Chapter 6
SIX
CASEY
This was bad. Really terrible. I didn’t know how to get out of it.
What was Travis going to think of me? Why was he even here?
How did he know I was in the restroom? I knew he’d said something about Jakob, but I hadn’t been listening because I was busy fiddling with my zipper.
Then Travis said something else, and now I had no idea what he’d been talking about.
The panic sat hot under my skin, that old fear of messing everything up rising fast.
“Travis fixed you?” Rory asked expectantly.
“Yeah, but I dunno how he found me.” Maybe he might have told me in the restroom, but I don’t remember. I was nervous he was in there.
“I helped him find you,” Jakob said proudly.
“He was getting a drink, and I told him you needed help, and he said you gotta get fixed, and he did,” Jakob said before he stopped holding hands with Owen and started dancing.
It had butt shaking and spinning and twirling, and I don’t know what else, but we had to dodge his hands.
Part of me warmed at the idea that he noticed I was gone before anyone else did.
“You told him I was little?” Nobody should tell on you. What if you wanted a secret? “You told him?”
Secrets always felt fragile to me, like one wrong word could shatter the whole thing.
“Yeah, he knew. Maybe? I thinked he knew, right?”
“No, he hafta be told. You told him,” I said with a scowl.
“Oh no. Oh no. I sorry, Casey. I super-duper sorry.” When he said sorry, Jakob sounded like he was gonna cry, but I didn’t want him to do that. It wasn’t on purpose, even if I was a teeny-tiny bit still kinda sorta mad.
“We need the Daddies,” Nico said with a glance over his shoulder. “They fix it and tell Travis he gotta keep secrets.” Nico put Owen’s hand in mine. “Casey, you gotta help Owen. He’s just a baby, so gotta watch ’im, okay?”
I solemnly gave a small nod and puffed out my chest. Owen couldn’t talk when he was little, so you had to be extra special careful. Nico loved Owen extra special, so I had to make sure he was okay. Once we were all in a row, Nico marched us through the crowd until we got back to the Daddies.
“Nico, what’s wrong?” Levi, Nico’s Daddy, jumped to his feet when Nico stopped right in front of him.
“You gotta tell Travis to behave,” he answered with a look that made me scared of him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Travis look at the Daddies. He looked confused. And a lot worried.
“Has he done something to upset you?” Levi sounded like a lawyer on a big person’s show. “Can you explain to me what’s going on?”
“Travis gonna tell Casey’s little and he don’t wanna tell people, and you gotta tell him to stop.” Levi looked between all of us, but then returned to me.
“Casey, what makes you think Travis would do that?”
“’Cause Jakob told him and I didn’t tell.” When I said it, Jakob came and stood next to me. He still looked like he was gonna cry. It wasn’t his fault. It was Travis’s. I didn’t know how. But it was.
“I sorry, Papa. I gonna be in trouble.” Reed, Jakob’s Papa, opened his arms and Jakob stepped into them. I kinda sorta really wanted Travis to do the same, but he hadn’t moved. Not even an inch. Not one little bit.
“Nico, how about everyone sits down, and we figure it out, okay?” When Levi said that, all the boys moved to sit on their Daddies’ laps. Rory snuggled up with Gabe, Owen dropped my hands and curled onto Barrett’s lap, and Nico moved near Levi. That left me standing by myself.
Being the only one without a lap to climb onto made something small in me curl tight.
It was awful.
“Hey, if you want, you can sit by me,” Travis offered.
“Maybe it’ll help me figure out what I did.
” Since it was better than sitting by myself, I slid onto the seat next to him.
It was chilly ’cause the air was blowing right on me, and I wanted to snuggle like the boys, but I wasn’t sure that I was allowed to, if Travis would want me to, or anything else, so I shoved my hands into my pockets and picked the cushion next to him.
The offer loosened that tight knot, just a little, like he saw the part of me I tried to hide.
“What do you think I’m going to tell?” Travvy’s voice was low and soft.
When he spoke, I forgot to be nervous. It washed over me and settled around me like the warm blanket I kept in my apartment, the one that always made me want to stay in bed all day.
He’d talked to me like that when I was cooking in the kitchen the other day too.
“Tell people I’m little?”
“Honey, both your bosses are sitting right here. Because we like littles.”
“Barrett doesn’t matter.” I winced when I heard a soft ouch from the other side of the sofa. “Sorry. You matter.”
