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Bellamy patted my shoulder. “Absolutely. Grizzly deserves to be loved just like anyone else. He’s been worried there would never be a Daddy to see who he was beneath the Big side of him.”
“But we saw how you looked at him,” grunted someone from the crowd.
Another chimed in with, “You’re exactly what he needs.”
Their words eased some of my stress. If there was any chance for me to have the man of my dreams as my Little, then I would take it. Even if it meant trusting this group of men I didn’t know personally to help me get there.
I was meant to be Grizzly’s Daddy.
CHAPTER 8
Grizzly
The guest room at Jake's house was the perfect place to use for my escape. Soft cream curtains hung over a window that looked out onto the backyard. A big, enticing bed took up most of the space, with its shimmery curtain drapes and intricate carvings. Two nightstands, a dresser, and a few odd pieces rounded out most of the space.
There was a chair in the corner with a throw blanket draped over the arm that I felt immediately drawn to. I pulled said blanket around my shoulders the moment I sat down, because my body had decided that shaking was the appropriate response to everything happening inside me.
I wasn’t cold. The shaking had nothing to do with any of that.
It was the terror of being seen. Knowing someone looked at me and wanted to know even more. I’d never experienced something like it. Not to the level Paxton brought to the table.
I sat in the chair with the blanket as my shield, staring at the soft glow of other houses in the distance as I tried to understand what had just happened downstairs.
Paxton Wells had knelt down beside me on the floor of a playroom full of people. He’d looked at me the way I had spent the better part of my adult years telling myself no one ever would. And when he spoke about a future together, I nearly came undone.
I've pictured being your Daddy more times than I can explain.
The memory of those words went through me like a shock of electricity. I pulled the throw blanket tighter and pressed my lips together as I tried very hard not to make any noise.
Because the noise that wanted to come out wasn’t a composed, professional sports agent kind of noise. It was much more like a Little who’d been giving a pound of sugar and a free pass to a water park.
The problem was that I didn’t know what came next. I didn’t know what to do with being wanted this way or how to accept the truth in Paxton’s words.
I had run from it before my brain had even finished processing it as real. Truthfully, some part of me was still operating under the assumption thatthiswasn’t a thing that happened tome.
Aside from not being a typical Little, I also had other differences about me now.
My vision loss had to be considered by whoever wanted to be with me. While it wasn’t as bad as it would get yet, I could already note a few big changes I needed to make in my life.Things that would take time to get sorted before I was no longer able to.
That last part was what kept circling back around no matter how many times I tried to set it aside. I was going blind. It was a fact of my life.
It wouldn’t be all at once. Dr. Whipell had been clear that it was a gradual process with room for management and adaptation. I remembered that much before I passed out in her office.
I’d begun, reluctantly, to consider how this would affect me, my clients, and my future. Handling it the way I handled most things that frightened me, I focused on managing the practical side of it while the emotional side sat in a corner gathering dust until I had to address it.
But sitting in this chair, in this room, with Paxton's words still fresh in the air, the emotional side wasn’t staying in its corner anymore. It was insisting on coming out and taking over.
It forced me to think of the questions I didn’t want to. Things like, what kind of man would look at a Little who was slowly losing his central vision and think, yes, this is who I want to care for? What kind of Daddy signed up for that burden?
I had spent enough time in the lifestyle to understand what the dynamic asked of a Daddy. It asked for presence, patience, and attentiveness. It was about being a person that created a safe place for their partners.
That alone was a generous and demanding thing to be for someone else. And those asks only got more complicated when the Little in question was going to need an above average amount of support as time went on.
More accommodation. More patience. More of everything.
The idea of watching someone decide, partway through, they hadn’t bargained for all of that was the kind of thought I was terrified of. I had to approach the idea carefully, in small pieces as I weighed my pros and cons of trying to find a Daddy. Even then, it made my chest tighten so much I found it difficult to breathe.
Which was precisely why running had felt like the only sensible option in the moment.
