Should have got that the first time. Too bad it’s not 180. Might add a bonus to your allowance this week.
Hopefully, I’m hiding how much I’m seething as Ward lets out asqueeand slams into me with a hug, laughing and jumping up and down.
I hook an arm around him so I can hold him still and kiss him. His 179 on the LSAT is better than good, goddammit.
It’s one point shy of a perfect score.
The first time Ward took it, he scored 172, which is damned good. Better than my 168, which is also above average.
For his father—an attorney who only scored 165 on his best try—to promptly shit all over Ward for not doing better than that.
It crushed Ward and had him crying himself to sleep in my arms that night.
We received our latest test scores this morning.
Ward has been fighting back tears all day, ever since he sent the text to his father about his score.
I suspect even if Ward had scored 180 his father still would have slammed him for something.
Every time Ward returns to Georgia to visit his family, he comes back…broken.
In bad ways.
Worse every time.
And every time, it takes me longer to build him back up again.
It angers me that I can’t do anything about preventing it from happening in the first place, but Ward’s fear that his father would retaliate against me in some way is the only thing holding me back. Ward’s fear on my behalf.
I don’t want to be yet another stressor on my boy, so I try to say as little as possible about it.
At least over the last six semester breaks, Ward was able to convince his father to let him stay in the city, so he could study, and the guy footed the bill for us.
Well, he didn’t know it was forus. He thought it was for Ward.
Alone in our efficiency apartment, we would pretend Georgia didn’t exist and I avoided mentioning anything about our future so I didn’t trigger Ward’s anxiety.
Times like this, however, remind me that the demon haunting my boy isn’t one I can easily exorcise from his soul. Not when the fucker’s rich, and neck-deep up some serious GOP dark-money taints.
“Dinner’s on me!” He grins. “Sushi?”
This is one of the few ways Ward gives a silent and secretfuck-youto his old man, by spending his family’s money on New York sushi, because of course his parents provide him money for expenses.
I slide his cell phone into my back pocket so I can monitor it for him tonight. Then I reach up, cup his face in my hands, and slowly kiss him in the way I know turns his brain off. He lets me do all sorts of things to him that we discovered turn his brain off—and turn our cocks on.
My favorite, though, is kissing him like this. No amount of spankings or other torments sadistic or sexual can compare to sharing the same breaths with him, tasting him, knowing that we’re connected in this moment.
When I finally lift my lips from his, I smile at the way his blue eyes have gone soft and slightly glassy, meaning I’ve nearly got him in subspace. It’s his mental safety zone where even his father cannot find him.
Only me.
Mine.
My heart skips and trips as I don’t move my hands. He’d stand here all night with me, like this, if I held him here.
“I love you, baby,” I whisper. “You did fantastic. I’m very proud of you.” It’s the same thing I told him this morning when he cried happy tears in my arms before reality pierced his bubble and he realized he’d have to tell his father about his test score.
Since I’m the only one in his life who will praise him, I make sure to do it as often as possible. Multiple times a day. Trying to build him up faster and stronger than his father can tear him down.
