Page 79

I swiped away the message notification on my screen and pulled it up to review, my eyes skimming through it and, not surprisingly at all, finding no surprises.

It was everything I remembered, everything Colby had been so careful to stick to on his end—no overnights, no renewals, no expectations beyond his graduation date.

And no answers for me, either.

On paper, the agreement was airtight, just the way I’d designed it. But maybe the problem was that I didn’t really know what question I was trying to ask.

Or simply hadn’t yet found the balls to admit it to myself.

I stared at the screen, my cursor blinking like it was waiting for me to make a move. Taunting me. Daring me.

Fuck it. Yes. I wanted more. I wanted to keep what we had going. I wanted… more of the way we’d become, and less of the way the contract was written.

I was pretty sure I wanted to be Colby’s Daddy after all.

But could I even do that long distance?

No, the real question was, would he want to?

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, abruptly spinning my chair away from my desk and staring blindly out the window.

The boy was only twenty-one. He wasn’t going to want to settle for something like that. He had his whole life ahead of him. He’d agreed to something temporary , and he’d only agreed to that much because he’d needed financial support to finish out his degree.

But I hadn’t gotten where I was in life by being a quitter… although I guessed it could be argued that romantic relationships were the one area of my life where that wasn’t true lately.

But if so, Colby was worth taking a risk for.

If I could just figure out how.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, Ellison, fucking think.”

If this had been a business problem, I’d already be outlining next steps. Mapping variables. Testing solutions. It was what I did. And sure, maybe this wasn’t business, but my heart felt too full and too fragile to navigate blind.

I just needed logic. Structure. A plan.

I spun my chair back around and grabbed a legal pad off the corner of my desk, then flipped to a clean page and drew a line down the middle.

I labeled one side BOSTON and the other SEATTLE, then started listing out everything I knew.

Colby’s goals, dreams, and post-grad employment options.

What I could offer. Whether I could convince him to move. Whether I should .

Pros and cons. Benefits and drawbacks. Challenges and opportunities for him if he stayed here versus moving to the west coast with me. But halfway through scribbling out the fifth pro under “freelance in Boston” and circling it like an idiot, I gave up and tossed the pen down, frustrated.

Frustrated, but definitely not ready to give up. Not on Colby.

I opened a blank document on my laptop. If logic wasn’t getting me anywhere, maybe language would. Terms. Structure. An actual proposal, and fuck what I’d originally had him sign stipulating no amendments to the contract.

I started typing.

Amendment 1: Term extension negotiable—dependent on graduate’s relocation preference

Monthly stipend subject to increase based on cost-of-living adjustment.

Clause 5.2 revised—overnights permitted at either party’s discretion.

Jesus. It read like a rental renewal.

I took a deep breath. This wasn’t a contract problem. This wasn’t something I could fix with stipulations and incentives. I didn’t want to renegotiate terms.

I wanted to tell Colby I wasn’t ready to give him up yet.

I sat there for another few seconds, staring at the blinking cursor as I remembered Colby’s voice, brittle and hurting, when he’d referred so snarkily to the bonus clause in our existing contract.

“So I get a prize at the end, huh?”

Christ. This wasn’t what he needed.

Hell, it wasn’t what I needed, either.

I closed the file and dragged it into the trash.

I needed an outside perspective. I needed to talk to someone who’d see through my bullshit, and call me on it.

Someone who already had, many times before.

I snorted softly, shaking my head as I pulled out my phone and tapped a name I rarely used anymore—Julian West. My ex-husband’s twin brother, and through some convoluted chain of circumstances that I still couldn’t claim to understand, still my friend.

A friend who’d had a front-row seat to the implosion of my marriage to Jonathan.

My stomach tightened as the call connected, but there was no time to second guess myself. It had barely made it through the first ring before Julian picked up.

“Well, well. It lives!”

I laughed despite myself. “You’re one to talk.”

“Takes one to know one. What’s going on? You need me to fly out and handle a permit fight for you?”

“No, it’s… nothing work-related.”

That got a pause. The shift in tone was subtle, but there. “You’re not calling about my brother, are you?”

“No,” I said, a little bit shocked to realize that the question didn’t faze me at all. I felt… nothing. No more anger. No hurt. No regret.

I guess I was actually over him.

But apparently, I still wasn’t over the aftershocks, since I had no fucking clue what to do about Colby and I was pretty sure that stemmed from years of protecting myself after things went south with Jonathan.

“Huh,” Julian said after a moment. “It sounds like you really mean that. So, what’s up then? Is the Seattle project still on?”

“Yeah, of course it is. But I told you, this isn’t about work.” But it was about the move to Seattle… sort of. I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It’s about a boy I met here in Boston.”

“One of your sugar babies?”

“Yep.”

“The same one you mentioned back in December? The one who had nothing to do with our conversation, but who you still somehow managed to bring up three times in one phone call?” he asked, sounding a little gleeful.

I closed my eyes, but couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. “That’s him. His name is Colby.”

Julian whistled low under his breath. “Well, shit. And since I can hear you smiling over there, this isn’t another…”

Fuck-up.

Disaster in the making.

Total implosion, like the end of my relationship with his brother had been.

Julian is tactful enough not to say any of that, but I confirm it anyway.

