Page 74 of Tender
Miles jolted. “Wait, what? You didn’t?—”
“I’m your Daddy. I’ve played the role from time to time in bed or in clubs with strangers who didn’t really mean all that much to me. I know I’ve wanted it for a long time, but I didn’t realize what it meant—not entirely—until you came along.”
Is this where Emmett realized it wasn’t what he wanted at all? He held his breath.
“I’ve been in this marriage for a long time. What I have with Cosimo—it’s routine. It’s simple only because it’s been our way of living for over twenty years. I forgot how hard it was at the beginning. I forgot how much I had to learn and grow with him until I got it right all the time.”
Licking his lips, Miles lifted his gaze from Emmett’s lips to his eyes. “I’m sensitive to being rejected or dismissed. It’s probably something clinical. I never did get enough therapy. I aged out of the system, and I’ve been on shitty student insurance ever since. I’m still working through a lot.”
Emmett looked sad. “I know.”
Miles appreciated that while he knew Emmett wished he could have done something for him, he didn’t voice it because that wasn’t realistic. Emmett hadn’t been in his life before now, and if he’d come along earlier—before Miles was ready to leave Selene—he might be nothing more than his girlfriend’s dad.
And that thought threatened to gut him.
“I don’t want it to be like this forever,” Miles finished.
Emmett’s face softened into a small grin, and he touched the edge of Miles’s jaw. “Oh, my sweet thing. It won’t be like this forever. We’ll find our way. And I’m looking forward to the day you feel safe to tell me that you need something more from me. Or that I fucked up. Because I did,” he added when Miles sucked in a breath to argue. “And I will. That’s just being a person.”
Miles had to agree with that. He understood the human condition. He’d dedicated his entire life to studying the patterns of people—the rise and fall of not just empires, but families and social groups and pieces of society. He couldn’t expect different from himself.
Or from the two men he was falling for.
“I need time with you and Cosimo tonight,” he finally said. “I need to feel wanted. I need to feel like this is all, you know, solid.”
“I can do that. We can do that,” Emmett said. He leaned in and took Miles by the chin, kissing him thoroughly. “Anything you want.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” Miles murmured.
Emmett closed his eyes, looking like he was basking in the honorific. “Thank you, my sweet, sweet thing. With you here, my life feels…” He hesitated.
He didn’t say complete.
He didn’t say whole.
He said, “Worth every painful second it took to get here with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
COSIMO
“How long wasit before I stopped royally fucking up with you all the time?”
Cosimo startled, looking down at his husband who had his head pillowed on his thigh. Emmett had been in the living room with a pillow mostly over his face when Cosimo had gotten home. It was an early day for him which was both unexpected and incredibly welcome.
Home was different now. Not better. Not worse. But being there as much as he could to settle into whatever their new routine was becoming felt…important, he supposed. He wasn’t used to seeing Emmett like this, though.
He’d whispered he had a headache and crawled up to Cosimo the moment he sat down, curling against him. Seeing him like this was rare, and he wondered if it was more than just work stress. He was also surprised Miles wasn’t there taking care of him, but after a long beat of silence, Emmett simply said that Miles was on a long meeting with his advisor and would join them when he was done.
That had been an hour ago, and Emmett hadn’t spoken again until that question.
“I don’t know what you mean, amore.”
Emmett looked up at him. “I know I fucked up a lot when we first, you know, started exploring what you need. I didn’t get it right much. Not at first.”
Ah.
“What happened?”
