Chapter 22 Saúl
twenty-two
saúl
“I’m just saying, I could just hide under the table, and you can do all the big Daddy stuff.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t expected him to hyper-focus on this, but ever since we’d left Damian’s place and gotten in the truck, Cam had started peppering me with questions and hypotheticals about Saddle Up.
After I’d had to come up with a proper answer to him wondering what he should do if someone asked him for a fox kit in exchange for a donation, I switched gears.
“What’s really bothering you, Cam?”
I’d checked in with him in the morning, when I woke up to him sprawled on top of me like an octopus and pretended to stay asleep because he shushed me and told me it wasn’t wake-up time until he said so in the most adorably frantic voice I’d heard that early in the morning.
But he’d been fine. There was a lot unspoken—of course there was—but he hadn’t been on the brink of an anxiety attack or trying to sneak out in the middle of the night while pretending nothing had happened.
“I’m not good with people.”
The confession was unexpected. I wasn’t sure I kept the grimace off my face in time. “And what makes you say that?”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Cam scrunching up his nose.
He seemed to debate between staring out the passenger window and turning toward me.
He opted for the latter, eventually, and I focused on keeping a poker face under the premise that I needed to keep an eye on the road.
Thankfully, it was only another half a day, and we’d be good to unpack for real and start setting up for the next two weeks of not living inside my admittedly cramped truck.
“People don’t like me.”
“Okay…?”
This time, there wouldn’t be any nearby service stops, so I contented myself with squeezing the wheel a bit tighter. Maybe I pressed on the gas a bit, too. The road was pretty empty, anyway.
“I think I don’t want to get close to people and fuck things up again, but I also want people to like me, so it ends up being messy.
” He ran a hand through his hair as he lifted his feet to the edge of the seat, knees wrapped close to his chest. “And that’s when I’m not scared of them, because what if they realize what a fuckup I am, and they have something to say about it? Because, like, I would.”
“Cam…”
“And,” he pushed forward, “now I did the thing I wasn’t supposed to do, which was find a Daddy or get involved with one because this was supposed to be me facing the consequences of my very unforgivable actions, but I’m clearly a shitty, selfish person, and…
You know. I just don’t think I’m the right person for this. Any of it.”
I sighed, fingers setting a random rhythm against the wheel. I wanted to give him an answer fast, before he could ramble more or get deeper in his head and those kinds of thoughts. I just wasn’t sure what.
I was used to rambling and dark thoughts, thanks to Roy, but… The memory of Roy was precisely why I found myself thinking each word carefully, treading through calm waters I knew didn’t stay calm for long.
“Do you know why I keep my distance from the other ranch hands?”
Cam frowned, shifting until his side pressed against the seat. It wouldn’t be a great look if we were stopped at any point, but I didn’t have it in me to give him shit about it right this minute.
“Because you’re a bit of a hermit?”
I snorted. “It was a rhetorical question, darlin’.”
“Right.”
I shook my head. “There was a guy I knew from school. He spent most weekends volunteering with me. After school, there was no question that he’d move in with me.”
“Oh.” Cam shuffled on his seat. “You were like, high school sweethearts?”
Why did everyone go there whenever I tried to talk about him?
“No.” I licked my lips. The word rang wrong in my head, albeit true.
The image of him in my head had started to fade around the edges.
I’d never been good at visualizing shit, but it still hurt.
Both seeing him and knowing I was losing out on the details.
“He had it rough at home. Got diagnosed with BPD right before graduating. I was always the one who protected him, I guess? Tried to.”
“Okay.” Cam nodded. “You’re very protective.”
“Right.” The irony wasn’t lost on me, but it wasn’t a conversation to have with him right now. “Things were fine at first. They all knew him, after all. He’d spent weekends around the refuge for years by that point.”
I took a deep breath before I continued.
