Page 39 of Worth the Wait

“You need to know I didn’t know who I was getting involved with when it happened. I just found out.”

“That’s ominous.”

Jack glanced up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. He looked around his apartment, a tiny one bedroom in New York that he paid an arm and a leg for that barely contained the life he’d built for himself then he shifted his attention to Verity.

“It’s Callum,” he blurted.

Verity blinked a few times. “Callum?”

Jack nodded.

“Callum, the bartender at Rapture, Callum,” they said, not asking, already knowing their Callum was also Jack’s Callum.

Verity rubbed their lips with their fingers and clenched their teeth together in a grimace that looked a lot like an uncomfortable and forced smile.

“Huh.” Verity shrugged their shoulders then nodded as if having a conversation with themself that Jack wasn’t a part of.

“Huh?”

Verity pushed out their lip in thought. “I just never pegged him for a sub.”

“You better have never pegged him at all.”

Verity held their hand to their chest. “That’s such a good line, Daddy, it should have been mine.”

Jack swatted their hands away and faced Verity with a hopeful look on his face.

“He’s mad at me because I went MIA in the hospital. He’s not really talking to me right now and I think it put a lot of things in perspective.”

“And what’s the forecast?”

“He doesn’t want to be involved long distance.”Anymore, Jack amended silently. Callum was far more willing to admit the way he felt for Jack had escalated, and Jack was…well, Jack was scared of losing what he had now by reaching for more.

“That is an issue, you know. All those flyover states between here and there.”

“Believe me, I know.” Jack leaned back into the couch. “The last time we talked, he told me that he needed to think about things, but even before I’d gotten sick I told him I would plan for an August trip so we could meet.”

“That’s not that far,” Verity pointed out.

“I know.” Jack sighed, taking stock of his apartment again. The flat-pack entertainment center he’d put together in the hallway because he didn’t have enough mobility in the living room to get the long pieces of pressboard aligned, his tiny kitchen with the sink shoved into the corner beside the rare, full size refrigerator.

A life with Callum wouldn’t be a bad life, but what about when Callum bored of him? Matured and didn’t want a Daddy hovering around him anymore. His brain and heart were at war and his cock kept jumping in too. Jack didn’t want things to change, but didn’t want to go forever withoutknowing…

“But.”

“But I don’t think I want to wait that long,” Jack admitted, tracing the parquet pattern of his floor with his eyes. That was such a New York thing, and he used to love it but didn’t even care anymore. He didn’t want New York things; he wanted Callum things.

“Come to LA with me then,” Verity said, as if it were that easy.

“One, that’s ridiculous. Two, I’m slammed at work. I can’t get any time off approved until August anyway.”

“No, I meancometo LA with me,” they repeated with new emphasis.

Jack pulled back and scrunched his eyebrows together in doubt. “I can’t just move to LA, Verity.”

“Of course you can.”

“So, what, then? Give a short notice and find someone to sublet and just move across the country?”