pace, and within a few minutes, we were settled at a table in the corner. Micah closed his eyes and savored the drink with small sips while his hands cradled the paper cup. I sipped and waited for him to open his eyes. There was no damn way I’d interrupt his bliss. After a few minutes, Micah reopened his eyes and sheepishly gave a sidelong look.
“Sorry. It’s been a really long time since I had cocoa.” Micah cleared his throat before he added, “My mom used to make it for me every Friday night if I got all my behavior stars at school.”
“Yeah? So you had it every Friday night?”
“Except for one, yes.” Micah’s smile let up his face and his eyes sparkled like the emeralds they resembled.
“Oooh, tell me.”
“It’s silly, but at the time, I was ready to throw down. My teacher insisted that armadillos roll into a ball for protection, but that’s not true because only one kind does.”
“What’d you do to lose your star?”
“I told the teacher that if she didn’t know about armadillos, she shouldn’t be a teacher because teachers were supposed to know things.”
Micah’s peals of laughter warmed my goddamn heart. He sounded so happy and carefree. And I wanted to be the one who gave that to him, even if I couldn’t precisely explain why. For a split second, I saw a glimpse of the happy child ready to throw down in the name of armadillos everywhere.
“Can we talk about what happened at the store?” Micah inclined his head like a king acknowledging a lesser subject and ceded the floor to me. “I don’t understand why I’m having this reaction to you, but I don’t need to understand it. All I need to know is that I want it. And the Daddy thing? Yeah, I want to figure that out too.”
“Dating? No one will believe that.” Micah fiddled with the unraveling thread of his chair. I debated for a half-second before I reached out and covered his hand with mine. It looked so small in mine but felt exactly fucking right.
“People believe what we tell them to believe. If we say we’re dating, then we are,” I answered with a shrug. “It doesn’t change the offer I made for you to stay with me. And I’m not asking you to sleep with me. Those are wholly separate from anything else. But, yes, I want to define it as dating.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything if you don’t tell me no.”
Micah’s shrug was as good as I was going to get.
From the coffee shop, we walked to a higher-end suit store. The leaded glass in the front obscured the interior for maximum privacy. Seeing glimpses of my world through Micah’s eyes was eye-opening. For perhaps the first time, I noticed the opulent wood shelving and the rock tile floors. An older man no taller than Micah bustled over with a smile before the door closed behind us.
“Gentlemen, how can we help you today?” He sized us both up before settling his gaze on me.
“He needs a suit, and he needs it immediately.” The salesman’s smile faded.
“We can do the suit, but a custom suit takes time.”
“Sadly, we don’t have that. We have an event at the end of next week.” The salesman tapped his lips, followed by a snap of his fingers.
“It won’t be a custom suit, but I do have a ready-made option we could tailor. Maybe that works for you?”
Before I could answer, he hurried away with instructions to wait trailing behind him. To kill time, I pulled a few button-downs for Micah to try.
“Calvin?” I was obsessed enough with this man that I noted this was the first time he’d voluntarily called me by name. “Can we talk about this? Please?”
I led him over to a tufted leather sofa off to the side. Thankfully, we were the only ones in the shop at the moment, so there was no chance of being overheard. I settled on the sofa before I drew him next to me. Our knees touched, but he didn’t pull away. Micah’s eyebrows knitted together and he cleared his throat a few times before he spoke.
“I understand this is a job,” he said, holding up his hand when I started to protest. “Please let me finish.” I shut up. “This job has specialized requirements when it comes to the uniform.” He did air quotes around the job bit. “But, I don’t want to be a burden. The money you’ve spent doesn’t mean much to you, but it’s a lifeline to me. Before going one more step, we need an agreement on this.”
Micah sat back when he was finished speaking, hands folded in his lap, and waited for me to respond. Damn, if his quiet assertiveness hadn’t chubbed my dick. My attraction to him popped up, pun intended, at the most inopportune times.
“You’ll need them to do what I’ve asked you to do, which makes it a uniform.”
