Chapter 2

"We getting paid to watch concrete dry now?" Juan, my business partner and best friend asked, flicking my hard hat as he strolled up next to me.

I slanted him a dry look before turning my attention back to the foundation our crew was pouring. "That stopped being funny back in high school."

"Nah, hermano. It never stops."

I shook my head, huffing out a laugh. "I think Karl is going to work out just fine for the foreman position."

Juan cocked his head to the side, studying the man in question as he supervised the pour. "Maybe. Let's give it another week to see how he gets on with the guys before we bring it up."

I grunted an acknowledgement, and we stood in companionable silence for a few minutes watching our guys work before I broke and asked a question I knew I'd probably regret.

"Any idea where the 608 area code is from?"

Juan's head snapped around, his eyes lighting up with glee. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

"Because Google probably has the answer."

I pinched the bridge of my nose, staring straight ahead. "It's not important enough to check."

"And yet, you just asked me," he said, his shit-eating grin still visible in my peripheral vision.

"Christ," I groaned, shaking my head. "I shouldn't have. Just drop it."

"No."

"We have work to do."

"We're the owners. We pay people to do the work now."

I laughed, shaking my head. It was true if you counted actually getting in there and swinging hammers, and yet somehow, even running three full-time crews, owning the business often left me more exhausted at the end of the day than I'd been back when Juan and I were first learning how to do basic construction from his uncle in high school.

"North," he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder and forcing me to turn and look at him. "Dime. Tell me. Who is he?"

"Who is who?"

He rolled his eyes. "Your 608 area code. Did you finally find yourself a new boy? Because I've been telling you, all work and no play isn't healthy."

"That's why I keep my membership at the club."

His expression settled into something more serious, and he squeezed my shoulder before dropping his hand. "And I'm glad you make time to blow off steam there, but the occasional scene isn't enough, my friend. It's not what you're built for. You need a boy of your own."

I sighed. It was a conversation we'd had too often to count, and I knew I shouldn't be irritated that my best friend not only knew me so well, but also cared. And yet, for all our similarities, this was one thing we would probably never see eye to eye on. Juan came from a huge multi-generational family that supported each other in every aspect of their lives, and always would. My upbringing had been different, and as the only child of a single mother who—yes, loved and supported me, but had always struggled to support the two of us—I knew that I needed to build something stable and get myself financially set before I could turn my attention to a real relationship.

I wanted to be able to provide for my future boy in every way, and despite our company's success, I still worried that it could disappear at a moment's notice, the way so many of my mother's part-time jobs had back when I was growing up.

"I know," I told Juan. "But there will be time for that later. I need to get myself in a more secure position before I look for someone of my own."

He shook his head, giving me that annoyingly pitying look again that I only put up with because there was so much fondness and understanding behind it. "You are secure, hermano. You and I have built a solid, profitable business with an excellent reputation. You have a beautiful home, an impressive investment portfolio, and…" He grinned, thumping his chest, "the Ruizes."

"Well, I guess I'm set then," I said, nudging his shoulder. His family had been calling me an honorary Ruiz ever since the first summer I started working for his uncle Carlos, and though I never planned on leaning on them for help, it meant a lot.

"Damn straight," Juan said. "Now tell me about this Wisconsin boy."

"Who?" I asked, getting a little whiplash from the conversational pivot.

He grinned. "Your new boy. The 608 area code is somewhere in Wisconsin."

"And how do you know that?" I asked, an unexpected pang of disappointment hitting me.

Juan tapped his temple. "I know many things, my friend, but what I don't know is the details of your current love interest."

I huffed out a laugh. "Uh, he's not that."

Juan got another shit-eating grin. "So there is a boy!"

I crossed my arms over my chest. "No."

"Mentiroso."

"I'm not lying."

Juan looked up at the heavens, shaking his head. "And again, he lies to me."

"Okay, there is a boy," I confessed. "But he's certainly not my love interest. He's not my anything."

The cocked eyebrow I got told me he wasn't buying it, and we'd been friends for far too many years, more than half my life, for me to have any illusions that he'd actually let this go.

And if I was being honest, I'd known that before I brought it up.

If I was being painfully honest, it was probably why I'd brought it up.

I already knew the amusing and totally unexpected text exchange I'd had on Friday night wasn't going anywhere. The boy had mostly likely been drunk, and almost definitely straight.

Now, thanks to Juan, I also knew that he lived halfway across the country, so it was probably for the best that I'd left it alone after for the last few days… even if "leaving it alone" had looked a lot like me re-reading the thread multiple times per day, and fighting off the urge to check up on him again, each and every time I did.