“Don’t worry about it. Do you mean I don’t matter because I have a boy?” I nodded eagerly. Barrett wouldn’t tell ’cause then he’d hafta tell on himself and then tell on Owen. Tonight wasn’t working the way I wanted it to work. It was supposed to be fun. Now it was weird and not so much fun at all.
“Oh, in that case, that’s easy enough to fix then. If what it takes to keep the secret is having a boy, then you can be my boy tonight, and then I’ll have to keep the secret because that’s what Daddies do,” Travvy said, then he sat back against the velvet sofa and let me have a think.
I liked that he didn’t push me or prod me, or ask me a bunch of silly questions.
Squeezing my eyes tight helped me think better, so I did that, but I opened one a teeny-tiny bit to see if Travvy was still waiting for me to finish my think.
He waited. Since he was being patient and nice, that meant he was a good Daddy and would keep my secrets too.
His patience felt steady in a way I didn’t know how to brace for.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Travvy smiled at me, and I grinned back. This was more fun.
“Casey?” I turned to see Jakob sitting in his Papa’s lap. Reed rubbed small circles on his back. “I sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was an acci…acc…it wasn’t on purpose.”
“We still gonna be friends?”
“Uh-huh.” Instead of answering, Jakob smiled like one of the angels my mom used to put on the dining room table that no one was allowed to touch, or she’d smack your hand. Hard.
“Now that that’s rested, what do all these boys want to do?”
The resounding chorus of glitter crafts filled the air, and Reed collapsed back onto the sofa with a groan that the astronauts could hear from space. Gabe laughed and Barrett threw a pillow at him.
Travvy turned to me, offered me his hand, and said, “I kinda like glitter.”
It was ridiculous how fast the word lit me up inside, like he knew exactly how to tug on my joy.
Oh, Daddy.
“Thank you for tonight.”
After our night of glitter, cocoa, and tabletop smores, Wylde Dandies’ open house for littles was winding down.
Changing from my onesie back into my regular street clothes jolted me back in a big headspace, and I was, once again, forced to confront the awkwardness of the situation.
Unfortunately, it was unavoidable, given that Travis was waiting for me outside the changing area.
The other boys went home with their Daddies, so they hadn’t bothered to change.
I’d arrived on my own, so the plan was to walk home since my car was still in the shop.
That was another headache that I wanted to put off for another day.
When Travis heard my plan, he rolled his eyes, told me I was welcome to change if I wanted, but he’d give me a ride home.
Any leftover little part of me would be too much outside of these walls, so I scurried off to change, and he followed behind me.
I could imagine him lounging against the wall, foot crossed at the ankle, while he casually scrolled through his phone.
He liked to pretend he was reading the news, but I’d caught him a few times playing the bright-colored matching games that came with approximately nine thousand four hundred twenty-three levels and endless dopamine.
He would look up when I came through the door, slide his phone into his pocket, take my bag, and lead me down the hallway.
He’d done the phone, bag, and guide move several times at the gym and work.
How I hadn’t clocked him as a Daddy was beyond me.
Everything about him screamed it, and somehow I’d been oblivious to it all.
Had he been dropping hints the entire time?
He was always concerned about what I was doing, including making sure I stayed hydrated when we were working together in the kitchen.
With my hands braced on the restroom sink, I studied myself in the mirror. I looked exactly the same as when I left the house earlier this evening. Same dark hair. Same dark eyes. Same tan, except it was winter, so kinda pale skin. Everything was the same, but it all felt different.
I felt different.
Different was scary, but it also felt a lot like hope trying to take root.
And given that he was my boss, I didn’t know how that was going to work out.
Sure, Barrett was my boss too, but he owned a kink club and had a little of his own.
The Stone and Vine might not explicitly say littles were welcome there, but they totally were in all the ways that counted.
I knew there would be no issues from him.
But Travis? He was nothing but a wild card.
He made me feel safe and unsettled at the same time, and I didn’t know which part to trust.
A soft knock on the door interrupted my spiraling introspection. When I forgot to answer, the knock was repeated but more firmly.
His voice through the door wrapped around me, warm and grounding, even as my nerves spun.
“Casey, you okay? Did you get stuck again?” Travis called from the other side of the door. Ugh. My mind had wandered so far that I hadn’t even moved to change my clothes.