“But you didn’t have to purchase so much.”
“I did. Let the extra be a gift.”
“Your gift was not having me arrested.” He ignored my scoff at that bit of idiocy. I wasn’t asking for anyone’s arrest for the not-so-heinous crime of sleeping in a damn shed. “Fine, I’ll deduct something off what I’m paying you, but only the items for around the house. Everything else is a uniform.”
Micah let me stew while he calmly contemplated my proposal. Now that his fear had lessened, I saw more of who Micah was, and it was fascinating. He was quiet, yes, but he was also thoughtful, considerate, hot as hell, and beautifully submissive. There wasn’t a damn thing I wanted to change, except for him to drop this nonsense about paying for things. That part was absurd.
“Can you write me an employment letter?”
“What for?”
“If I have an employment letter, then I’ll be at the head of the line at the rescue shelter,” Micah said so calmly as if it made perfect sense. Anger rose in the pit of my stomach until I struggled to maintain my temper. He wasn’t fucking leaving my house.
“What the hell are you talking about? What shelter?”
“The rescue shelter.” He sounded bewildered, while I sounded pissed. “I can’t stay with you and can’t afford an apartment yet. I need to save for the deposits.”
“You aren’t moving to a shelter,” I bit out. “You’re staying in my house. You belong in my house.” My attempts to control myself were somewhere close to herculean. A fucking shelter? No goddamn way.
“But I can’t take advantage of your hospitality. That’s too much.”
“Where are you going to keep your clothes? Shelters have limited space, so you’ll have to stay.”
Micah considered my words carefully. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head.
“If it’s a uniform, couldn’t I keep it at your office?”
“No, because that would look odd to the other employees, and I don’t relish the idea of my employees gossiping about the status of my relationships and why I’m making the guy I’m dating keep his clothes at work.” Micah opened his mouth, but I interrupted before he could make a sound, “Remember? You agreed we’re dating.” He promptly closed it.
“I found what I was looking for,” the salesman proclaimed triumphantly as he swept back into the room and, thankfully, interrupted our conversation. “This suit was ordered, but, well, the gentleman who ordered it ended up not needing it, so it’s been in the back waiting to be loved.”
“Why didn’t he need it?” Micah asked without guile.
“He died.”
I choked back a bark of laughter and Micah shot me a quelling look. It worked.
“Oh, that’s terrible. He ordered a suit and never got to wear it?”
“It’s fine. He was buried in his favorite, and we also made that one.”
“How do you know all that?”
I couldn’t tell if Micah was legitimately interested or only making conversation. Regardless, he was about to become my secret weapon. When I mentioned the value of social lubricant, I wasn’t joking. Those party fuckers would never see him coming.
“Because he was my partner.” The salesman’s face had a flash of pain before he shook his head and presented the suit. “And he would have been tickled to know someone would find some use out of it. He detested waste, so I’ve kept the suit around, hoping someone close to his size would come in.” He paused for a flourish. “And here you are!”
Micah was ushered behind the brocade curtain near the seating area to try on the suit. The salesman took one of the button-down shirts I’d pulled and nodded approvingly before disappearing behind the curtain with Micah. My gut churned that another man was helping Micah with the suit. It didn’t matter to me that the other man was old enough to be his father, maybe grandfather. He wasn’t me, and that made it unacceptable.
Micah peeked out from behind the curtain with a faint hint of something, maybe pride, and caught my eyes. Once I was focused on him, he stepped out fully. Yeah, it was pride. He was goddamn magnificent. Micah’s back was straighter and his head was taller as he stood in front of me. I rose from the couch for a better look.
“Do you like it? Stan said Milly, never Milton, always wanted to look up-to-date, so he was all about the classics.” I could tell Micah was holding back his reaction until mine was given.
“Micah, you look like a vision,” I breathed.
Never before had a man in a suit done a damn thing for me, but all that changed when Micah stepped out. Blood sizzled through my veins, headed to my cock—new kink found and revealed.
He was not moving into a fucking shelter.
