Chapter 2 #2
That stopped him before he could make his escape. He turned and raised a brow at her. “Did you forget that I said I knew his family?”
Her face said she was unimpressed. “So you know how bad they treat him?”
“Well… I was friends with his oldest brother, but we haven’t been close in years,” he hedged, wondering if he’d somehow missed the fact that the Moores were abusive or something to their youngest child.
She tipped her chair back onto two legs but rolled her eyes and let it drop back to the ground when Tomas cleared his throat without looking away from his computer monitor.
“I tried to get him to either let me come with him for his family Thanksgiving or to skip it and just come here for the club’s.
But he wouldn’t hear of it and kept saying how it would be fine.
When he got home Thursday night, he was really quiet.
” Viper’s jaw tensed as she shook her head.
“So I got him some ice cream and put on his favorite cartoon and finally got him to admit that his fucking family barely spoke to him the whole day and then somehow forgot to set a seat for him at the table. He said no one even noticed he wasn’t there until he finished washing his hands and walked in.
They were literally already passing the food around. ”
Jesus.
“So I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” she said, running a hand through her green hair and sighing.
“Well, I kind of am. I love that kid something fierce, but more importantly, he… needs certain things, and I don’t want him getting his hopes up because you flash your charming smile at him and are nice and do your whole caretaking schtick. ”
He looked at Tomas. “I have a schtick?”
Tomas shrugged. “You’re a bit of a mother hen.”
Tipping his head back and forth as he conceded that point, he turned back to Viper. He couldn’t argue with that even if he wanted to. “Sounds like he could use someone to take care of him a bit more. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said through gritted teeth, obviously lying. “But what I’m trying to say without saying it is that he needs a special kind of caretaking, okay?”
Her comment about ice cream and cartoons snapped into place next to Emmett’s superhero apron and sub vibes. He couldn’t help the smile that started to grow on his face. Fuck, he really was going to be that lucky. “Yeah, okay. I hear you, V.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Do you? Because I don’t think you do based on that look.”
“He’s a little,” Rooster said bluntly, crossing his arms over his chest. He tried not to look smug as Viper gaped at him. “Which means my caretaking, daddy ass might just be the perfect man for the job.”
“That’s too much!” Emmett squealed, then laughed as he leaned into Rooster’s side and tried to scrape off some of the heaping glob of frosting he’d just put on the cookie he was holding.
He moved it out of reach, pretending to be affronted at Emmett’s correction when he was honestly fucking delighted.
Emmett had been kind of quiet when Rooster had sat down next to him, but between Ollie and CJ’s easy chattering and Rooster’s gentle encouragement, he’d started to come out of his shell.
Rooster couldn’t believe he’d never realized Emmett was a little before and was kicking himself for it. It seemed so obvious as he watched him smile and giggle, a blush blooming on his round cheeks when Ollie teased him.
For years, Rooster had been searching for something he hadn’t even known he’d wanted, unsure how to find it. Now that he did know, he could see the pattern from his past relationships. He’d come on too strong, end up “smothering” them, and then get burned. Again and again.
He gazed at Emmett’s profile. The idea that a sweet boy he could dote on and take care of could have been under his nose but just out of reach the whole time made him a little crazy.
Especially if he let himself think too hard about what Viper had said about how Emmett’s family had treated him. How often had shit like that happened?
How many times could he have maybe been there to stop it?
“I like ’em thick,” he said, smearing the red frosting around the Christmas tree–shaped cookie and then taking a huge bite.
Emmett stared up at him with wide eyes, gaze dropping down to his mouth for a second and then away. Licking his lips, Emmett asked hoarsely, “The frosting?”
Ollie or CJ was giggling on the other side of the table, but Rooster ignored them, winking at Emmett and letting his eyes drop to his soft waist and round ass, even though they were hidden pretty well under his clothes and apron. “Frosting too.”
Emmett’s breath hitched in his throat, cheeks filling with heat. “Um.”
“Rooster?” Ollie said, breaking up the tension of the moment.
Which was probably for the best. Rooster didn’t want to push too hard and scare off Emmett before he could figure out if they could actually be a good match. Just because he was a daddy and Emmett a little didn’t mean they’d automatically complement each other and their respective needs.
He just… There was something about Emmett. Something he’d noticed when the kid was seventeen and had the sweetest smile Rooster had ever seen—even if it’d been a much rarer sight then. Something that should have tipped him off at the time that all was not well in the Moore household.
“Yeah?” He glanced at Ollie’s smirking face.
“Did you know Emmett works at an assisted-living facility?” Ollie said, leaning his elbow on the table and then planting his chin on his fist.
“Oh yeah?” He turned and smiled at Emmett. “What do you do there?”
Concentrating harder than was necessary on putting sprinkles on the couple of frosted cookies in front of him, Emmett nodded. “Um, I’m the assistant activities director. That’s how I met Ollie. He volunteers once a month to do some of the residents’ hair.”
“Then Emmett started coming to the salon for haircuts,” Ollie piped up.
