Chapter 38

Shawn

“ I s he okay?”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from where Daniel had just vanished out the door. My heart slammed into my ribs. I didn’t have a solid answer to that. He’d been so mad at me when I’d offered to help him with therapy and here we were offering to help him with a lawyer. That hadn’t looked like anger... however…

“Let me go check on him.”

Before I could get up, dad was around his desk and pushing me back into the chair. “Do no such thing. Give him some space to breathe. I get you want to protect him, but at this rate, you’ll only smother him.”

Shit, he wasn’t wrong. It didn’t change the fact that every fiber of my being wanted to go see what was going through his head.

“Dad...” God, why did I sound so small? “I’m scared.”

He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “What do you mean by scared?”

Jesus. I wasn’t the type of person who had this type of talk with his parents. We didn’t have that type of relationship, but I needed someone to talk to about it. This was the first time I’d felt this way about anyone.

“I don’t know. He’s different. Like I don’t want him to walk out of here and I’ll never see him again. If he did, he’d take a part of me with him.”

Dad smirked, sinking into the chair that Daniel had vacated. “And you two just now started being a thing?”

My face heated. “I’ve always liked him. Ever since he started here.”

A nudge to my shoulder. Yeah, we were crossing back into friend territory versus father and son, but maybe that’s where we needed to be for this talk.

“You sure had an odd way of showing that.”

My eyes rolled as I looked over at him. “Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Does he know?”

I snorted. “That I like him? Yeah, I think that much is obvious.”

It was Dad’s turn to roll his eyes now. “I feel like this is where your mom and I failed you. That part that says he’d take pieces of you if he left? That’s not just liking someone, Shawn. He’s dug himself in deep. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but if I had to guess, I’d say that you were in love with that boy.”

Well. Damn. Truth bomb from my father. I sank deeper into my seat as I mulled that over. Was I in love with Daniel? I didn’t exactly know what that was. My parents weren’t shining examples of what it looked like. It was obvious they cared for each other and they made sure that I was taken care of... was that love?

“I don’t know if I’d call it that...” I trailed off as something fluttered to life in my chest, spreading through my limbs and filling my body with warmth. Well, fuck. Maybe it was love. Now how the hell was I supposed to tell him that?

Dad stood from his seat, resting both hands on my shoulders. “Again, I feel like we should have taught you a little better about what that looked like. Your mother and I love you very much and only want you to be happy.”

He let me go and went back to sit in his usual seat. It felt strange to look at my dad across his desk like this, but I needed to process what the hell was going through my head. My parents weren’t terrible people. They just hadn’t known how to be actual parents. Lots of people fell into that boat. I’d turned out okay, considering.

“Do you—do you think he’s had enough time to breathe?”

Dad chuckled. “Give him time, Shawn. Go back to work. He’ll be out there and you two can talk about it later.”

Everything within me wanted to talk about it now, but for once in my life, I needed to be patient. Rushing into feelings wasn’t a great idea. There wasn’t even a guarantee that he felt the same. As of a week ago, he’d wanted to hit me every chance he got. I had to be the only one who’d fallen hard and fallen fast.

But the guy was staying with me. With the guise of looking after a cat he also swore that he didn’t really want. Maybe I was overthinking things with Daniel?

I left Dad’s office and walked back to the bar. Daniel wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It didn’t make me feel any more at ease. I wanted him to work beside me. We were a team and a damn good one at that. The bar ran like a well-oiled machine when the two of us were behind it, even when we spent every spare moment arguing.

As I grabbed the rest of the glasses Daniel had been setting up before we went to the back, the front doors opened. Dinner guests filed into the waiting area and my heart sank a little lower when Daniel still didn’t make an appearance. Work seemed sort of mechanical as someone sat in front of me and ordered something to drink. I sort of went through the process, not really focused on it. When I set the martini glass in front of the woman, she sneered at me.

“What the hell is this?”

I looked at the drink and frowned. Holy shit. I didn’t know what the hell I’d just placed in front of her. I thought I’d been making a lemon drop martini, but the color was wrong and looked more like water. For all I knew, I’d just handed her a glass of vodka.

“Sorry, let me remake that for you.”

The woman rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms. I understood her irritation. That was the worst part. It wasn’t like me to fuck things up this badly.

The longer that Daniel stayed away, the more distracted I became. I’d added bitters to a damn margarita for crying out loud. I was never this bad. If all it took to jumble my brain this badly was for a guy I liked to have some sort of freakout, I was in for a mess. Maybe Dad was right that I was in love with him. It was the only way I could explain why this affected me the way it was.

“Shawn?”

I looked up to see Chase step behind the bar. He didn’t work back there as often, but he was trained. It had to be bad if they were sending someone over to help me out.

Where the fuck was Daniel?

“I’m good.”

“You’re really not. Go take a break and catch your breath. Come back when you can focus a little better, yeah?”

I nodded, catching that my dad was standing in the doorway to the kitchen watching the exchange. I didn’t need him to see me floundering.

The door to the back room swung closed behind me and I made my way around a shelf of liquors. My steps halted to find Daniel huddled on the floor, knees to his chest and his face buried against them. Had he been back there the whole time?

I didn’t want to startle him. He was obviously upset. He was more receptive to someone being more caring and understanding than someone trying to make him talk. I said nothing as I sat on the floor in front of him, silently waiting for him to realize that I was there. Thankfully, the bar wouldn’t be too busy for another hour or so when the dinner rush really picked up.

Soft sniffles filled the room, and I wanted so badly to reach out and touch him. To let him know I was there for him. Seconds stretched into minutes as I watched his shoulders shake in quiet sobs. Every fiber of my being wanted to comfort him, but my father’s voice kept telling me not to smother him. Surely, this was an exception. I’d never seen him look so broken.

The second my hand made contact with his arm, Daniel’s red-rimmed eyes blinked up at me. Tracks of dried tears stained his face, and before I knew it, his arms wrapped around my waist, and his face was buried in my chest.

“What took you so damn long?”

A sourness settled in my gut. Maybe my father had a point about not smothering him, but I should have gone looking for him sooner. “I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space.”

Those brown curls bounced as he shook his head against me. “Never. No more space. Crowd me. Don’t let me go.”

My hands soothed up and down his back as his tears soaked into the front of my shirt. How had my dad offering him a lawyer reduced him to this?

“What happened? Why are you so upset?”

He sniffled, his nose against white cotton, before looking up at me. “Because someone cares. Someone believes that I had no idea what the hell was going on. My parents love me, but I know they still partially blame me.”

My fingers worked through his thick hair, pushing it back from his face and making him maintain eye contact. “The parents that I met? Daniel, they’d do anything for you. I think you’ve all been through something traumatic and it’s hard to get past that sometimes.”

Another fat tear rolled down a soft cheek, and my thumb swiped it away. “Now try to cheer up. We want to help you fix this mess. No one should have had to deal with the harassment he’s put you through for as long as you have.”