Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
NORTH
Juan leaned against the side of my truck, grinning as he watched the pup Owen had saved hobble around my front yard, her tail wagging happily.
“Canela?”
Cinnamon? I squinted at her, trying to see it. “You really think she’s red enough for that?”
“Eh,” he said, waggling his hand back and forth. “More brown. You’re right. But how about Pepita then?”
“Isn’t that what you call your cousin Josefina?”
Juan shrugged. “Sure, but they’re both short and stubby so…”
I laughed. “You’re lucky I’m a good enough friend not to tell your cousin you said that.”
“What, it’s true!”
“And again, I’ll be a good enough friend not to tell her you said that. You’re welcome.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s still a good name. You guys can’t keep calling her Stumpy. It isn’t right.”
I grinned. As far as I was concerned, anything that made my boy smile was right. “Take it up with Owen. He says she might as well own it. Besides, he insists it’s just a nickname until we find out her real one, so I’m not sure you’ll get very far.”
Juan cocked his head to the side, giving me an assessing look. “Oh? And have you had any responses to the missing pet notifications?”
“Not yet.”
“Hm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He threw up his hands. “What? I just said hm!”
“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.”
No way was I buying the exaggerated show of innocence. He had an opinion, and he wasn’t going to leave until he’d shared it.
He’d come by to return a grill I’d loaned to the Ruizes for his abuela’s ninetieth birthday party, and normally, that would mean the two of us sat around with some beers and shot the shit for a while.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting a little antsy to send him on his way so I could go back inside and check on my boy.
Owen had just taken a call from the insurance adjuster when Juan showed up, and while I knew he was more than capable of handling that—although I’d had to bite my tongue more times than I could count to keep from telling him my opinion of the way his parents treated him like an unpaid property manager—I didn’t want him to have to do it alone.
I didn’t want him to ever have to do anything alone again.
Not if it stressed him out.
Not unless he wanted to.
I had no doubt at all that Juan could tell I was getting a little restless for him to get in his damn truck and head out already. We’d been friends for more than half my life, and sometimes it felt like he knew me better than I knew myself.
But I knew him, too, and not only did he enjoy goading me, he wasn’t going to budge until he said whatever he’d really come to say.
And it definitely wasn’t just “hm”.
His devilish grin proved me right. “I’m just wondering, hermano, when you’re going to admit that the dog isn’t going anywhere and give her a proper name and a permanent home.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Again, you’d have to take that up with Owen.”
“Oh? You have no say over these things now? In your own home?”
“If we keep the dog—” We were definitely keeping the dog. “—it’s his dog. So yes, he gets to decide.”
“Hm.”
“Christ, just spit it out already, brother.”
“What? I just find it interesting that you said if ‘we’ keep the dog.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?”
“Well, now that you mention it, I was also wondering when you’re going to admit that the boy isn’t going anywhere, and give him a proper name and a permanent home.”
Oh, was that what he was getting at?
Juan probably thought it would get me flustered after all the years I’d told him I wasn’t ready for a boy of my own yet, and all the times I’d shied away from anything resembling a real relationship.
The joke was on him, though, because neither of those things made me want to run the other away.
Not anymore.
Not when the boy in question was Owen.
“I’m working on that,” I said, very much enjoying seeing my best friend speechless for once. I gave his truck a pointed look. “And if you’d like to let me get back to trying to make that happen…”
“I’m going, I’m going!” he said, grinning so brightly that I regretted not putting on sunscreen this morning. “And tell my future hermanito that the new water heater won’t arrive for a few more weeks!”
He hopped in his truck, but before he could swing the door closed, I caught it.
“What? What the hell is the hold-up with the water heater?”
Even knowing the insurance company was supposed to reimburse him, I’d ordered it at cost through one of our suppliers… and put it on the company account, with Juan’s blessing.
Anything to make his life a little easier.
Juan grinned. “There is no hold-up. I said tell him. I didn’t say it was the truth.” He winked. “Just consider it my way of helping you ‘work on that’.”
I laughed, shaking my head as he drove away. Of course I wouldn’t lie to Owen about something like that, but I took Juan’s teasing for what it was—his way of giving me his whole-hearted approval of the boy who’d so thoroughly stolen my heart.