"Dime," Juan said again, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know you want to."

"Fine," I said, since he was right. I did want to tell him, even if it wasn't for the reasons he was clearly thinking.

I just needed him to tell me to drop it. I didn't need the distraction, and wasn't even sure why it had become one. I should have deleted the text thread and moved on from this already, not let the boy whose name I didn't even know take up so much rent-free space in my thoughts.

"I got a message the other night," I explained. "It was a wrong number, but the kid was sweet. Nervous, out at a club with friends, and probably intoxicated, but falling all over himself to apologize for accidentally ‘bothering' me. And he just seemed…"

Cute? Definitely. But more than that. Reading tone and intention into text was always a bad idea, and yet somehow, with him, I'd felt like I could do exactly that.

And it had woken up everysingle one of the Daddy instincts that I really didn't have time to indulge right now.

"He seemed what?" Juan pressed me, because of course he did.

I shrugged helplessly, then fished my phone out of my pocket and handed it over, opening the thread. "Look."

Juan read it over, shaking his head a little as his smile grew wider and wider until he finally handed it back. "Ah, I see."

"Really?" I asked a little sarcastically. "And what exactly do you see?"

He grinned, blowing past my sarcasm as if it didn't exist. "I see that he's exactly your type. Fumbling and sweet. Hungry for praise and a little bit needy."

I rolled my eyes this time. "And straight. And living in Wisconsin."

"And you are still thinking about him."

"I…"

Couldn't deny it.

Juan grinned when I fumbled, rubbing his hands together like some kind of movie mastermind. "And you do not know he's straight, or that he's actually in Wisconsin." He chin-nodded toward Karl. "Doesn't our newest hire have a phone number from the east coast? You know people move all the time. That doesn't mean they have to change their cell numbers."

My pulse sped up. "You're reaching, brother."

Juan grinned. "No, I'm encouraging you not to give up on something before it even gets started. Not to give up on someone who you're finally showing an interest in. Especially since you've already got him calling you Daddy."

"He didn't call me Daddy."

"Eh," he said, holding his hand out, palm down, and waggling it back and forth. "Mas o menos. But why didn't you reply to him after he gave you that cute little goodbye?"

"My battery died.'

He raised his eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Yes!"

He laughed, then clapped me on the shoulder. "You, and I say this with love, are an idiot. Message him. Be a good Daddy. Even if it goes nowhere, a needy boy like that? He's probably got himself all twisted up about the way you dropped him. At the very least, you need to let him know you accept his apology."

"Apologies," I corrected him, my lips trying to twitch up into a smile. "There were… a lot of them."

Juan laughed again, but then sobered. "There were. And the odds are you're right. He's probably not your future boy. But how do you think he feels right now, worrying that conversation over and over in his head? Because you can see by the way he was going on that he overthinks things. Feels responsible for what isn't his fault. Needs some reassurance."

"Shit," I muttered. If Juan saw it too, then maybe I wasn't just being a fool about things. The boy really did need a Daddy, and even if that wasn't ever going to be me—not in a permanent way—the reason I hadn't been able to let this go was because I was a Daddy.

And I'd let him down.

Juan crossed his arms over his chest, chin nodding toward my phone. "Do it, hermano. Just check in and give him the reassurance he needs. Get some closure, if nothing else. For your own sake. You deny this side of yourself too often."

I snorted. We were both members of the same kink club. "You know I don't."

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "I know that a scene every few weeks is the bare minimum, and that you deserve more than that. Message your boy."

"Fine."

He gave me a devilish grin, and I groaned when I realized the trap he'd walked me into.

"You know what I meant," I grumbled as I opened the text thread again and finally gave in to what I'd been wanting to do all week. "He's not my boy."

A high-pitched mechanical whine interrupted us, accompanied by a faint hissing sound that yanked my attention off my phone and back where it should be.

"Shit," I muttered. "The pump?"

"Sounds like it," Juan agreed with a sigh as Karl called out to us from the other side of the slab.

"Mr. Wexler? Mr. Ruiz? Can you come take a look at this, please?"

Juan clapped me on the shoulder again, holding me in place as he answered. "I'll be right there. Mr. Wexler has something else to take care of."

"What I need to take care of is that hydraulic line, if it's leaking," I grumbled.

"No, what you need to take care of is right there in your hand," Juan said, giving my phone a pointed look. "If Karl is going to earn that foreman position, this is his chance to prove it. So how about I go take a look at the pump with him, while you check in with your boy."

"He's still not mine."

"Aún no," Juan threw over his shoulder as he walked away. "But sometimes you don't have to be ready for something in order for it to find you, my friend."