Page 36 of Ruthless Daddy
Honest question. Maybe the most important one. I respected her for seeing it.
“I’ve always needed this,” I said. “I need to feel like I matter. Like I’m responsible for someone, for something. It’s not about control. It’s about being needed. If I don’t have that, I start to . . . lose the thread.”
She looked at me, really looked, and I saw the flicker of understanding. There was a kinship there, bruised at the edges. She knew what it was like to need structure or else drift out into the cold.
“I don’t know if I could do it,” she said, honest and hard. “I don’t know if I could even try.”
I said, “You don’t have to answer now.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t if I wanted to.” That surprised a laugh out of me, small and not unkind. It made her lips twitch for a second, and then she buried her face in her hands, elbows on her knees, breathing out slow through her fingers.
I stood up, stamped my feet, tried to look like the cold bothered me more than it did. “Let’s go home. It’s freezing out here.”
She got up without a word. We walked back, side by side, not touching, but not as far apart as before. I felt the distance shrink with every step, even if it wasn’t visible. We crossed a bridge over the river, shadows from the railings striping our faces. She stared down at the ice below, then at the city on the other side, as if she was already seeing the possibilities.
Halfway home, she said, “Would you . . . be able to stop, if I couldn’t do it?”
I thought about it. “Yeah. I could. I’d want to, if it wasn’t right.”
She nodded like she believed me, which was more than I expected.
Back at the apartment, I started making breakfast. It wasn’t hunger, not really—just my hands needing something to do, my body craving the rhythm of prep.
She came in, slower than before, watched from the doorway for a minute. Then she crossed the room and, without ceremony, swung herself up onto the counter next to the sink.
She tucked her knees up, heels balanced on the edge, hands clasped around one ankle. She looked smaller like this. Young. Not a girl, but something you wanted to protect, or at least not fuck with.
I looked up at her, waiting.
She said, “I have three questions.”
I nodded, kept slicing.
She counted them on her fingers. “One: Have you done this before?”
I didn’t dodge. “Once. Years ago.”
“How did it end?”
I laid the blade flat on the board, wiped it clean. “She left. Not because of the dynamic—because I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I wasn’t built for anything long-term.”
She bit her lip, thinking. “Did it fuck you up?”
“Yes,” I said. “But that wasn’t her fault. It was mine.”
She nodded, like she expected that.
She said, “Two: Do I have to . . . wear a diaper? Act like a kid?”
I said, “You don’t have to do a single thing you don’t want to. I won’t even ask. Most Littles find it soothing to let go of their adult personas and inhabit Littlespace. You can look it up, see whether you feel okay about it. But you don’t have to. I don’t mind either way—I just want you to be happy.”
She didn’t say anything, but I could see her cataloging it.
I said, “It’s not about power for me. It’s about being useful. The rest of my life, I’m not allowed to be gentle. This is the only way I can be, and not fuck it up.”
She absorbed that, face blank.
“Three?” I said.
