8. Clyde
CLYDE
When Posy told Stephen that I was her only daddy, the atmosphere changed. Stephen’s entire demeanor lightened up. He’d been friendly throughout the entire meal, but also, like he was carefully choosing his words. But after she said that, he relaxed a little.
His fox was closer to the surface than I’d seen him before, and not in a way that he was pushing at Stephen to do something or an attempt to try to take his fur. The impression I got was that he was curious and wanted to be present.
Stephen told Posy that she was lucky to have me but didn’t ask any more questions about our situation.
And I didn’t offer any answers because the answers he’d need to know were ones that Posy didn’t need to revisit.
She didn’t need to hear me talking about how her parents were gone or why they were gone or how I became her dad out of that mess.
He knew I wasn’t mated and had a child, and that had to be enough for now. At least that was what I’d have assumed.
Did he think I was hiding a mate? Or that I’d rejected him?
Or maybe I was like the few shifters who took the divorce route after living in the human world for too long and forgetting our ways and opting for human connections over shifter ones?
He’d have scented that Posy was a full shifter.
She was at that age where it was no longer in question.
But that didn’t mean her parents were mated.
They had been, but for all he knew, I was her bio dad.
I wanted to know exactly what he was thinking, and there was no way to ask. Not here in public and certainly not in front of Posy.
The main thing I needed to know was if he scented me as his. He mentioned how good the food smelled, so he wasn’t disabled and without a sense of smell. He would know I was his by now. Right?
My wolf begged me just to announce our mate status. And it wasn’t until I insisted that it wouldn’t be good for Posy that he fell back enough to let me feel like I was in control again. He was going to be a butt until Stephen wore my mark.
Please let him one day wear my mark.
We went back to talking about school and different kinds of pancakes, about drawing and favorite colors. The entire time, the conversation we needed to have was on the back burner.
“And I think I should get a dog.” Posy looked back and forth between the two of us as if he had any say in it at all. I mean, if he wanted to, he could have full say, but she couldn’t know that. Could she?
“And what do dogs equal?” I asked.
She put her fork down. “Responsibility, Daddy. I know. They require responsibility.”
I’d considered indulging her more than once, but with our schedule, it wasn’t fair to the little fur baby. Our best bet would be waiting for the cat distribution system to do its job. And if we were meant to be cat parents, it would. That was how things worked.
“What do you like about dogs?” Stephen asked.
He didn’t realize the can of worms he’d opened. And she went on and on about everything, from their looks to their intelligence to how they played. Neither of us could get a word in edgewise, which was good because I didn’t trust myself not to say something I shouldn’t in present company.
“You know, if you have a dog, you have to be careful of your teddy bears. They like to eat them,” Stephen said.
“Not my teddy bears,” she said. “I will keep them safe.”
She swished her arm like a sword, and I couldn’t even guess what the image going on in her head was. Was she a knight, a princess, a pirate? Could be any of them or something else entirely.
“Don’t forget you promised to send me a picture of your buttons.”
She had gone back to that twice now. “Absolutely. I’ll send a picture, but I have to send it to your daddy because you don’t have a phone.”
“Sally has a phone, and her birthday comes after mine.” This was not the first time Posy had brought that up.
“Just because Sally has a phone doesn’t mean that you’re old enough to have a phone. Every parent makes their own decisions.” Stephen was really good at this.
I’d honestly seriously considered caving on the phone thing after what happened in the library, but quickly realized it wouldn’t have changed that situation. And it opened up a whole bunch of other potential issues. It was best for her to wait. Probably. I still wasn't sure.
My wolf would go back and forth between listening to the conversation and pushing me to mark the omega already.
Had we been home, I couldn’t have guaranteed my ability to keep him at bay.
And that was part of the reason why I thought a public space would be better than home.
My wolf knew better than to expose us in human places, and that gave me an edge.
Did Stephen’s fox feel the same as my beast? The man was so hard to read.
A couple of times, our feet or our hands had brushed together when shifting in the seat or grabbing a napkin. And I was guilty of allowing it to linger longer than necessary. He froze as I did.
I couldn’t help myself, wanting to believe that maybe he’d felt the pull as deeply as I did, too. Obviously, attraction and a potential mating bond weren’t the same. I wasn’t that foolish. But there was definitely attraction there on both sides. That was a good sign.
As much as I wished that I had the time to talk with Stephen about who we might be to each other, spending time with Posy like this was better. It would make things easier when I had the discussion with her.
