Page 2 of Xavier

Damn, I missed him.

Horribly.

Since coming back from Louisiana, I’d had the worst withdrawals from him. Not just because of the lack of sex—which we were more than making up for through texts and phone calls every night—but because I missedhim. Hispresence. His energy. His body wrapped up in mine as we fell asleep together.

I’d only had such a short window with him in Louisiana that even now, almost ten months later, it still didn’t feel like enough. Our time difference made it complicated to connect with each other at decent times, and our jobs weren’t helping that either.

As proud as I was of him for passing his exam and getting into the field of his dreams, I fucking wanted to rip him right out of Louisiana and smuggle him back here to be with me.

Would I ever tell him any of this shit?

Fuck no.

He didn’t need to be worrying about my slow spirals into insanity while trying to deal with his own full plate.

Besides, most nights after we said goodnight and hung up, I was good. It was only those few times throughout the month, those one or two nights, that were absolutely fucking diabolical on my mental health. And waking up to an empty bed on top of that when I finally came to was worse than if I just simply jumped off the nearest roof.

While still looking down at my phone, an alert went off that made my heart lurch in my chest.

REMINDER: Dex dinner

Oh, fuck.

Checking the time, I spun on my heel and ran to my truck.

CHAPTER 2

Xavier

“You’re late,”was all my son said to me the second I sat down in the booth across from him. He had his nose already buried in his menu, a drink half gone with pearls of condensation rolling down the side of the glass and creating a pool on the table.

Wincing, I slipped my jacket off of my shoulders and shoved it into the corner of my side. “Sorry, kid. I got over here as fast as I could.”

He wasn’t looking up from the menu as I talked. Not even a subtle shift in his brow that indicated he was listening to me. Just his eyes darting over the menu while he scanned it, looking for something to eat.

I loved my kid a lot but sometimes he was difficult to read. Actually, scratch that. He was like a fucking dictionary in a foreign language and I was the idiot trying to translate it.

“Dex?”

He sighed and looked up. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

His face finally faltered, going from that neutral expression to an actual frown. I knew he was upset, even if I was only a couple minutes late. We’d been working on this relationship between us for a couple of months and it seemed that the more I got to know him, the more walls he’d been throwing up lately.

My therapist was adamant that it was Dexter’s way of trying to gain control of the situation. I’d been out of his life for a long time, no thanks to his mother. But the logistics of that weren’t all that important.

At least not at this stage.

He was a child still, even at the cusp of turning eighteen, and his view of the world was still small. Giving him the space to express himself, no matter if it was happiness or disappointment at me, was what was going to be the thing that would help him in starting to trust me.

Ijust had to trust the process and not be impatient.

But fuck was it hard not to reach over and pull him into a tight hug and promise him the damn world. He was my pride and joy, my baby, my everything. Losing him had been what hurt the most back then.

The PTSD from the military had only compounded my depression and spiraled me into a person that I barely recognized whenever I got the courage to look in the mirror. A year ago, I’d been a man that was incapable of being there for my son, no matter how much I’d tried to convince myself otherwise.

Here, today, I wanted to prove that old me wrong.

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