Page 13 of A Reluctant Boy Toy
Would he? Nope. Not Stone Wilder.
He’d seemed more bemused than anything when I asked.
“Anyway, I don’t want it to feel like a date. Don’t go all romantic. Get man food.”
“Man food?” she asked. “Like what he feeds the wolfdogs, only on a plate?”
“You know what I mean. Meatball subs. Tacos. Buckets of chicken wings and a vat of beer.Man food.”
“You mean I should just order anything you wouldn’t normally eat in order to impress your date that’s not actually a date. I get it.”
“Shut up.” I drained my glass, rinsed it, and set it on a towel to dry. “I’m going to bed.”
“Sweet dreams, Bast.”
I turned. “Sweet dreams, Molly.”
Once in my room, I stripped, cleaned up, and crawled into bed, conflicted. Why had I left out one minor but oh-so-important detail—Wilder’s not insignificant scars.
It wasn’t like me. I told Molly everything, not only because we were close, but also because she had an uncanny knack for opening me like an upside-down suitcase. Everything always seemed to just fall out.
But this time not only had I hidden an important detail but I’d left the room so she couldn’t pry it out of me, and that was different. That changed things.
So why hadn’t I told her everything?
It wasn’t because Stone's scars mattered to me. Or rather, of course they did. A person couldn’t be damaged like that without excruciating pain, without terror. Without the grief of having to adjust everything around the scars, the way he perceived himself, the way others looked at him orlooked away.
I’d observed Stone for a while, and I’d seen the way the actors especially avoided looking at him. The way they met each others’ gazes behind his back to express sympathy or horror or somethere but for the grace of Godsentiment, as if looking at him would tempt fate to repeat itself on them.
I saw the way people looked at Stone and realized it was the way people had looked at me after everyone found out about the incident with Jericho Waltham and his predatory posse of drunken cronies. People shifted their gazes around me when they realized the extent of my damage, even though my scars were impossible to see with anything as mundane aseyes.I couldn’t imagine what my life would have been like if Jericho had left scars on the outside too.
So it wasn’t the scars, per se, that made me keep what I saw in Stone Wilder closer to my heart than I normally would with Molly. It wasn’t how his face had been shattered below his left eyebrow. It wasn’t the shiny, buckled skin that covered a quadrant of his face and pulled the corner of his lips into a wry, almost sinister grin.
It wasn’t protective. A man like that didn’t need my protection.
It wasn’t shame either. I was obviously into him. I couldn’t care less what people thought about that.
In that way, Jericho Waltham had given me a gift. I no longer cared what others thought because living in shame for the better part of the last nine years had ground that particular bit of finery—pride—to dust. Molly would have said pride was different from self-esteem. She was probably right. Waltham had destroyed that too, for a long time.
No, actually, what kept me silent about Stone’s scars went far deeper. I wanted to think about them for a while. I wanted to figure out what they meant—to him, to me—without anyone analyzing it for me.
Did they matter? Of course. They were the residue of a traumatic event. Plus, they’d partially destroyed his looks. Honestly, that was a crime against nature because he’d obviously been gorgeous before.
Ninety eight percent of him was still pretty gorgeous.
I needed some kind of private gut check to see whether it was because of his scars, or in spite of them, that I’d pushed a dinner date between us. Neither of those options was any good at all. I couldn’t throw myself into a man’s life because of his scars.
Was it only the deep recognition that drew me? The notion that while he bore his scars on the outside and I wore mine deep within me, we each had that residue of trauma in common? Because that said something about me I didn’t like knowing. No. It wasn’t that—at least it wasn’t only that.
I’d liked watching him interact with the wolfdogs in his care.
There was an aura he had, a fondness, tinged with respect whenever he interacted with Hades and Persephone, that spoke to something deep inside me. There was a protective core of steel. He would not allow anyone or anything to harm those animals.
There was gentle humor and deep loyalty and unconditional love every time he interacted with them.
It was that unconditional love more than anything that made me turn to look at him again and again. His heart glowed, warm as sunshine, when Hades and Persephone were near, and I was drawn to bask in it as well. I wanted that light, that warmth, to shine on me so badly it was a hollow, gnawing ache in my gut.
I’d experienced unconditional love before. My father loved me deeply and with that same fiercely protective zeal. My father would burn the earth for me, he had done just that, and I was grateful. He was my dad. He was so good at it; he was all I needed in the dad department.