She liked him. There was no denying that.
She regaled him with stories, asked about his favorite books, mentioned how cool she thought his button collection was, and explained why math was better than handwriting class.
This meal had been set up because Posy wanted to thank him, and she got that opportunity.
When the waitress came to collect our dishes, she asked us if we wanted pie. None of us did. Did she not see all the sugar she put in front of us already?
“I’m too full to move, Daddy.”
“I can carry your backpack for you,” Stephen offered. And to my surprise, she let him. She loved to be independent and normally would’ve demanded that she do it herself. But with Stephen, she was happy to hand it over.
I watched as they walked side by side with me behind them toward the door. They looked like they belonged together, like they were family, and that caught me off guard. I was going too fast, even if it was only in my head.
Outside, Posy threw her arms around Stephen and thanked him again. It took him a second for him to reciprocate the hug. He hadn’t been expecting it. And then he helped her get her backpack on. Help she didn’t need, but once again...
“Don’t forget the picture,” she said with her sternest little voice.
“I promise I won’t. Thanks for eating with me.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
We lingered there for a few minutes longer than we probably should’ve. I’d like to think it was because none of us wanted to say goodbye and I wasn’t the only one with that affliction.
I clicked the fob, unlocking the car door. “Get inside, Posy. Don’t forget to buckle your seat belt.”
“Bye, Stephen.” Posy climbed in the car.
“Clyde, is it okay if I call you?”
“It’s a thousand times okay.” So much for holding back my feelings.
Stephen smiled at that and said he would talk to me soon. He started to walk away, and I wanted soon to be already. It was ridiculous. I was like a teen with their first crush.
I climbed in the car before I did something stupid like calling after him.
“That was so good, Daddy. We should go out again.”
“I think so, too.”
“Do you like him, Daddy?” She had always been blunt.
“Of course I do. He’s a nice guy.”
“Is that why you were staring at him?” Really blunt.
“I wasn’t staring at him.”
“You were. You were staring at him like they do in the movies right before they kiss. Were you going to kiss him, Daddy?” This was so not the conversation I wanted to be having with her.
“Posy, don’t make fun of Daddy.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying you looked like you were in a movie and about to go in for a kiss.”
Thankfully a song came through the speakers that distracted her. As much as I needed to talk about Stephen, it wasn’t about my desire to kiss the man.
Stephen didn’t call me that night as much as I willed him to, and I’d have known if he had.
My phone was with me at all times. If there was any kind of notification, I checked just in case it was him.
And I even went to bed with it by my side.
For all I knew, he wanted to call me because he was looking for a friend and not a mate.
Not knowing whether he scented me as his was killing me.
The next day, on my way to work, I stopped to get coffee. I ran into someone who used to work with me while in line, and we chatted. They were someone I’d always gotten along with. Despite that, it still caught me off guard when he asked if maybe I wanted to grab dinner sometime.
It wasn’t an immediate no. I was polite about it, but I couldn’t go out with him.
And the thing was, I’d probably have said yes in the past. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the guy or that I’d always waited for the perfect match.
Posy always came first, but a dinner out here and there wasn’t a bad thing.
Until now.
Whether or not Stephen recognized our bond, I wasn’t going to be able to date anybody else. Not a human. Not a shifter. Not anybody. Stephen was it for me.
And that realization had me talking with Posy that night. I spent the entire day worried about how to bring it up. I shouldn’t have been. She recognized our connection.
“Daddy, you like Stephen. Stephen likes you. If you want to go kissing, you can.”
“You do know that liking someone just doesn’t mean kissing.” We hadn’t talked in detail about mates, but she knew they existed and they were a kind of family that sometimes grew with children and sometimes didn’t.
“I know, Daddy.”
“And do you know that if he becomes my mate, you will always be my priority?”
“Of course, Daddy. I’m the cutest.”
She really was.
“You should have him over on one of my Miss Caitlin nights. Then you can kiss, and I won’t even giggle.”
What was this child’s obsession with me kissing?
But she was right. That was a good idea. He still hadn’t called me, but he asked to, which I took to mean that he wanted to.
I called his work number hoping that I could find his direct line through the directory.
Last time I hadn’t listened to the voicemail enough to see if there were alternative numbers on there or anything like that.
But I didn’t have to wait to hear the message.
A few rings in, Stephen answered the phone.