Chapter 4
Chapter Four
NORTH
“You know what we should do this weekend, hermano?”
I hit send on the text I’d just sent to my—to Owen, congratulating him on completing his last final, then looked up at Juan.
“Get started on your new deck?”
He knocked into my shoulder, chuffing out a laugh. “Hell no. What? We are not relaxing after a long week of work by doing some extra work. My deck can wait. We need to go to the club. It’s been months.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Months? Weren’t you just telling me about the bratty little boy you met there last week, the one who looked so good with your cock down his throat?”
Juan grinned at me. “So you were listening. I can never be sure anymore, not now that you’re always glued to your phone.”
He lunged for it, and I instinctively yanked it out of his reach, making him laugh.
“Still keeping your love life a secret, I see.”
I tucked my phone into my back pocket. “No love life. Just a friend.”
Which was nothing but the truth, and yet it felt like… less than the truth.
Owen wasn’t mine.
But also wasn’t not mine.
“No love life,” Juan repeated with an exaggerated sigh, shaking his head. “Sadly, I’m still not surprised to hear it. But I’m not talking about the fact that you’d be happier with a boy of your own.”
“Someday.”
He waved my comment off. “I know, I know. But I’m talking about today, not someday.”
My lips twitched. “I thought the club was closed on Monday nights.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not today-today. This weekend. You know what I meant. Quit dodging the question.”
Juan really did know me too well, because he held up a hand to stop me before I could point out that he didn’t technically ask me one.
“Okay, you want me to spell it out for you, hermano? I mean that you have not been to the club in months. Are you getting laid somewhere else?”
“Is that your business?”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yes? Are we or are we not family? And don’t give me any bullshit about blood. You know what I mean.”
I did know, and I appreciated it even when he was being a pain in the ass. And even if—after all these years—the vast difference in what “family” meant to the Ruizes versus what I’d grown up with still caught me off guard sometimes. But in a good way.
Even if it was also sometimes an annoying as fuck way.
“North?” Juan pressed, his brow lowering with concern. “You’ve been… preoccupied lately. Dime la neta, do I need to worry about you?”
“No. I promise. I’m fine. I’m good. I’m happy.”
His eyebrows rose higher and higher with every statement I made, until I had to laugh at myself, too—a little ruefully—for how hard I was selling it.
It was still true, though.
Our business was growing at a steady rate, our crews were solid, and I was happy. My relationship with Owen, such as it was, filled up something in my life that even scening at the club never had.
But—not that I’d ever agree it was any of Juan’s business, chosen family or not—it had been a while since I’d gotten off by anything but my own hand.
Months, in fact.
I dug my fingers into my scalp, scrubbing through my hair, and vaguely noted that it was probably time to schedule a haircut. I guess I really had been a bit preoccupied lately.
“See?” he said triumphantly. “That! You do that when you’re frustrated.”
I dropped my hand.
Shit, I had a tell?
“I really am fine,” I insisted. “But I’ll think about the club, okay? You’re right that I haven’t had a scene in a while.”
“In months,” he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest and giving me a look that dared me to deny it.
“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed with a grin, distracted as my phone vibrated in my pocket. “In months. I’ll let you know about this weekend, okay? Just let me think about it.”
He grinned, relaxed and happy again now that he thought he was getting his way.
“Okay,” he said, walking backward toward the door to my office while giving me a pair of cheesy finger guns.
“See that you do. Now, do you want to head down to the courthouse to check into those permits, or do I have to do it?”
“Don’t even try it, brother. That’s all you.”
He muttered a few choice curses in Spanish as he left, and the minute he was out the door I pulled my phone out… with what might have been an embarrassing amount of speed if Juan were still here to give me shit about it.
But he wasn’t, so I didn’t give a fuck.
Owen and I texted every day, multiple times per day, and yet I was still greedy for every bit of contact I could get with him.
And I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was more excited to see the picture of the salad he’d promised he was going to eat today than I was about the idea of putting a pretty boy who would call me Daddy on his knees at the club this weekend and letting him suck my cock, but I also didn’t feel overly invested in figuring it out.
I unlocked my phone and grinned at the expected picture and accompanying text.
Was I also a little disappointed that, as always, the boy had sent me proof that he was following my “eat vegetables every day” rule, but had left himself out of the picture?