“Not at all. The opposite. It’s a good thing. Well, I think it is. But fuck, Jules. I don’t know what to do, because the Seattle project is still on, and I’m leaving in less than a month while his life is here.”

Julian hums thoughtfully. “But you want to do something. That’s interesting, my brother from another mother. Tell me everything.”

So I did.

Not every detail, I wasn’t about to betray my boy’s privacy, but enough. All about Colby. The terms of our agreement. The contract’s rapidly approaching expiration date.

How much he’d come to mean to me.

How he’d broken down last night… and how I’d done everything I could to settle him without ever really asking what the problem was.

Frankly, it was gut-wrenching. Hearing myself say it out loud just drove home all the more how I’d let the boy down.

I hadn’t asked him what was wrong. I’d assumed I’d known—school, stress, life—but I hadn’t asked . Maybe because a part of me had worried that the answer might be me.

When I finally finished, Julian didn’t say anything for a second. Then, “So basically, the boy’s cracked open your ribs and found himself a place inside your cold, scarred-up heart… and your plan is to pick up and fly across the country, leaving him behind?”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “You always this dramatic?”

He snorted, and now I was the one who could hear him smiling. “Only when I’m right. But seriously, what’s your plan here, Grant?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It’s complicated.”

In other words, I didn’t have a plan.

“It’s not,” Julian replied instantly. “You’re just scared.”

My hackles went up. “Hey now, that’s not?—”

“You are,” he said, cutting me off, voice calm. “You’ve been scared of letting anyone in ever since my brother fucked you over, and now you’re scared again. Different reasons, but same outcome if you let yourself end up alone again. Don’t vanish on this boy. Not if he really matters to you.”

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. “He matters more than anything.”

“Grant,” Julian said, quieter now, but firm, like he was about to tell it like it was. In other words, exactly what I’d called him for. “You feel something for this boy. You’ve already made the leap. Now you’re just scared to look down.”

After a long beat, I blew out a breath. He wasn’t wrong. “So what the hell do I do?”

Julian laughed, a rustling sound on his end of the line—probably him leaning back in that overpriced ergonomic monstrosity he swore helped his back. “You already know. Don’t make me say it.”

I huffed out a breath. Got up from my desk. Paced back toward the kitchen and leaned on the counter where Colby and I were supposed to have had our nice dinner last night, staring at the two place settings I hadn’t been able to bring myself to clear.

Julian waited me out.

“Okay,” I finally said. “Here’s the truth.

I don’t want to let him go. I’ve known that for a while, but last night…

it hit different. He wasn’t just stressed or tired.

He was hurting. And I couldn’t fix it. I still don’t even know exactly what was wrong.

What if there was more going on in his life than I realize?

I can’t just ask him to pick up and move! ”

“Why not? You don’t think him being that upset last night might have had something to do with the whole contract-ending-soon, never-seeing-you-again thing?” Julian asked dryly. “That maybe if you’re feeling this strongly, he’s caught some feelings, too?”

“Fuck, I really hope so,” I said far too honestly.

“Hallelujah!” Julian joked, the fucking drama queen.

“Don’t get too excited. I’ve already reviewed the contract. There’s no clause for renewal. No way to extend it.”

Julian snorted. “Right, because you wrote it that way. You , Grant. This isn’t a set of commandments etched in stone.”

I let out a half-laugh, already walking back toward my desk.

“No, I know. And I was working on figuring out a new set of terms to propose to him. I just… I need to figure out what Colby actually wants after graduation. He said he was considering freelance, maybe design work at a small firm. Something flexible. I started a list before I called you.”

Julian groaned. “Of course you did.”

“Hey now, I’m trying to be realistic here!

If he came with me to Seattle, I’d need to set him up for success.

Not just financially, but professionally.

I could bring him on as a paid assistant at the firm, maybe set up mentorship through our branding department.

Or, if he wants time off after school, I could cover that too. Whatever he needs.”

There was a pause on the other end. One filled with judgement, I could just tell.

“Just spit it out. Where’s the flaw? What am I missing?”

“It’s a great plan, Grant,” Julian said, deadpan. “Very thorough. Very solid. But you seem to have forgotten the first step.”

I froze. “What?”

He laughs. “You need to tell that boy that you’re in love with him.”

My throat went dry. “I?—”

Nope. That’s all I had. The rest of the words got stuck somewhere in the middle of my chest.

“You don’t really want to offer him another contract,” Julian went on, softer now. “You want to offer him your heart.”

Well, fuck. Julian really had cut right through all my bullshit. But he was wrong about one thing. I didn’t have to offer it.

I could still see the boy in my mind’s eye—head tipped back in laughter over something dumb I’d texted, his curls mussed from sleep and sticking up in every direction, the way his fingers curled into my chest when he fell asleep on me in the middle of a movie, like it was the only place he felt safe.

Colby already had my heart. I really was in love with the boy.

He’d cracked something open in me, filled it up and finally healed it, just by being exactly who he was—brave and sweet and stubborn and so damn earnest that it made my chest ache.

And I didn’t just want to take care of him, or be his Daddy, or wake up next to him in the mornings instead of waking up to a cold bed.

I absolutely did want all those things, but I wanted more, too.

I wanted forever.

Now, I just needed to follow the rest of Julian’s advice and tell Colby that, too.