Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MICAH
“Gentlemen, it’s nice to see you again.” The same host worked the stand as on our last visit. “Reservations?”
“Yes, under Rutledge for eight p.m.”
Daddy held my hand, and I was cuddled up to him. After our—I wasn’t sure how to describe his afternoon homecoming—encounter, Daddy joined me in the shower and washed me from head to toe. It was too late to be embarrassed, but the man inspected every bit of my body, including my hole. I wanted to beg him to fill me, but I wasn’t ready to take that leap, and he hadn’t pushed me for it.
With our reservation found, the host escorted us to our table in the back, overlooking the garden area. They’d strung twinkle lights around the garden, and in the shadows, the plants looked like they were part of an alien landscape. Daddy pulled my chair out and got me settled before taking his spot.
“Gentlemen, anything to drink from the bar?”
“Yes, we are celebrating. Could we have two mocktails, one sweet and one not?”
Daddy smiled at me, but I was confused about what we were celebrating. On the way out the door, he’d slipped an envelope into his jacket pocket from his laptop bag. He waited to pull it out until our drinks, sweet for him and not for me, were delivered, and our dinner orders were taken.
Once we were assured of having an uninterrupted moment, Daddy laid the envelope on the table and slid it over to me. His smile was enigmatic, but I couldn’t help but notice the slightest tremble in his hand.
“What’s this?”
“You need to open it.”
His tone was neutral, but I could see the smile in his eyes. He held his breath when I opened the flap and pulled out the letter. I scanned the document… a profound apology… The FOIA request had gone unanswered… No justification for this lapse in our duty… Enclosed, please find… My eyes filled with tears, and I was one step away from hyperventilating.
“Little one, look at the other document.”
I checked out the envelope again and a smaller document was folded inside. When I pulled it out, a small blue card fell out. When I opened the document, my birth certificate was there too. With the papers directly in front of me for proof, I was still scared that I wasn’t awake and that was a cruel dream of a wishful subconscious. But if it were real, I could get a legitimate job and avoid the streets.
Please let this be real.
“I’m awake, right? Like, this isn’t a dream?” Daddy gently pinched my wrist and felt the wonderfully sharp sting of it.
It was real. Oh my gosh, it was real.
It. Was. Real.
I hadn’t received many gifts, but this had to be the best one possible in the entirety of the world. “Daddy, how did you do this?”
I desperately tried to hold back my tears, but they welled in my eyes. I lost the battle. The damn broke, and they streaked down my face and left me sniffing and snuffling, but I was beyond caring. I had my papers.
I. Had. My. Papers.
“Oh no, I didn’t mean to make you cry, baby.”
“These are happy tears. Do you know what this means?”
“Tell me.”
“It means I never have to go back to the streets. Ever.” Finally, the flow of tears slowed enough for me to ask more questions, “How did you do this?” I mopped my eyes, but the waterworks wouldn’t quit.
“Levi, the lawyer from the other day?” I nodded, and he continued, “He lit a fire under their ass.”
“Daddy,” I whispered, “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
Not since my mom had someone cared enough about me to go out of their way. The day I decided to be a sex worker wasn’t the lowest one. It was when my brother came home and told me our parents were gone. I wasn’t concerned with my dad, and I hadn’t missed him. But my mom? She’d been the only one who mattered.
That night, Kyle had popped open a beer, then another, and another after that. After a while, he’d gotten mad because no one was around to fix dinner, so he took out his frustration on my face. I spent the night she died clutching the blanket she made me when I was a baby and trying to stop my bleeding lip. That same blanket was safely stowed between my feet because I needed it with me always. It was worn and old, but the embroidered seascape she designed was still there. I reached down, moved the zipper a little bit, and rubbed the cloth between my fingers. Daddy centered me the way she did. He was starting to feel like home.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
He hadn’t asked to be thanked with a kiss, but it was the only way I knew to show him how much it meant to me. I leaned forward, and even though it was my thanks being offered, he met me in the middle. With a gentle brush, I laid my lips against his before returning for a deeper, longer, wetter taste. I poured every part of my heart into the kiss. The diners may have gotten an unexpected show, but tonight, it didn’t matter to me. He needed to know how much I appreciated what he’d orchestrated.
“Daddy, do you remember when we went to Jimmy’s, and you brought up rules?”
“I do.”
“Yeah. Um, I’ve been thinking about them. A lot.”
“I see. What are your thoughts on them?”