Yes.
But a part of me that I also didn’t want to look too closely at was fine with not receiving any selfies from him. Not that I wasn’t curious, but at the same time, I didn’t want to break this fragile but important thing between us by rocking the boat in any way.
I liked having him in my life like this. Hell, I loved it. And if the sweet boy didn’t know the name of my company, even though he knew all about the projects we were working on right now, and I didn’t know which school he was enrolled in, even though I knew his entire class schedule.
Well, that was just fine. It kept a boundary in place that I was sure we were both safer for being on opposite sides of.
And if I ever craved more of him, all I had to do was remind myself that he’d come into my life purely by chance, and would more than likely slowly fade out of it again once he finally met a girl he was interested in.
And if I happened to feel more and more invested every day, to feel closer to him after just a few months than I had to anyone other than Juan, ever…
Well, that was on me.
“I’m a fool, but I’m not giving him up,” I muttered, my thumbs flying over my screen as I sent him a quick reply. “Not until I have to.”
MONDAY 1:22 PM
Proud of me, Daddy?
MONDAY 1:24 PM
Yes, sweetheart. It looks delicious.
MONDAY 1:24 PM
Um, it’s salad? It’s healthy. I don’t think that really goes with “delicious.”
He sent an emoji that had me smiling, even as I shook my head. The boy had definitely not been big on vegetables before I’d… suggested it. And the fact that he ate them daily now, for me, that he’d let me set rules for him and told me he liked it was—
Well, I wasn’t sure what it was, but it definitely had something to do with why I hadn’t been to the club since I “met” Owen.
MONDAY 1:25 PM
Did you convince Tyler to get one too?
MONDAY 1:25 PM
Ha! No. But he did ask the waitress out!
I should be used to smiling this hard since it had been happening for months now, but it still caught me off guard sometimes to realize just how frequently it happened now.
When I told the boy that he was my own personal ray of sunshine, it was the absolute truth.
My fingers hovered over the screen, eager to keep the conversation going a little longer, when something in the photo he’d sent caught my eye.
I zoomed in, my eyes widening.
The front of the restaurant was in the background of the picture, with a backward version of their logo on the window and a bit of the street view visible beyond it.
I’d never been to Wisconsin, so I couldn’t say what it looked like, but I knew what that looked like, and what it looked like was downtown Portland.
But even if that was just some strange optical illusion or a pure coincidence, the artisan pizza logo wasn’t.
I recognized it.
It wasn’t a big national chain; it was a locally owned restaurant that had been written up in the Portland Tribune last year. I remembered, because Juan kept making jokes about something the name rhymed with in Spanish at the time.
Was Owen right here in Oregon? Right here in Portland?
I sat down abruptly on the edge of my desk, my heart pounding so hard I’d have been worried if I wasn’t still too young and healthy for those kinds of concerns. Because for all that Owen occasionally teased me about being old, thirty-five was anything but, as far as I was concerned.
Although it was still fourteen years older than him.
Which had felt like a non-issue when he was out of reach, but now…
“Holy shit,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my mouth while I tried to come to terms with the need to rearrange my entire world view. Or at least, the part of my world that included Owen in it.
Objectively, I wasn’t sure why I was so shocked.
It wasn’t like he’d ever said he was in the midwest. As soon as I’d found out his phone number had a Wisconsin area code, I’d just assumed.
And maybe, if I was being brutally honest with myself, it had even felt safer to get close to him since I’d “known” he was out of my reach.
Not just because he was a straight boy pushing the boundaries of being too young for me, but also geographically, physically out of reach.
Someone who would never want a “real” relationship with me…
even though he lapped up all the Daddying I offered and fulfilled that part of me better than any short-term contract or night at the club ever could.
My phone sounded off with another incoming message, jolting me out of my spiraling thoughts.
MONDAY 1:30 PM
Tyler says she said yes! Ha, but now he doesn’t know where to take her. It must be love since he doesn’t want to just take her out to a club like he usually does with girls.
I almost felt disingenuous sending my reply, but I had to know.
MONDAY 1:32 PM
How about the Hollywood Theatre on Sandy? They have themed movie nights sometimes, along with beer tastings if they’re both over 21.
MONDAY 1:33 PM