“And then he told Roni—um, Viper about me when she was looking for a roommate.” Emmett smiled across the table at Ollie.
“Of course, when I did that, I thought we’d hang out more, not less,” Ollie quipped.
CJ rolled his eyes and elbowed Ollie. “Be nice, or I’m telling Six.”
Ollie plastered on a smile. “Me? I’m always nice. Aren’t I being nice, Emmett?”
When Emmett’s soft eyes just widened as he looked back and forth between CJ and Ollie, Rooster couldn’t resist stepping in.
“Behave.” He gave Ollie a stern look, but the boy only seemed to listen to Six, the club’s Enforcer.
“Ugh, who invited the daddy to the party?” Ollie muttered to CJ, then cackled when Rooster sighed in annoyance. “Kidding. You’re always welcome, Rooster.”
He squinted at the sassy boy, but Knuckles interrupted before he could say anything.
“What about me?”
They all turned to look at where he was sitting at the end of the table, put-upon look on his annoyingly gorgeous face.
There was a stud through one of his brows and a small ring in his lower lip, and he had a black-and-gray skull tattooed on the side of his neck, even more ink going up both of his arms. He was the very picture of a tattoo artist.
“What about you?” CJ asked, eating one of the cookies he’d already finished. He and Emmett were the only ones making any real progress on frosting and decorating, so Rooster figured he’d more than earned it.
“Well… I’m, like… a daddy or whatever… right?” Knuckles asked, glancing down at the table, thumb rubbing at his eyebrow ring.
Ollie opened his mouth to answer, but Rooster cleared his throat, loudly, and he snapped it closed again.
Knuckles had been… different lately, like for the last year or so, but Rooster and the rest of the club weren’t pushing him to share before he was ready.
Rooster knew—because he’d accidentally overheard Houston telling Tomas—that the club’s VP had had a chat with Knuckles to see how concerned they all should be.
He hadn’t told Tomas—or Rooster when he’d stepped into the office and apologized for inadvertently eavesdropping—what was hanging over the guy’s head, but he’d promised to keep an eye on him.
Knuckles had seemed a bit better than he’d been over the summer when he’d barely left the clubhouse other than to go to work, and he’d even attended some of Houston’s BDSM classes.
Which made it even stranger that he thought he could be a daddy.
Rooster wasn’t one to knock another person’s kink or identity, but daddy was not who Knuckles was.
Was that what he’d been struggling with all year?
Wanting to be something he wasn’t and trying to force it on himself?
“It’s not just a word, man,” Rooster tried to explain, very aware of Emmett listening, even if he wasn’t looking at him.
“Okay, yeah, I know that,” Knuckles said, reaching over and snagging one of the containers of sprinkles from in front of Emmett. “Daddies are, like, Doms or whatever, right?”
“If you’d gone to one of Houston’s classes, you’d know the answer to that,” Ollie chirped, then held his hands up in surrender when Rooster shot him a look.
“Usually,” Rooster said, slowly. He set his spreader into the small bowl with the frosting in front of him. “But it’s more than being the dominant in the relationship. It’s about taking care of your sub—physically, emotionally, mentally.”
“Yeah, like how Six lets me wear my—”
“Ollie!” CJ dove at him, trying to cover his face, but Ollie dodged away.
“What? Emmett is part of the family now. He’ll be cool.”
Knuckles frowned down at the finished cookies in front of him, not saying anything in response to Rooster’s explanation.
He didn’t look upset, just… discouraged.
Maybe a little frustrated. Rooster made a mental note to check back with him later when they were alone.
When he’d put a name to his own needs and desires, it had been like a weight off his shoulders.
He wanted that for Knuckles too, no matter what it ended up being.
While the two boys across from them scuffled and threatened to tell each other’s daddies, Rooster leaned closer to Emmett and whispered, “I know you know him, but if Ollie makes you uncomfortable, I can make him stop. Well… I can try. He doesn’t listen to anyone but his own daddy, really.
But I can threaten him with telling Six. ”
Emmett giggled. “It’s okay. I didn’t… I didn’t know that everyone here was so…”
“Open-minded?” Rooster offered, grinning.
“I guess you could put it that way,” Emmett said, rolling his eyes, but he was smiling again, those mesmerizing dimples of his peeking out.
“God, have you always had those?”
Emmett frowned at him, cute little nose furrowing in confusion. “What?”
“Your dimples,” Rooster said, unable to stop himself from raising one hand and gently brushing the pad of his thumb over the spot where the little indent appeared in Emmett’s right cheek. “How could I have never noticed them before?”
He was pretty sure Emmett was holding his breath, eyes wide as he stared up at Rooster with shock… and maybe interest? Fuck, he hoped he wasn’t seeing shit that wasn’t there.
“Maybe you weren’t looking,” Emmett finally said, voice soft, but he didn’t look away from Rooster’s eyes.
Grinning, he ran the back of his fingers down Emmett’s soft cheek and winked. “I’m looking now.”