“Then, he had a couple of meltdowns. Y’know, adjusting to a new routine, people he was interacting with every day instead of just during the weekends, and like…
the stress of caring for the new animals arriving and everything.
The thing is, people learned he had BPD, and it was still fine, but some grew warier around him. ”
Fuck.
I was fucking this up badly. It was a tough reflex to curb, the need to defend Roy, to absolve him of all responsibility. That was all I’d ever done.
“He started to get worse.” I cleared my throat.
The road wasn’t the best place for this particular confessional.
I supposed I could blame Cam, say I was following his footsteps.
“He ended up convincing himself everyone looked at him weird, that everyone wanted him out of the sanctuary, and I was the one who had to stand up for him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
It was a good question.
“It’s the reason why there’s a distance between the guys and me.” I sighed. “Dwight says the distance is on me, that they all stopped blaming me years ago, but I’m still punishing myself for it, I guess.”
“Why? What happened?”
“It just kept escalating.” I drummed my fingers against the wheel. “Shit hit the fan, and it was bad. Putting animals and other workers at great risk bad. Almost shutting us down bad. And I didn’t respond well. I was too biased.”
“Because he was your friend?”
“Because I was his Daddy.”
The silence that followed was stifling.
“Why are you telling me this?”
It was the same question, but the tone was more cautious.
Regret filled me. I should’ve waited to have this damn talk.
“Because I understand what it’s like to push people away because you feel like you deserve it.” I took an invigorating breath before I kept on. “And because you insist that you’re terrible at keeping things to yourself, so it’s only a matter of time until someone tells you about Roy.”
For the next minute, Cam didn’t say anything. I wanted to check in on him, but I wasn’t the brave sort of Dom who just did the thing.
“Um. Why is it different when you do it?”
“It’s not.” I needed to find the nearest service station, stat.
Despite the reputation I’d built as a grump of a hermit, I was a tactile person.
I needed to squeeze him to me, to tease the mounds of his ass and get a sense of that physical tether before memories dragged me under. “Do as I say, not as I do?”
“This is why brats will keep on bratting.”
I snorted. Even blindfolded, I’d have no problem picturing the pout he had to be regaling me with.
“Okay, darlin’. Brat away.” The break into kinky talk was a relief, but not one I could relish for long.
Not if I wanted to maintain some semblance of responsibility.
“But another reason why I’m telling you?
I might have my issues to work through with people, but when we’re down there?
I’m not there to socialize so that I feel better or because I deserve a break or fun.
I’m there for the animals only. The ones we have and the ones that need us. ”
“Oh.”
I waited a beat, but no more words followed the exhaled sound.
“Can you do that?” I thought he could when I suggested it to him.
I wouldn’t have risked it otherwise, but…
Could I say I’d been completely unbiased when my suggestion had been in response to the thought of losing him, of being blamed again for the fate of a man in the sanctuary?
“Keep your head in the game while we’re down there? ”
Again, he didn’t answer right away. The GPS said there was a service stop in half an hour. I had a feeling the distance was going to feel much longer than thirty minutes, but thirty minutes was better than an unknown amount of time. Certainty brought a sense of calm I could wrap around myself.
“I can try?”
I nodded. It didn’t bring me the comfort I’d expected, but I was rational enough to know there was little more I could ask of him. It wouldn’t be realistic, either.
I just hoped word didn’t reach upward, and I ended up taking the brunt for another person I had misjudged.
“Good.”
“Not good boy?”
Air left my lungs in a loud exhale. I had the feeling that Cam used these sorts of retorts, of the kinky variety, as a sort of coping mechanism, a reflex when he was uncomfortable or didn’t want to process the words that had been said.
It wasn’t ideal, but it was…
I could work with taming a brat better than I could with reopening old wounds I’d been picking at for the last hour.
I hoped I could.
“First rule about being my boy, Cam?” I spared him a quick glance. “Fishing for compliments only gets you a red ass.”
“Not a deterrent.”
Of course it wasn’t.