Page 41 of Declan
“Yeah, you are. You are way more confident than they are.”
“This isn’t computing, Declan. You told me you get hit on all the time.”
“Well, yeah, I do. But usually, it’s when my brothers take me out, and it’s pretty fucking obvious we’re rich. They see dollar signs when they look at me, and it’s easy to play that game. They’re all the same, and they all want the same thing from me.”
“Money.”
“Money,” he echoes. “But when I —.”
We’re interrupted by the waitress as she puts down our drinks. “Be right back with your food.”
I doctor my coffee, adding a bunch of creamers and sugar, taking a sip, and letting the creamy goodness flow through me as I ponder his words. What must it be like to know that people are only after you for your money?
“Did the women you dated before, the gamer girls, know you were rich?”
“Not at first. When they found out, it got...weird, usually.” Color rises on his face. “Honestly, that was usually when we’d break up. I’m not sure why, but when they found out about my brothers and me, they either stopped returning my texts and calls, or they changed.”
“Changed how?”
“Like they’d dress differently. Start asking me to take them to those trendy restaurants…changed.”
“You didn’t enjoy going to those places?”
“Not really, but I would be happy to take them. But they’d spend the whole time looking around at the rich people and talking about how much everyone’s worth.” He frowns. “There weren’t many like that, honestly. Only two. Those were easier to handle than the women who just blew me off. I’m still not sure why that happened.”
“Because they thought they were getting a simple gamer boyfriend. Not a billionaire with eight brothers and a pretty serious day job. Maybe it was a bit of false advertising.”
He leans back in the booth, crossing his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t pretending to be anyone else.”
“Maybe not, but you only showed them one part of you. The geeky, video game-playing guy. When it was time to show them more, maybe they felt a little deceived. Maybe the world they want to live in isn’t the same as yours.”
“We live in the same world, Cara.”
A laugh bursts out of me at that statement. “Do you honestly believe that? Seriously? Because no, you definitely don’t live in the same world as the rest of us.” Has he truly forgotten how the rest of us live? With our car payments and jobs and scraping by on minimum wage.
Ok, I don’t scrape by anymore. But I did for a lot of years.
The arrival of breakfast interrupts our conversation, and we both dig in. And the food is fucking spectacular. Fluffy pancakes, greasy breakfast sausage, and a mound of fluffy scrambled eggs. We stuff our faces, but I throw in the towel before Declan. Smiling, I push my plate closer to him.
He swallows his bite and frowns. “That’s yours.”
“I’m full. It’s ok. Finish it.” He reaches for it, then pulls back, looking torn. “Oh, my god. Declan, just eat it! What is the problem?”
“I don’t want you to be hungry.”
“I’m full. I promise.” When he doesn’t look convinced, I remind him. “Besides, I'm sure we’ll be back in here for lunch in no time.”
Finally, he seems satisfied and digs into the not-small portion left on my plate. There’s something in that interaction that I can’t put my finger on. Something that feels bigger under the surface. Besides caring that I had enough, which is sweet, it seems deeper somehow.
Though maybe it’s not that deep. A man who grew up in foster care might know a thing or two about being hungry.
I watch him plow through the plate, looking like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.
“I don’t remember you eating quite this much...before.”
He swallows and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “It’s Jonas’s fault. He made a stupid bet with me, and I started working out. Then I kinda got into it and started lifting with Colton. Now I’m always hungry.”
“The Mohawk bet?”
