Page 22 of Coiled Tight

“Bye??”

“Cam.”

There was no hate in his voice. Why wasn’t there hate in his voice?

I still didn’t look, obviously. My lips pursed of their own accord. Ants crawled up my legs, and I took a step back. I needed to sit down, or to curl up somewhere, but that would only make me look more pathetic, and I didn’t want to keep?—

“Cam, what is this?”

“I told you I’m not answering questions.”

“I’m not asking about ABDL,” he retorted, and my brain screeched. He couldn’t have been gone for more than what? Ten minutes? Twenty? He’d already had time to research? How the fuck did people just function so efficiently? “Look at my arm. What do I have on my wrist?”

“Um.”

I blinked fast. Everything screamed at me to recoil, butSaúl’s voice was steady and oddly gentle—oddly because I only heard something close to it when he was talking to his horses, but it was actually soothing, and it felt more real than the grumpy version of it? But I had been burned before. People loved tricks to punch you down when you were already at rock bottom.Bottom, heh.

Oh, look, I still had the sense of humor of a five-year-old. Surprise.

“Why?”

Saúl shuffled on his feet. I didn’t know he could do that.

“I don’t want to invade your space more than I already have,” he said. What kind of cowboy spoke like that? “Just look at the wristband, please.”

Ohh.

Right. I got a peek of the black leather around his wrist a few times, but I’d overheard that he sold leather jewelry and stuff at the cowboy convention thingies he went to, so I hadn’t thought much of it.

Fine, I might’ve thought it was hot and that I would totally melt and die if he ever crafted something for me, but that was the kind of thought that stayed in the fantasy realm where it belonged, and we didn’t talk about it.

Now, though, he had rolled up his sleeve, and he had turned it around, so I could see the…Ooooh.

“Is that?—”

Not only kinksters used a triskelion to flag what they were into. Ask me how I knew. Besides, my throat was still parched dry, and my chest hurt from how fast my heart was going, and I really, really didn’t want to deal with the disappointment—or the hope—that would come from making any assumptions.

It had the three dots that the regular Celtic triskelions didn’t have, though.

“Yes.” Saúl cleared his throat.

Was it embarrassment lacing his voice now? It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t the one who had all but flashed his boss.

Besides, even if he was kinky… Well, that would explain why he knew what ABDL stood for—Adult Baby Diaper Lover—but not everyone who was kinky was into age play, and they definitely weren’t all into diapers. Hell, not even all Daddies were into it. There was a lot of discourse around it everywhere, which was exhausting, mind you, but it was also a whole other conversation, and I just wanted to crawl up and disappear, not rehearse dozens of Tumblr posts in my head.

“I can still be out of your hair in an hour,” I resolved. Things hurt less when I just powered through. “I mean, I just have one suitcase, so I’ll finish stuffing everything into it, and then I’ll walk to… Actually, can I take one of the trucks to the back gate? I think I can still remember the way to the bus stop, and I have more than enough money, so I’ll be okay, and you don’t have to worry?—”

“Cam.”

I huffed.

He was going to use up my name at this rate.

I kept my eyes trained on the floor regardless. Maybe it was for the best that this was coming to an end. There was dust on the floor, while the rest of the house was spotless.

I wasn’t a good roommate.

Saúl deserved someone who could pick up the slack and care for house rules and shit like that. Maybe if I packed up extra fast, I’d do some cleaning. The mirror had gotten a bit messy because I never learned how to use wipers, but there had to be products for it.