The trip back home was spent with both of us firmly ensconced on our sides of the vehicle. I wanted to touch him again and remember what his skin felt like, but I was treading in dangerous water. He hadn’t technically agreed to stay, and no way in hell did I want to push him into a shelter.
We’d been in the house less than five minutes when the officer from yesterday called to confirm all was well. Micah assured him his evening had been uneventful, and we’d done a little shopping today for more appropriate clothes. I confirmed Micah was the perfect house guest.
After Micah and I brought his new clothes into the house and took turns speaking with Officer Hagen, it was close to dinner time, and cooking was the last thing I wanted to do. My house manager prepped dinner for me during the week when I was home, but I was on my own for the weekends. He’d taken Friday off for a long weekend, so he’d have more questions than I had answers when he returned on Monday.
I found Micah in the guest room, surrounded by clothes, looking overwhelmed and lost. The bags were fanned out around him, but nothing was pulled out or put away.
“What are you doing?” Micah flinched at the abrupt question. Shit . I cleared my throat and tried again. “You okay?” The second question earned me a wan smile.
“I think it’s just so much. I’ve literally, and I mean literally, never had so many new clothes at one time. It’s a weird problem to have.”
“The trouble with shopping is the aftermath always means more work. Here, let’s pull it all out and then figure out where it goes.”
“But I don’t live here, so putting it away seems silly too.” Micah’s voice turned wistful, and my unasked questions were answered. He didn’t want to leave. He thought he should leave. That was workable.
“Don’t argue with me. Right now, this is where you live.”
With that, I sat on the floor next to him and began to pull out clothes. We paused briefly while I hunted down scissors to remove the tags, but the clothes were put away within an hour. Micah worked quietly and efficiently while I tended to refold items a million times until they were properly straight. His rumbling stomach reminded me it was late in the day, and we hadn’t eaten anything in hours.
“I’m not in the mood to cook tonight. Let’s go grab some dinner.”
Micah froze like a deer in headlights. “Like at a restaurant?”
“Yeah, there’s a good place near the harbor. The kitchen is slow, but the food makes up for it.” Micah picked at his pants, and I covered his fingers with my own. He stared at my hand before he spoke.
“What if someone thinks we’re together.”
“We are together.”
“I don’t think you understand how dating works.”
“I understand how dating you works,” I answered with a wink.
His deadpan stare wasn’t a no.
With an embarrassing groan, I stood, pulled Micah behind me, waited for him to grab the backpack I now realized he never let go of, and headed to the garage. This time, I moved quicker to reach the door before him. Every part of me wanted to protect him and keep him close to me. Yes, he was physically smaller, but he was also fragile. Whatever the whole story was, it was obvious he’d been left on his own far too many times to figure things out. I’d be damned if I would add to the list.
The trip to Wild Fern took less than ten minutes, including looking for parking. The options for dinner were limited here on Almstead Island, so the place did brisk business most evenings. The cedar-stone-and-glass building was on the edge of town with a kitchen garden along the side. Lights along the pathways allowed diners to stroll between the raised planter beds. The chef boasted of using fresh local ingredients whenever possible, and the food was always mouthwatering. The inside lighting was muted, with a color scheme that matched the rustic, woodsy vibe.
“Hello. Do you have a reservation?” The host seemed frazzled, which meant, as usual, the kitchen would be slow tonight.
“We don’t, but I hope you can find us a table anyway.”
I gave my best charming smile and slipped a few twenties into his palm. The host glanced down at his book while muttering about people who didn’t show up for the reservations they made or canceled. After a bit more grumbling, he grabbed some menus before leading us to one of the few empty tables in the restaurant. I pulled out Micah’s chair, and he slipped into the seat with a murmured thank you .
“The food here is amazing. I think you’re going to like it.”
“This is the nicest restaurant I’ve ever been in,” Micah whispered when he leaned closer to me. “It’s so fancy.”
“Only because you’re in it,” I quipped. The blush I’d hoped for bloomed on his cheeks.