I knew him well enough by now that his neutral tone meant he was hiding something. Based on the glimmer that sparked in his eyes when I mentioned rules, it was excitement. Daddy carefully and deliberately buttered a slice of bread and placed it on my plate before repeating the process for himself.
“Um, I was…uh…thinking I was interested in knowing what you’d like them to be.”I sat back against the booth and waited. Daddy took off his glasses and set them down on the table.
“Are you dick drunk?”
“What the heck is dick drunk?” I sputtered.
“It’s when you feel you come so good you start making decisions you’ll regret when you sober up from the dicking.”
“Can you get it from blowjobs?”
“I sure as hell can get it from yours.”
“Daddy!” He chuckled at my feigned shock.
“Are you though?”
“No, Daddy, I’m very much not dick drunk. Anymore. Are you?”
“Still a little, but I’m going to be fine.”
“Then we must both be in right enough minds to discuss it.”
Without what happened this afternoon, I’m not sure I’d have felt brave enough to mention any of this tonight. When Daddy had taken me upstairs, I hadn’t been sure where it was going, but it hadn’t crossed my mind he’d force me to say good things about myself at the risk of not coming. But it loosened something in me and made me freer, at least for the moment.
“Do you remember what I asked of you?” Daddy asked in a curious tone.
“To belong to you.”
“That’s what I want. Your pleasure? I want to give that to you. Your troubles? I want to take those. And your happiness? I want to share it.”
Gone. Melted. Obliterated. All defenses destroyed.
“If your peen is mine, then I decide when you get to touch it. You won’t talk down about yourself. If you decide you don’t want this to continue, we’ll talk first. And I’ll do the same, although that’s not going to happen. And, last one, either of us can safeword for any reason. Fair?”
“I can live with those, Daddy.”
“But do you want to live with them?”
“Yes, please.”
“All right, here you go,” the server interrupted to deliver our dinner. “We’ve got your marinated root vegetable linguini and grilled salmon. Anything else you need?”
“Nope, we’re good,” Daddy answered with a crooked grin I knew was directed at me.
This man kept inching toward breaching my self-imposed walls a little more each day.
“I haven’t forgotten my original question that started this afternoon’s activities.” Daddy smirked from the driver’s seat on the way home. His crooked smile made him look more boy-next-door than Washington tech guy.
“I was hoping you would,” I murmured. “It’s stu—I mean, it’s just a silly thing I do, and it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Fair enough, but I still want to know.”
This man wasn’t going to let it go. He said it with a smile, but I heard the steel that backed up the words. Daddy reached over to cover my hand resting on my thigh. I stared down at our threaded fingers. His bigger hand was warm and protective. He was shelter.
“Do you remember that I told you I like to track things in my notebook?” Daddy nodded, so I continued, “When I was in college, I took a behavioral finance class. We had an assignment where we had to apply behavioral principles to some aspect of investment finance.”
Daddy’s hand squeeze encouraged me to keep going, even though this was the embarrassing part.
“My project was applying statistical analysis to the values that polls indicated were important to different categories of consumers and then picking stocks based on how the companies embodied those values.”
“And the chart I saw?”
“I kept doing it to see, theoretically, what I would earn or lose if I kept at it long-term. I used to keep track on my laptop until it got stolen, and then I used my notebook. It’s kinda stupid since it’s not like it matters.”
“It’s not fucking stupid,” Calvin interjected through clenched teeth. When I heard him mutter another fuck under his breath, I was thoroughly confused. A glance confirmed it wasn’t my imagination because he took a few deliberate deep breaths. “It’s not goddamn fair is what it is.”
I shrugged because there really wasn’t anything to say. Fair wasn’t an option.
“I’m not ready for bed,” Daddy said when he shut off the engine but made no move to leave the car. “Can I convince you to stay up with me? I’ll teach you to play Gin Rummy.” That crooked grin was an irresistible force. “How ’bout this—we change and meet in the kitchen?”
I was as susceptible to Daddy’s charms as anyone else.
As promised, Daddy was in the kitchen. He wore sweatpants…of course, they were gray…and a company T-shirt. His feet were bare, and I was oddly jealous of his long toes. Jealous of toes? I shook my head as I stood in the doorway watching him.
“Going to watch me or come in?” he called brusquely over his shoulder.