The boy who, once I gave Stumpy a few ear scritches and the two of us finally made it back inside, was slumped over the kitchen table with his head in his hands, looking utterly dejected.
“Baby?” I asked, my heart in my throat as I rushed over to him. “What’s wrong?”
He looked up at me, his face pale and his chin trembling. “Um, I think I really fucked up, Daddy.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from automatically denying it. I highly doubted he had, but I also had no clue what was going on, and we all fucked up sometimes.
If it was true, then I didn’t want to give him empty reassurances. I just wanted to help him make it right. But if I was going to do that, first I needed the facts.
Correction; first, I needed him in my arms.
I lifted him out of the chair, easy to do since he was rather, ah, petite. And while I was entirely sure I would have been just as gone for him regardless of his physical appearance, I had to admit that I kind of adored how pocket-sized he was.
I settled him on my lap and cuddled him close. “Tell me, sweetheart.”
He sniffled, but burrowed against me. “The insurance company is denying the claim, and it’s all my fault.”
“What?” I tipped his chin up. “Baby, that doesn’t make sense. That water heater was so far past its prime that it should have been replaced years ago.”
He nodded, his voice shaky as he agreed.
“Yeah, um, that’s kind of what they said, too?
They called it, uh, ‘contributory negligence’.
They said if I’d done the proper maintenance and hadn’t ignored the, um, the warning signs that it was going to break, then…
then it could have been replaced before all that flooding happened, and now they’re not going to pay out any of it.
” He swallowed hard, his face losing even more color.
“I had to tell my parents that, and they’re, um, they’re really pissed. ”
They were really pissed?
I clamped my lips together, breathing out through my nose as my blood surged with the same unprecedented anger I’d felt when Owen had been upset the night I’d left the club to get him.
My boy was one of the most responsible people I knew, but far too willing to accept blame that didn’t belong to him.
And somehow, as his Daddy, I needed to find a way to point that out without saying something I’d regret, something I might mean but could never take back, about his parents.
Because Owen was it for me. I was in it with him for the long haul, if he’d have me. I wanted exactly what Juan had been teasing me about, to eventually give him my name and make my home into our home, from now until death did us part.
And part of that meant that whatever I thought about his parents, I couldn’t afford to alienate them, or to be the one to drive a wedge between them and Owen.
“Daddy?” he asked, his voice quivering. “Um…”
I put my finger over his lips, taking one more breath to calm myself down.
I knew the next thing out of his mouth would have been an apology.
Not because he had anything at all to be sorry for, and definitely not to me, but just because that seemed to be his default setting whenever anything went sideways.
We’d work on that, because my boy deserved better.
But first things first.
“Sweetheart, you did nothing wrong here.”
He tugged on my wrist, moving my finger away from his mouth. “But—”
“No,” I interrupted, leaning in to plant a firm, listen-to-Daddy kiss on his lips.
“You didn’t. I have months’ worth of texts showing that you were not ignoring the warning signs.
You were doing your best on a non-existent budget to mitigate them.
Isn’t that right? The rusty water. The fluctuating temperature. The leaks.”
His eyes widened, his shoulders lowering a bit. “Yes? I mean, yeah, I did my best with all that stuff. Do you really think the insurance company will change their mind if we give them all our texts?”
I almost hated to kill the hope in his eyes, but I would always be honest with him. And right now, I gave zero shits about the insurance payout. What I cared about was my boy’s feelings, and helping him see the truth.
“No, baby,” I said gently. “Those warning signs were ignored, but my point is, not by you. How many times did you tell your parents about them and ask them to invest more money in maintaining their investment property?”
He blinked at me. “Um, you mean, put money in the house account? Yeah, uh, they told me before I moved out here that they’d never do that, though.
Property is way more expensive out here, but they still figured it would be a good investment in the long run if we could keep all the rooms rented out?
But, um, they said I’d have to make sure to cover all the expenses from that.
They couldn’t keep just, like, dumping more money into it. ”
I scrubbed a hand back through my hair, silently reminding myself not to burn bridges here.
“Tell me something, sweetheart,” I finally said. “Did the math work?”
“What?”