Chapter 13. Knox
The following day, I met him at the mall.
The suggestion had been his. I told him to choose this time, and he said it was his favorite place to hang out.
I only agreed because was curious what possessed him to drag a man like me, a man who had the resources to have anything delivered, a man who hadn't set foot in a real mall since the Bush administration, into that monument to American adolescence. Maybe he wanted to see me out of my element. Maybe he just wanted a cheap thrill. Either way, I found myself parked between a battered Subaru and a dented Honda Civic, feeling vaguely anthropological, studying people’s behavior.
I shouldn't have been this excited about meeting a boy.
But Florian wasn't any boy. He was totally different from anything I'd ever had.
He wasn't impressed by money or power, never tried to flatter me, and didn't hide his messy, vulnerable side.
He was honest. He challenged me, pushed back just enough to keep things interesting, but when I drew a line, he melted into obedience, trusting me in a way that felt addictive.
With Florian, there were no games, no masks.
Just raw, restless need, and a kind of openness I'd never realized I craved.
He was waiting at the main entrance, on the concrete bench beneath a statue of a dolphin leaping over a cluster of starfish.
He wore ripped jeans, his yellow hoodie, and a pair of white sneakers that looked new.
He was tapping at his phone, thumbs moving at the speed of light, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in concentration.
When he spotted me, he grinned, as if he hadn't spent the last week plotting my emotional destruction one text at a time.
"You came," he said, standing and hoisting his backpack over one shoulder. "I owe Luna ten bucks. I said you'd send a driver to collect me, and she said you’d show up yourself."
"Luna seems smart,” I replied, eyeing him up and down. “Of course I'd come for my boy.”
Florian bit his lip, glancing up at me with his cheeks turning pink. “I just… like holding your hand and walking in public with you. Don’t get a big head about it, though,” he added, trying for a smirk. “Still am not admitting you are my favorite or anything.”
My lips twitched, barely holding back a grin. “That’s alright, little one,” I said, voice low. “You don’t have to admit it. I already know.”
I squeezed Florian’s hand, savoring the sight of him blushing even harder.
He led the way inside, cutting through a swirling mix of toddlers and stroller moms, retirees in matching track suits, and the occasional cluster of teenagers who looked up from their phones just long enough to dart sidelong glances at us. He walked ahead of me, light on his feet.
We made a slow circuit of the place, him ducking into every candy-colored pop-up. In the pet shop, he pressed his nose to the glass of the puppy display, face so rapt with longing that for a fleeting second, I actually considered buying him one.
“Can we get one? They’re so cute, I’d die. He could be at your place, and I'd visit on the weekends.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I need to bring home a yapping, squirming mess of fur.”
Florian shot me a look over his shoulder, lips twitching. “Why not?”
I smirked. “Because I already have one. You. You follow me around, make noise, and can’t sit still.”
Florian’s cheeks flushed but he laughed, loud. “Rude. I’m way cuter than any of those puppies.”
I laughed. “That’s right, you're a cute little puppy. My cute little puppy.”
At one point, we passed a jewelry kiosk.
He stopped, staring at a display of cheap, silver-colored chains, running his finger over a row of ID bracelets.
"My dad had one of these," he said, voice distant.
"He pawned it when I was ten. Said he'd buy it back, but...
" He shrugged, letting the sentence dangle.
I waited for the punchline, the bratty deflection. It didn't come.
"Do you want one?" I asked, already calculating which actual jeweler in the city could deliver a custom bracelet by the end of the day.
He shook his head. "Nah. Waste of money. If you bought me one, I'd probably lose it in, like, a week. Or melt it down for rent," he said, dismissive. I knew it wasn’t true. If I bought him one, he’d cherish it. But I let it pass; I didn’t want him to dwell in thoughts about his dad.
He’d told me a little bit of the situation, and it was bad.
"That's not how silver works," I corrected, automatically.
He shot me a look, blue eyes dancing. "Wow, Daddy. Mansplain harder."
I laughed, the sound startling me with its volume. How could such a broken thing be like that?
He made me buy him a pretzel at the food court but refused to let me pay for anything else.
In the comic shop, when I tried to buy him an X-Men book, he glared at me until I put my wallet away.
At the candy store, he paid for a jumbo bag of gummy bears with three wrinkled singles, then handed me the bag.
"For you," he insisted. "Sharing is caring. "
"You know I don't eat sugar," I said.
"Live a little," he said, popping a bear into his mouth. He chewed with exaggerated relish, lips stained pink.
I took a single blue gummy and pretended to savor it.
“Disgusting,” I said. He giggled, which made it almost worth choking down.
The final stop was the ice cream counter, and he insisted on paying again. When the cones came, he licked his with concentration, letting out a moan.
“Go on, Daddy,” he said, looking at my untouched ice cream. “It’ll be very rude if you don’t eat it, as it was a gift from me, and rude boys get spankings!” he joked. I laughed, loud again. I couldn't seem to keep my composure around him.
“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” I answered back. He pretended to scowl while still devouring his ice cream. We sat at a table in the food court.
We stayed in a rare moment of silence, savoring our treats. I was eating more sugar in that hour than I did in the last decade. When I finished, he looked at me with those longing eyes.
“If you don’t say you liked the ice cream I bought you, I’m going to be very upset,” he said and I chuckled.
"I loved it. Thank you," I said. “You’re too honest for your own good.”
He looked up, a smear of vanilla on his lip. "I get that a lot."
"Most boys I've known are always performing, always calculating what I want to see. But you, you're just... present. Real."
"Uh? You think I'm not faking it?" he asked, looking offended. “I'm doing my best acting!”
I laughed, but I meant what I said. He went quiet again for a second.
"I really want to impress you,” he said. “But I'm not good at pretending. It doesn’t mean that I don’t really, desperately, want you to like me.”
I leaned forward, elbows on the sticky table. “You do impress me, Florian,” I said, keeping my tone light, easy, as if acknowledging it too seriously would make him cry again. “That's why I'm here.”
I’d told myself for years that I didn’t need real intimacy, that I was better off keeping people at arm’s length, especially after a lifetime of being valued more for my money and status than for who I actually was.
But sitting across from Florian in that noisy food court, watching him blush and fidget and try so desperately not to care, I realized with a jolt that none of those careful defenses mattered anymore.
The way he looked at me, open, vulnerable, and completely unaware of the effect he had, made me feel something raw and terrifyingly hopeful.
I couldn’t believe my luck. That, out of everyone, we met.
I kept my tone light, afraid the truth would chase him off, but inside I’d already surrendered.
I wanted him to be mine. Completely, totally, I wanted him to be my boy and allow me to care for him, entirely.