I crept forward until I reached his side. As I’d come to expect from him, he hauled me close and leaned in to kiss me firmly on the mouth. That stone-faced man from the shed hadn’t been seen since that afternoon. “I decided we need hot fudge for ice cream. Are you sprinkles, cherries, or both?”
“Sprinkles, please.”
Daddy grasped me around the waist and plopped me on the counter. He stepped between my open legs and nuzzled my neck. My strangled sound was somewhere between a giggle and a moan. Daddy smiled against my skin and ripples of happiness flooded my body. Eventually, I would wake up from whatever fugue state I’d fallen in, but it wouldn’t be tonight. When he pulled away, I missed him.
He dumped the ingredients on the counter into the pot and set it on the stove. With each stir of the chocolate sauce, the kitchen felt more intimate and quiet. The rest of the world slipped away, and the only ones left were us in this cocoon. Daddy asked more questions about my investment markers and seemed interested, which shocked me. He was in tech, so he had to know how investing worked. His questions about my thresholds and outliers surprised me with their depth, but he listened to my rationales and asked for more details.
When our sauce was made and the sprinkles sprinkled, Daddy carried our bowls to the table. My offers to help were brushed aside. He allowed me to put out the spoons and napkins, which made me feel less like a guest. He’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t want me to go to the shelter, but now that I had my documents, I had options— real, viable options .
“I know you’re decent at math, but I’m kind of a big deal with this game.” Daddy produced a deck of cards from somewhere and began an effortless shuffle. “I’ll try not to beat you too badly.”
His delivery was deadpan, and I needed a quick look at his eyes to determine whether he was joking. He launched into an explanation of the basics of Gin Rummy, which I’d somehow missed in the past twenty-three years.
Dressed casually, he appeared younger than his thirty-five years with messy hair and a five o’clock shadow. Under most circumstances, there was never a hair out of place or scruff on his sharp jaw, but I liked this side of him more. Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached up and gently cupped his cheek. His beard was soft enough to feel good but bristly enough to be sexy.
“Hmm, soft.”
“I like it when you touch me.”
I flushed with embarrassment at his tone, but Daddy’s eyes flashed with heat. He returned to the shuffle, but my entire body felt restless and tingly.
“I have a trip I’ve tried to put off, so I’ll need to leave tomorrow for a few days. But I’ll be back by Friday, and there’s an event I need you to attend with me.”
“What’s the event?”
“It’s the annual island fundraiser, so we’ll have a table up front and a few guests are joining us.” I nodded because I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Daddy unexpectedly leaned across the table and softly kissed my lips. “I’ll miss you.”
“Nix, are you sure this is mine?”
When Nix called me into the library, I was confused as to why the open boxes on the table would be mine. In addition to a brand-new laptop, Nix was fiddling with the buttons on a new cell phone.
“Is there another Micah hiding in the shed?” Nix asked over the rim of his glasses.
There was something so comforting about his calmness. In fact, what I liked about him best was he never got worked up or flustered. Daddy might be the boss, but Nix could’ve been a jerk about me staying here. The only thing he had done was shake my hand and ask me about allergies. From his little carriage house, I wasn’t sure how much he knew about our evening activities.
“For my sake, I hope not.”
“Then I guess it’s yours. He left a note.” Nix slid an envelope down the coffee table until it was directly in front of me. Inside was a folded piece of paper with his scrawl in bold strokes across it and a bank card with my name printed on it.
#I want to talk to you while I’m gone. Be a good boy, and don’t argue with Nix about accepting the presents. My phone number is already saved. I’m available day or night for you. Remember, hands off without permission. If you need that, you’ll have to call and ask. The rules haven’t changed. The computer is yours, so you’ll have an easier time with research. The bank card is for you to use for anything you might need. Nix has the PIN and bank information.
Miss you already, Daddy.
“How did he manage a bank card with my name on it? I only got my documents back yesterday.”
“He had your Social Security number, which was enough for you to be added to the account. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough for you or me if we walked into the bank, but we don’t have a private banker.”
Nix shrugged. He looked nonplussed. Since Calvin went to the mainland for work early each morning, I spent time with Nix. He was former military and that was the sum total of what I knew about him. We weren’t friends, but we were some undefined thing more than acquaintances.
“I don’t understand Calvin.”
“What do you mean?” Nix paused the laptop set up to look over to where I’d planted myself next to him. I picked at the nonexistent lint on the sofa.
“He’s been extraordinarily generous with me, but in the shed, I would’ve thought he was an entirely different sort of person. But even on that first day, he was so different when no one was around.”
