Page 49 of Kit
As if reading my thoughts, Parker spoke. “Baby boy, we’re both still learning trust. It takes time to be sure of your position and place with someone you care about. Time to do more than hope for a happy ending. You have to live to get there. That means we have to keep trying. I love being with you. I have no intention of stopping unless you tell me to.”
I pointed at the book that lay open by Parker’s side. “The boy and the dog and the sled and the daddy leading them home gives me so many feelings. It all came bubbling up, Daddy. And look at the Santa in the sky. It’s so magical. But like a fairy tale. It’s not real.”
My eyes got very hot. I hid my face in his neck again.
Parker shifted me in his lap, leaned out and got my sippy cup.
“Here,” he said. “Take a nice long cool drink of juice.” He put it to my lips, tipping it forward.
I swallowed two sips.
“There. Good boy.” He set the cup down.
I snuggled tightly to him.
“I’m glad you need me so much, Kit. I love it. A needy boy. Believe me, you are just what I’ve been missing in my life. And between us, well, can’t we write our own fairy tale? And we can decide what we want, even take control.”
“You can take control, Daddy. You’re good at that.”
“Yes, but you are, too. Daddies take their cues from their boys so they can get things just right.”
“Really?”
“We’re collaborators on this journey, right?”
“I know it’s still so early. But I feel like you’ve been my daddy for a long time. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
“But can we really have our fairy tale, Daddy?”
“Why not? Who says we can’t?”
I lifted my head and looked around at the big living room we’d decorated. It sparkled like a fabled dream. We had done that. We made it happen. And outside in the snow, we had a snowman. And light up trees. Last night I’d sat in Santa’s lap, and he was mine. All mine.
Everything we’d done together in the last few days, added to all my fantasies before Parker had asked me out, had led me to thinking I wanted more than I could have. But Parker was right. Who said we couldn’t have these things? This feeling? Each other? We decided. We had control together.
I was falling in love, and it was precious and wonderful. And it hurt. It was almost too much for me.
Parker put a hand under my chin and forced me to face him. “This is our time, Kit. Ours to make what we want from it. We can make it last as long as we want. But we have to trust each other to get there. Trust the next day and the next to keep us holding on. Do you want that?”
“More than anything, Daddy.”
“Me, too. Do you believe it?”
“Yes. Right now, I believe you.”
“But you hesitated.”
“What if you change your mind?”
“How could I hold such a lovely boy like you in my lap and ever want anything else?” he said.
He leaned down and kissed me. I fell back onto the couch with Parker over me, kissing away all the emptiness and fear, kissing until I was filled up with a wonderland of generosity, empathy, caring, love.
This beautiful man wanted me. Me. The boy with the bad reputation. The boy who had lost his way, thinking he only deserved hard daddies who wanted to use him. Because that’s truly how the last year had been, and why I’d avoided coming to the club as often as I had in the past. I’d believed in my own press, in what others thought, and had lost all belief in myself.
I pushed up and into the kiss.
