“Oh my God, you’re the worst,” he said, wrapping himself around me like a monkey. Then he mumbled something else that sounded a lot like “I love you.”
“When we tell people about our hot Daddy hookup weekend in the future, we’ll leave out the part where we forgot how time worked, okay?” I said, tickling him again and pretending I hadn’t heard.
“Youforgot,” he said, giggling again until I was suddenly laughing, too. I should never ignore him when he said he loved me. It didn’t mean anything. Well, it meant everything, but it wasn’tnew. And after all the sexual tension from earlier, and the endless weeks of buildup and preparation that it had taken to even make this whole weekend happen in the first place, and all the impending heartache that was bearing down on me in the future, it felt really good just to lay here and be silly with my boo.
Myboo.
Except… he wasn’t really mine, was he? Not in the way that mattered the most. Not in the way we’d been pretending.
It was going to be a hard adjustment to go back to the way things were, but even though we were both still naked, maybe we should start now. Isaac had Roman now, so he wasn’t going to need me to fill the same role in his life. He’d have someone else helping him make decisions and comforting him, consoling him, adoring him.
Wait, no. Daddy—Roman, I meant—was leaving.
But would he really leave Isaac? How could anyone leave Isaac? Roman didn’t sound like he had a life back in New York that he could easily walk away from, though. Would he try and entice Isaac to move to America with him?
Something crushing landed on my chest, and I rubbed at it desperately, trying to get it off.
Isaac shifted against my side, already half asleep again. “Jules?”
“Nothing, boo,” I lied, shifting over to put a little bit of space between us so I could start to untangle our limbs.
Isaac wouldn’t move to America. But even if he didn’t, hewouldfind another Daddy. He had to. Roman was too perfect… well, a Daddy. Having a Daddy was too perfect.
For Isaac, I meant.
So, I wanted him to have that. I’d evenhelphim have it. Find it. Again. Because he was my best friend,notmy boyfriend.
“Where are you going?” Isaac propped himself up on his elbow, his cowlick bouncing as he cocked his head to the side. “You, um…” He blushed again, looking shy and happy and beautiful. “You don’t have to move if you don’t want to. Cuddling is… nice, right?”
More than nice.
“We should eat, honey,” I said, since there was nothing good that would come from admitting that. “Can’t you smell something delicious?”
Isaac blushed hard, hard enough that I could see it even in the darkened room, and I tsked.
“I don’t mean cum, you dirty boy.”
“I wasn’t…!”
“You were,” I said, because he was, and he was right. The room smelled like a sex den, and if I stayed in here naked and warm with my sweet, sleepy sugar pop, I would be tempted to forget that we needed to go back to normal. The non-naked kind of normal. “Room service must have come while we were sleeping,” I said, then forced myself to add in an airy wave and make my voice light and casual. “And anyway, we don’t have to pretend to be together, since Roman isn’t around right now.”
Isaac froze, and I hated myself. The way his face instantly fell? I really was a horrible bitch who didn’t deserve anything good in life.
It was for the best, though. I couldn’t be what Isaac needed. We both knew it. It was why we’d never done…thisbefore.
But if he insisted…
“Oh,” he finally said in a tiny voice that stabbed into my heart like an angry queen’s nails. “Right. That’s… of course we… we don’t have to. Pretend, I mean.”
He wasn’t insisting. Of course he wasn’t. I was right. And my boo never pushed for what he wanted, anyway. That was why he had me, to push for him. To make it happen. Wasn’t that why we were here with Daddy Roman in the first place?
“Sweetie,” I started, because I was right about everything, but I couldn’t stand it. I was going to cave.
Except then Isaac twisted the knife in deeper by asking, “Do you think Roman might want to see us again, though? You know… after this weekend? He… he seems to really like us.”
He really did. Not just the sex, either. Helikedus.
And maybe my boo needed something to cling to, even if it did take him to America.