Nix looked like he was arguing with himself as he opened and closed his mouth a few times. Today, he wore a starched polo and slacks with a starched crease. His hair was cut short like he was still on active duty. It was the same pressed uniform he wore every day. “It’s how he was raised. His entire family is like that.”
“Oh, you know the rest of them too?”
“I started working for his grandfather after I left the military.”
“What did you do in the military?”
“I was a helicopter mechanic.” Nix, always standoffish, was stone-faced with rigid shoulders. “His grandfather gave me a job when he found me trespassing on company property.”
“What?” I must have misunderstood. Nix was so precise and orderly that I couldn’t imagine him doing something as messy as that sounded.
“You heard me. I was there to steal from Mr. Rutledge, and he caught me. He said I could go to jail or take the maintenance job he had available, but I needed to come back in the morning, hungover or not, and be ready to work. I sobered up permanently, took the job, and got my life back together.”
“Is that why you didn’t say anything when Calvin brought me home like a stray cat?”
“Well, I wasn’t homeless, but I was rock-bottom and desperate. Mr. Rutledge never told anyone the circumstances of how we met except Calvin. He’s never treated me differently after he knew. Of course, by that time, I’d been sober for a couple of years and working out here as a house manager.”
“I don’t like drinking either.” At Nix’s curious look, I added, “My brother got drunk the day he told me our parents were killed in a car accident. My dad was a drinker too.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, he’s brother of the year material.”
I powered on the phone and checked the contacts. A few contacts were already stored in the phone, but only one mattered.
#Micah: Thank you so much for the phone and the laptop. It was really generous of you.
Daddy: It’s nothing. You need to be able to do your research, and I need to be able to reach you.
Micah: Well, you didn’t have to do it, and I’m grateful.
Daddy: I’m glad you like it.
Daddy: Ugh, this is torture.
Micah: Is something wrong?
Daddy: Yeah, I don’t like being away from you.
Micah: Oh.
I stared at the phone while what he’d said churned through my mind. As much as I wanted to believe it was true and real, it wasn’t. The past few days…weeks—Oh my god, I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been in this house—had been a fantasy that would end soon enough.
This was real life and not a romance novel or a Disney movie. No prince would save me from the monsters waiting on the other side of the door. I needed to prepare for when Daddy’s eventual boredom had him politely excusing me from his life. Nix’s situation wasn’t mine. He’d been offered a real job. I was offered an interlude.
#Micah: I was wondering if I could use the card to put new tires on my bike. I’ll give the receipt to Nix or text you a picture so you’ll know how much I spent.
Daddy: You can access the account for your needs, and you don’t need my permission to use it.
Micah: I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you.
Daddy: Little one, I’m not trying to be a dick, but I can afford some bike tires.
Micah: Okay, I’ll get them and not worry (much) about them.
Daddy: Did you keep your hands off last night?
Micah: Daddy! You can’t ask me questions like that.
Nix had moved over to the desk to finish setting up the laptop but looked up at my gasp. He said nothing, but his raised eyebrow at my flaming face spoke volumes.
Daddy: Since it’s mine, I think I can.
Micah: To answer your question, yes, I did.
Daddy: Maybe tonight I’ll get a request. I hope so. I really fucking hope so.
Micah: I wouldn’t want to interrupt anything. You could be in a meeting or with friends.
The unspoken typed part of my text or on a date dropped the pit of my stomach. Last night, we hadn’t discussed whether this was an exclusive thing, and I wish we had. Daddy’s hands on me were lightning in a bottle, and I was queasy at the knowledge someone else could have that with him too.
Daddy: You’ll have first crack at me. My meeting is about to start, but I’ll talk to you later. Tonight, I hope :)
Micah: Thank you again. Bye.
I reread the conversation over and over, looking for clues or hidden messages. Unfortunately, nothing jumped out to answer my burning question about how he would occupy himself when all the work was done. I needed out of this house.
“Nix, could you give me a ride downtown in the truck today?” Nix looked up from the desk, where he was still fiddling with my new laptop.
“If you want, sure. But why the truck?”
“I’m going to have the tires fixed on my bike. If the shop has tires in stock, I’ll ride back.”
“No problem. And here’s the laptop. It’s all set up on the Wi-Fi. I didn’t put a password on it because I figured you’d want to do that. Give me about twenty minutes, and we can go.”