Page 83 of Coiled Tight

soft_and_sweet

Oh, okay?

We could… Maybe we could talk

I’m scared but I’ve missed you and I don’t know if it’s fair but like I deserve closure if nothing else, y’know

My therapist said that today

waffles_and_whips

Okay

Now there was no way I’d fall asleep, but oh well. I gulped, my fist pressing against myracing heart.

It would be a problem for Daddy.

Fuck.

It would be a problem for me, too, because tears sprung to my eyes, and that was never good.

I hated crying.

“Come here, baby boy.”

Where had he come from? I frowned, parted my mouth open so that I couldask, but then he had his arms wrapped around me, and he pushed me close to his chest, and suddenly, words left me and there were no strings holding me uptight.

But Daddy was there.

Hewas.

The tears flowed as the realization hit. It hit deep.

He was there. I had someone there. For me. No more fantasizing about it on forums. No more struggling with myself and my straying thoughts with no one to talk to.

It was probably too fast to lean this hard on someone. I wasn’t stupid. Or reckless. Was anyone with my levels of anxiety ever reckless? Was it even possible? If I were a therapist, I think I’d make it so that if someone was reckless, it would be a surefire way to discard anxiety as a diagnosis.

I was no therapist, though.

It was for the best, too. Well, I didn’t know if it was, but given how scattered I could be in my own therapy appointments? That didn’t sound like a great endorsement.

“I love you, Daddy.”

His breath hitched. He had me so pressed to him, it was impossible not to notice it. My skin broke into the warmest goosebumps.

It was silly, but catching a Daddy off guard?Saúl, to be exact?

Almost as good as the hours we spent in the sunroom.

“I love you, baby boy.”

thirty

cam

Was I already breaking the rules? It was Saturday, and my day off, and I remembered Saúl had said my days off had to be focused on Little-time, and yeah, that sounded so good it made me tear up again. But instead, I was following him along on Mercury while he went over the fences of the horses’ habitat because one of the volunteers had mentioned there were areas where it had lifted after a storm when we were away.

In my defense, yeah, I could’ve been chilling on my own, but the interest to do that now that I could do it with someone? Yeah, it was not there. Besides, I had things on my mind, and that meant bothering Daddy with them before they got worse because I was an expert at turning everything into a big, bad, scary monster.