Page 85 of Regal Feather
I hummed. My heart had only begun to slow down after panic had seized me when I’d walked into his room and found him a shell of who he was.
When I’d remembered Tony’s words about taking advantage of my experience. It hadn’t felt like I thought it would, not that I wanted to focus on any of that right now.
Santos needed me, not the layers and nuance that came with kink and power exchanges.
“Neither have I,” I pointed out. My mother had brought it up once, when I was in middle school, and I’d frozen during a photo call I barely remembered now. Of course, the headache of a blueblood going to therapy, regardless of how close to the bottom of the line I was, hadn’t been worth the hassle, so here I was. “A bunch of the guys at Plumas go to therapy, though. And they talk a lot about the struggle to find a good one, so I think if it feels like with that psychiatrist, then you just have to find someone else that you click with.”
Santos grimaced. “That sounds exhausting.”
It did.
Nothing I could say would change that fact.
“I’m still proud of you.”
“Why?” he snorted, frown etched in place as if there was nothing I could say that would be more out of whack. “I’m a failure.”
“You aren’t,” I whispered. “I told you, you’re my hero.”
“I’m not a hero.”
“I don’t mean it in a, you served way.” I scrunched my nose. “You just are.”
“Okay.” He stretched his arms over his head before pulling me closer to him. There was a warmth that came with following his lead that had never been there with anyone else. It wasn’t D/s, but it was…serene. The calm that came with knowing what I could give him, what I could do for him. “I’m still sorry.”
“I think that’s fine.” I frowned. I didn’t actually know that it was. I just knew that, whether or not it made me selfish, being here with him felt right. That this really was the way it had always been meant to be. “You and me, right?”
His eyes started to droop, but he nodded before wrapping an arm around me.
It was fine.
Perfect.
It was stillperfect in the morning, even when the doorbell was being pounded by someone downstairs.
I groaned. Santos would usually be up before me, but now not only I had to deal with the resounding sound and the fact that I still wasn’t a morning person, I had to figure out how to get his weight off me before my bladder burst to pieces.
Was that even a thing?
I shuddered.
“Santos?”
No response.
Great.
Well, he needed the sleep. It was a good thing that he was getting some rest. I didn’t think he’d woken up once during the night.
There was no way he wouldn’t end up waking up when the doorbell was replaced with my phone buzzing.
Fuck.
At least I could tell whoever was at the door wasn’t my parents.
Shit.
I blinked hard as I scrambled off the bed, the issue with Santos’s weight forgotten as I accepted the call.
